Food is something everyone must consume for subsistence on a daily basis in order to survive and maintain health. This has not changed, but what has changed are the ways in which we get our food, the genderized and racialized meanings of food, and the spaces we occupy while obtaining and consuming food. We are dependent on food, and therefore dependent on the supermarket to produce and distribute the goods needed.
The supermarket changes the way we move and interact within space. Space here referring to “social space” which is not just created by one person, but “the space created through the interaction of multiple humans over time.” People fill the aisles selecting their products moving and stopping at different counters to sample foods, obtain their meats and pastries, or to view the advertisements on the televisions. Communication in the supermarket has greatly changed from personal contact and interaction with employees to an almost invisible interplay. Customers communicate on their cell phones to friends in distant locations, bringing them into the shopping routine and shaping the space in new ways. This expands the social space to people that are not even present, and yet closes the social space of the actual physical people by limiting the dialogue and personal encounters with them.
The shoppers are all moving towards their end destination, the register or the less social, self-checkout. The assemblage of self- service has altered the way consumers shop and modified the duties and quantity of employees. The consumers no longer have to communicate with store employees because they can now non-verbally interact with the machines. The consumers may perceive this as progress, making shopping an autonomous activity and seemingly more convenient, but the self- service concept also plays a role in benefiting the stores labor costs. If the store no longer has to invest in multiple people to work the registers, they can instead hire one or two persons to see over the self-checkout area and thus save money. But the ideology of self-service can only successfully happen if the shoppers see it as being beneficial and appealing to them in some way. As our book states, “the assumption that a customer is “waited on” must be disarticulated, and the customer must be convinced that this a convenience, a good thing, a pleasurable activity, and so on.”
The register itself has the power of holding information such as the cost of purchases, sales, and coupons. Once at the register, customers can scan their frequent shoppers card offering the discounts and sales. The customers receive the discounts on their items all while their selections of purchase are surveyed and tracked in a computer. With the advanced marketing techniques using a form of surveillance, the customer’s choices of items are modified by the offer of additional coupons that correspond to items and brands that they have already purchased.
Food also creates a spatial practice in the kitchen, where people gather to make and consume food. As detailed in our book “Spatial practice consists of the structures and activities that produce and shape space by articulating it in certain ways." The family space of the kitchen is thought to bring the family together and focuses on a healthy well- cooked meal ideally cooked by the mother.
The ubiquity of supermarkets in suburban areas means that mothers should cook more extensive meals and more frequently. Also, food media, whether in film or on the television, portrays the idea of that food can create a community of people alike that can be bought and purchased not only by choosing particular brands, but by the mother’s choice of choosing the brands of America. It then becomes the mother’s obligation to buy these products and display and cook them in a certain ways. This can be seen with Jell-O, the popular gelatin dessert that is seen as quintessentially American. In Edible Ideologies, Nathan Abrahams states, “What American in the 1920s and 30s could resist the appetizing photographs of the gently rippling Jell-O salads in the Ladies Home Journal?”(85) Well who could resist them? The Jewish communities of America could not consume it because it contained the skins and bones of non-kosher animals. Jell-O became a way of separating the Americans and non-Americans, which during the 50s communist scares, held a tremendous negative connotation.
As spatial practices change with more people viewing television more regularly, comes a new way of consuming food. With easy to prepare meals, such as TV diners that are created to consume while viewing the television. The spaces we occupy and create together while consuming food can change the way we view food and the meaning we create for it.
http://www.normanadams.org/NR4Want.JPG
ReplyDeleteThe part in which you write about food media creating a sense of community . . . That's the image it evokes for me.
You're right about food media trying to portray a sense of community. Kroger's commercials especially do this, portraying their store as that neighborhood grocer. It's a great marketing strategy for the south, a region which has thrived on the sense of community and being around like-minded people they feel that they can trust.
The point you made in the final paragraph is also interesting. Grocery store food's meaning has been reduced to prepared, heat-up-and-serve meals instead of fresh proteins and produce. It reflects a change in lifestyle in which people either do not have the time to prepare their own meals, due to jobs, or because American culture has just become lazy. It's interesting to think about how both the grocery store and the media influence food's meaning in American culture.
You make very good points in this blog. Like communicating with others using a cell phone. I have known many of times that I been in a store and call or text someone if that store was running a sale that they might be interested in. This benefits stores more, because it is free advertisement by word of mouth. I now go to the store more often because of self-checkout. It makes the whole shopping and checking process easy and faster. I like to be in and out as fast as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting to me is that my wife still likes to go through the check out. She prefers to be inconvenienced by waiting in line because it is worth while to her to be able to communicate with the people checking us out. To my wife everything can become a social space. It is extremely difficult to find restaurants that will prepare food based on health. There has been an increase over the past few years in places like Whole Foods who provide healthy meals on the go for their patrons. People flood the store to get healthy food on their lunch break. The grocery store has done a fabulous job at allowing people to feel at home. The Kroger in arlington has pictures from 80 years ago in black and white all over their walls. I look at those pictures every time I am in there.
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