Have you ever saw your friend wearing something and you
think to yourself “what the hell were they thinking when they bought that?”
Like this thing is just god awful and you wanna tell them they look ridiculous
but it’s just way too late. Then you’re on your phone or something and you see some
famous person with the same exact thing your friend had on and somehow it
starts to grow on you. After seeing it on this person it became cool.
What a shame.
Because there is just
no way that Ed Hardy merchandise, tramp stamps, and frosted tips should have
ever been a thing in the 90’s.
Ever.
Like you try so hard not
to like this shit but these damn famous people make it look so cool when IT’S
NOT. Deep down you think Britney’s tat is stupid, but there is this part of you
that wants to research designs and try temporary tats that you could get on
your back on your 18th birthday.
In M.T. Anderson’s Feed, we see rapidly changing trends, media, and fame influencing the youth of the world. Early on we’re introduced to this fixation through these little plastic birds (Anderson 7).
Later on we see the influence of media intensified on these
characters through their lesions. At first, lesions were ugly and displeasing:
“We looked at ourselves. We all looked kind of bad. […] We
had the lesions that people were getting, and ours right then were kind of red
and wet-looking. Link has a lesion on his jaw, and I had lesions on my arm and
on my side. Quendy had a lesion on her forehead. In the lights of the hallway
you could see them real good. There are different kinds of lesions, I mean,
there are lesions and lesions, but somehow our lesions, in this case, seemed
like kid stuff” (11).
Nobody desired a lesion. They were ugly. Repulsive. Gross.
Revolting. Unwanted.
However, when the stars from Oh? Wow! Thing! Began to get lesions and were showing them off,
even our most independent character began to become subject to these influences
by the media.
“Violet was standing near the fountain and she had a real low shirt on, to show off her lesion, because the stars of Oh? Wow! Thing! Had started to get lesions, so now people
were thinking better about lesions, and lesions even looked kind of cool.”
Towards the end of the book Quendy, always trying to get one
step ahead of Calista, takes this whole lesion thing to the next level. She got
so many lesions all over her body that you could see her muscles and tendons. She went way over the top just so people would think that she was "hip". She was just doing what she thought would be the thing that would get her noticed for once, but turned out to be a total fail.
Just like almost every teenager in our world today,
the characters in Feed wanted to be
accepted and fit in. The lesions were just a representation for the negative power
that media can have on the younger generations. They also can illustrate the
corruption of society.
We laugh when the media’s influence is something as
simple as frosted tips that Justin Timberlake got in the 90s, but how about
when it comes down to serious things?
Violence.
Drugs.
Alcohol.
When celebrities are seen doing these things, we have
to think about how they can influence our younger generation. All because O.T.
Genasis is in love wit da coco, and Fetty Wap is happy to let his girl cook his
coke, teenagers will think this is a good way to be accepted and stay current.
We see artists using their ability to impact lives of
the youth destructively instead of using their fame to lift us up.
Now that I feel like a broken record saying how much the
media negatively influences us, let me just say that I don’t hate the media. I
actually am very engaged in it every day. I hate to say it, but I listen to all
the new music that comes out, I follow many celebrities on Instagram, Twitter,
etc. and I basically try as hard as I can to “keep up with the Kardashians”.
And so I’m not saying that the media is always bad, I’m saying that the media
has a certain power over us… but so do we! To be honest, we probably can’t
change the media, celebrities, etc. they are just too dominant. But just as
Violet tried to resist her feed, we can try to resist our exposure to the media
when it is hurting rather than helping.
Anderson, M.T. Feed. Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.
Nicole S.
Anderson, M.T. Feed. Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.
Nicole S.
I find it very interesting that you chose to attach trends in the 90s as examples of "bad media." Remember that these trends were just as normal to people who grew up in the nineties as following people on Twitter is to you, right? And while hip hop music does sometimes glamorize drug use, I think that a lot of young people know better than to fall sway to this. At least, I don't know how much hip hop is to blame for the prevalence of drug use in our country. I think that you've chosen to label media that you're not into as "bad media." This isn't very objective, right? Is there really much difference between watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians and watching Oh! Wow! Thing! from the novel? They're both reality television shows, right? Both involving following the lives of people that you don't really know for entertainment. I think that we have to be careful with words like "good" and "bad" because they're not very specific. Also, let's try to strive for objectivity. Frosting your hair might destroy your hair and cost some money, but it's not as objectively bad as having lesions put all over your body like Quendy, right? Though I agree with your point that Anderson is trying to raise awareness about how the media influences us. But I do think that Anderson would see your Twitter use and fondness of reality tv as concerning. At least, this is my reading of the novel.
ReplyDeleteProf. M