haikugraffiti.com

I love wine. I also realized how little I know about it, especially when compared to my knowledge of the only other potables I regularly consume- coffee and tea (my teeth really should be brown at this point). Wine is of particular interest when its cultural relevance is considered. There is evidence of wine production in Egypt, Greece, and Syria as early as 5000 years BCE, making it the oldest known fermented beverage. Wine is also a major part of world religions; Jesus turned water into wine (reason enough to invite him to weddings), Jews say the Kiddush over every Sabbath, and the Greeks worshipped their own god of wine and merriment, calling him Dionysus (my favorite resurrection god). Wine is historic.

I was under the impression that I possessed a respectable knowledge of wine for a casual drinker; being able to shoot off snobby adjectives like “minerally” or “black-current-like”, knowing a little about which varietals grow where. It’s made from grapes, right? However, I quickly realized that I couldn’t explain the cost variations in wine, didn’t really know what the label indicates, was clueless to the processing methods, and hadn’t thought about the environmental impacts of this agricultural product. Let me say first, that this was a research assignment that a developing wino can really get behind. My methods included interviews (accompanied by tastings) with wine specialists, as well as internet research and in home experiments (more tastings). This research relates general information on the industry as a whole, and specific information on two wines from California—Bonny Doon’s Ca’ del Solo nebbiolo (costing $29) and Charles Shaw’s “two buck Chuck” (a Trader Joe’s exclusive).

Wine grapes are typically grown in temperate climates, between 20 and 50 degrees North or South latitudes, the top three wine producing countries in the world are France, Italy and Spain; the United States come in a distant fourth, with the state of California leading the nation. The most common species of grape grown for wine is the vitis vinifera, which includes hundreds of varietals, both red and white, in a list so extensively long, and inclusive of every grape I’ve ever heard of, that my professed love of the “lesser known” viognier seems absolutely ludicrous. To produce wine, the grapes must be harvested, crushed, and fermented twice before bottling.

Harvest occurs around September/October in the Northern Hemisphere, and February/ March in the Southern. My romantic image of wine harvesting always included someone hand- picking grapes with a discerning eye for quality, and it the reality isn’t far off. Harvest is done when the grapes say they’re ready, and not on any human’s schedule. The grapes are analyzed for their Brix (sugar content), tartaric acid, and pH levels. When balance is achieved, weather needs to cooperate; harvest cannot occur shortly after rain because the grapes will actually increase their water content and produce a “thin” wine. Most wines in America, like the Bonny Doon, are hand harvested; this allows for quality control, omitting grapes with mold and excessive foreign materials, like leaves, rocks, and small animals. Most Australian vineyards are planted for mechanical harvesting, done by very large tractors. This country has a shortage of manual laborers, due in part to its isolated geography and conservative immigration policies. The mechanical harvesting is less expensive, and helps to explain why Australian wines are typically around six dollars, even though they have come from the opposite side of the world; it also explains the unrefined taste. Charles Shaw wines are also harvested mechanically, and the minimal labor results in a two-dollar price (and two- dollar flavor).

After the harvest is the crushing and pressing. The grapes are crushed to release juices and either separated from their skins, or allowed to macerate with them for a few hours to a few days, depending on the desired result. The combined grape juice and skin is called must. The color of the wine is largely affected by this; white wines (most notably Champagne) are frequently made from dark grapes (Pinot Noir) by separating the must immediately to avoid pigmentation. And a beautiful, tawny colored dessert wine I tasted a Bonny Doon was made from entirely white grapes; the specialist explained that red wine could be made from white grapes as a chemical reaction from the acids in the skins. The chemistry is astounding. This is also when the initial fermentation occurs. Yeast is naturally present on the grapes; it appears powdery on the skins. Bonny Doon uses these native yeasts to ferment the wine because they believe it adds to the local taste of the wine (it also reduces the cost of farm inputs), but most wine makers use cultivated yeasts because they produce consistent, predictable result. One benefit of wild yeast is that it ferments slowly, thereby generating less heat. Wines fermented with commercial yeasts often require massive amounts of refrigeration to maintain the desired rate of sugar conversion. The initial fermentation, lasting from a few days to a couple weeks, turns the natural fruit sugars into alcohol, and the yeast die and become sediment known as lees. Bonny Doon stirs the lees in to the wine before second fermentation, producing a yeasty aroma and dry, silty texture in their wines. Most wine makers allow the lees to settle before moving into a second fermentation vessel, making a clearer wine. I don’t like lees and decanting just separates me from the wine for a longer time.

Second fermentation occurs much more slowly as most of the yeast has died and there is minimal residual sugar to convert. This can be done in stainless steel containers or wood barrels. Stainless steel vessels have the benefit of being indefinitely reusable and inexpensive; they also maintain the taste of the grape without imparting any other flavors. Bonny Doon, and other producers of more expensive wines, use oak barrels (usually French oak, costing $600 a barrel compared to American oak at $289) for the second fermentation; it imparts flavor to the finished product, and French oak is known for is subtlety. Some producers of cheap wine will use the stainless steel and add oak chips to impart flavor. These production choices are reflected in the price of the finished product. The wines are bottled and distributed (or sometimes the other way around) after the second fermentation.

The mysterious label indicates information that is intended to qualify the quality of the wine, as well as disseminate legally required facts; alcohol content, volume, origin, distributor, and vintage. The most inexplicable of these to me was the origin or appellation as the French call it. What’s in a name? The concept behind naming the place of the wine’s origin is terrior, which is loosely translated from French as “the taste of the place”. The idea is that the local geography, microclimate, and soil contents all affect the taste of the wine, to an even greater extent than the varietal used. The assumption I challenged is that the place indicated on the label is actually the origin of the grapes. It turns out the label doesn’t necessarily indicate everything about the birthplace of the grapes. The right to use an appellation is protected by the laws of the originating name (like the familiar California sparkling wine is NOT Champagne law) but there are loopholes. A Napa Valley indication only requires 85% of the grapes to be from that county, the remaining percentage can be from anywhere; a grower can buy cheaper grapes from somewhere else to extend their vintage. Another loophole exploited by the Franzia brothers, the owners of Charles Shaw, is that the law includes a grandfather clause, any vineyard bearing the name “Napa” prior to the creation of the law is excluded. The Franzia brothers purchased vineyards in the San Joaquin Valley, already named Napa, and sell Fresno grown grapes as Napa Valley wines—legally. I question the importance of naming appellation in commercial vineyards; the use of cultivated yeasts, chemical inputs, and grafting seem to have a homogenizing affect on the taste of many wines.

Bonny Doon emphasizes the terrior of their wines by eliminating outside influences on the flavor of their wines with biodynamic viniculture; it also has the added effect of excluding the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides (which are frequently used in wine making, as many appellations have constant exposure to sea moisture). This winemaker has strictly adhered to biodynamic growing methods since 2004, and achieved third party certification from the Demeter Institute in 2007; all of the growers from whom they purchase grapes are also held to the same standards. (They use outside growers to offset the cost of land, as well as eliminating a requirement to purchase inferior grapes during years of bad harvest.)

I was excited by their biodynamic practices, and I thought I knew what this meant–planting and harvesting according the cycle of the moon, like my veggie garden (two more weeks for radishes. But “biodynamic” means a whole lot more. The idea is to enrich the soil and harness “cosmic forces” within the fruit; I get soil enrichment, but what do “cosmic forces” taste like, and how are they harnessed? Biodynamic agriculture requires nine specific preparations; one for each of the planets (per 1924 knowledge). One field preparation requires burying the manure from a fertile cow in the horn of a bull from the autumn to spring equinox; and field mice are eradicated by sprinkling the vineyard with ashes of field mouse skin—when Venus is in the Scorpius constellation! These processes seem akin to lighting votive candles or reading tarot cards; any results are difficult to measure, and may be imaginary. But the certification does allow for a price increase of around thirty percent, so it’s good for business.

So, I’m clearly not a biodynamic convert, but I was curious how these methods compare to organic farms. Several studies have shown that biodynamic soils are comparable to organic soils, and significantly richer than conventionally farmed soils; the seven compost preparations are considered largely responsible. Biodynamic farms also use minimal farm inputs, therefore creating a smaller carbon footprint than farms reliant on chemical fertilizers and seeds. I was also unsure of why the Bonny Doon wine isn’t also certified organic, as their methods seemed as though they might qualify. The specialist indicated that the vineyard is not certified organic, and that their winemaking methods would not allow them to qualify, they use sulfites to preserve the wine and prevent oxidation. Any wine with sulfur content higher than 100ppm cannot be labeled certified organic. This also explains why their wines cause terrible headaches in my sulfur sensitive spouse.

Now that I know a little more about why some wines are more expensive than others are, I understand that “two- buck” Chuck’s cheap price reflects deceptive labeling, inexpensive land, and minimal investments in labor and production. I also recognize that Bonny Doon’s higher prices reflect a commitment to terrior, stewardship of the land, and the premium cost of certified mysticism. So which wine will I purchase in the future? Neither. Chuck’s cheap compromises are evident in the flavor, and Bonny Doon’s “cosmic forces” aren’t. I will continue to purchase wine based on its deliciousness, try to buy more California products to reduce to energy used in transporting my beloved Spanish wines, and bring organic wines home whenever price and flavor meet.

I remember reaching through the fence

For the sweet

Red

Fruit

Always strawberries within reach

Every Spring

I am Peter Rabbit

Losing my tail

I remember pumpkin vines

Pregnant gourds

Too large to pull through chain link

Carrying them home with

Two hands

Dropping the pumpkin

One year

A crushed

Orange

Shell

Every Fall I am a jack o lantern

Always carved and lit

When the pumpkins go

The Christmas trees come

And go

And the Strawberries come again

The sweet

Red

Fruits

I remember reaching through the fence for the last strawberry

Before Sam’s Club was planted

I am Peter Rabbit

I am

Losing my tail

Sexy Beast

An American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis, was released in the year 1981.  Wikipedia states that this was one of three werewolf films in major theatrical release in this year, along with The Howling and Wolfen. I suspect that the prevalence of werewolf films at this time were a reaction to the sexual repression that was returning in the early 1980’s; conservative values were making a resurgence with Reagan’s presidency and AIDS made sexual activity dangerous again, after the sexual revolution of the pill had made it “safe”.  This was the only werewolf film that year to achieve a cult film status.

One possible reason for its enduring status is its remarkable special effects (doubtful that its character development is a contributing factor) which, according to Wikipedia, were so astounding that the Academy of Motion Pictures created the Outstanding Achievement in Makeup to honor it. Even now, the metamorphosis from man to wolf looks great.  Another reason the film may have been so well received it that it’s pretty funny.  My favorite scene is where David is trying to get arrested by insulting the queen, the prince, Winston Churchill, and Shakespeare—this scene ridicules British politeness.

The film addresses xenophobia; this is why the werewolf in London is a foreigner, and why the villagers are fearful of sharing their intimate secrets with Jack and David. Outsiders are scary. They are also seductive.  Alex’s attraction to David, an American Jew, represents the sexualization of outsiders; his becoming a werewolf accentuates the bestial nature of her exotic sexual escapade.

The film makes a definite connection between sex and animal. A werewolf attacks David and Jack immediately after Jack says he won’t give Debbie Kline “any choice” in sleeping with him. The werewolf taking Jack’s life reflects this aggressive sexual energy.  The pub’s name, The Slaughtered Lamb, also alludes to sex and lost virginity.  David’s brutal nightmares symbolize his unconscious and ferocious sexual desire. David’s murderous werewolf rampage takes as much screen time as his love scene with Alex and both scenes begin and end in nudity, but David only appears energized and elated after killing six people—the violence substitutes his insatiable lust.  The correlation of sex and violence wears an exclamation point when a pile of dead bodies accumulates in the pornographic movie theatre; it also mirrors the sexual energy of the crowd watching An American Werewolf in London.  Surprising and clever.

In no way does this film advocate for sexual repression (especially when you consider that John Landis also directed Animal House), and it doesn’t take the parallel of sex and death seriously, either. It’s a comedy. It makes fun of sensationalized fears. What An American Werewolf in London does take seriously is the role of the media. The television is prominent in David’s nightmares, and the children in front of the television symbolize the ubiquitous influence of it on children. The media frenzy, shot within a frame of a television, following David’s werewolf killings remind the audience of media’s tendency towards spectacle.

All in all, An American Werewolf in London is a howling good time, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Watch it for a few laughs and enduring visual effects.

This Little Piggy Stayed Home

Penelope, directed by Mark Palansky, is a modern fairytale, complete with magic and a wicked mother figure. The protagonist is a girl born deformed with a family curse; she has the face of a pig. A witch placed this curse– the first born girl will be pig-faced until someone of her own kind loves her faithfully– on the Wilhern family in revenge for the rejection of her daughter by the prideful blue-bloods. Penelope is kept apart from society until she is matched with a husband to break the curse. Like most folk tales, Penelope is a moral tale, but it has been updated to reflect the moral pitfalls of contemporary society.

The archetypal villain would normally be the witch who burdened poor Penelope with this curse, but this role is filled by the mother. Penelope’s mother, Jessica, fakes the death of her child. It appears that she is trying to protect Penelope from the cruelty of scrutiny, but by keeping Penelope locked in the figurative tower, Jessica is echoing the original Wilhern crime of vanity. She is ashamed to have born a pig-faced child. Jessica’s obsession with curing Penelope’s affliction leads to the search for a suitable husband; a reflection of the idea that a woman requires a man to rescue her. Jessica represents a dangerous preoccupation with appearances, the role that mothers play in developing their daughter’s self-esteem, and the problems of attaching one’s sense of self worth to their ability to attract a mate. Even after Penelope is transformed, Jessica recommends plastic surgery because, “That’s what mothers do with daughters; they talk about how to look prettier”.

Penelope, our heroine, is named the same as Odysseus’ faithful wife and like her namesake, she expresses faithfulness by repelling suitors. Penelope expresses faithfulness to herself when she rejects marriage to Edward, and is magically transformed into a regular featured girl. Another similarity that this tale has to the Greek epic is deception; Odysseus poses as a beggar to do reconnaissance on the chastity of his estranged wife, Max poses as a blue-blooded suitor to gather information for a reporter (for a fee). Both men are exposed and eventually chosen as the suitor of choice.

This film has a second, less superficial transformation within its plot; the transformative power of love. Max is transformed from a thieving gambler into an inspired artist through his exposure to Penelope. This particular narrative structure perpetuates the beauty-and-the-beast belief that love can change a bad man into a worthwhile human being. While I applaud the film in its efforts to show women as accountable for cultivating their own self worth by accepting themselves as-is, I find this trend toward stories requiring men to change dangerous. It creates a myth that encourages women to try to change abuser behavior.

I also would have preferred Penelope to keep her snout; she was able to gain public popularity and find a suitor with it. If the moral lesson is to cultivate self-acceptance, then her transformation is counterproductive.

Purrfectly Normal

Cat People, directed by Paul Schrader in 1982, certainly adjusted my perception of what a “cat person” is—there were no middle-aged women with seventeen cats and a sweater knitted from Fluffy’s fur.  What this film does feature is werecats, transformed from human to animal through sexual encounters, and reversed through acts of murder. The early 1980’s produced many werewolf films (mostly representing suppressed male sexual desire contradicted with animalistic violence) but this is the only feline transformation tale to transcend the decades.  If male desire is wolf-like, then Cat People is about suppressed female sexual appetite—mysterious, finicky, and independent.

Men in this film are portrayed as sexual predators.  Paul fornicates with and kills prostitutes and runaway girls; he seeks his estranged sister for the sole purpose of making her his mate.  Paul uses women to satisfy his sexual appetites. Oliver is a rakish lad who—as indicated through Alice’s observations that she has often seen him infatuated—feels he must manipulate women into sexual engagement, he tells Irena that the only way to keep the alligators at bay is by making love.  This brief exchange simultaneously indicates a myth that men must trick women into having sex and that women require men for safety.

Paul and Irena are both werecats, but the major difference between Paul and his sister is that she is able to control her sexual desire.  She represents the “good girl” by 1980’s standards; she is an adult virgin who also abstains from meat and alcohol. Nevertheless, her restraint is not indicative of her desires; she may not order meat in a restaurant, but she hunts and kills a rabbit in the middle of the night. (A time when no one is watching) When Irena tells Alice that she expects her first sexual encounter to be “magical,” it gets straight to the idea that women have romanticized expectations of sex. Even Paul is aware that Irena wants to sleep with Oliver, keenly aware of her physical lust. He says, “every time it happens… you tell yourself it’s love. But it isn’t. It’s blood. And death.”  This scene emphasizes the unrealistic ideals to which women hold sex; the film shows sex as an act that brings about the animal side of humans, who destroy each other through their quest for physical pleasure. But isn’t her becoming a panther pretty damn magical?

Sex in Cat People is bizarre. There are brothels, attempted rape, impotence, and bondage. But the role of incest is especially interesting in this film. Paul seeks his sister as a companion who can keep him from becoming a beast, wanting a relationship like his parents had. This is a Freudian nightmare, suggesting that Paul—a seriously deranged religious fanatic—has not completed the Oedipus complex. Since he cannot be his father or fuck his mother (they are both dead) he wants his sister to fulfill the familial fetish role. His insistence that their sleeping together is the only way to avoid becoming a beast is a reflection of the cultural value of sex within a family structure, specifically marriage. Only married sex isn’t animal.

What this film does is mock the neo-Puritan ideals of sex within 1980’s culture, and encourage women to become sexual animals—just like men.

It Doesn’t Mean Anything

Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, challenges established social conventions and values.  His character, Meursault, finds conventions and titles absurd, takes life day by day, accepts things at face value, and regularly states that the concepts held sacred to social order don’t “mean anything” or “matter.”  This phrase first appears in the opening paragraph, initially seeming only to indicate that the message concerning the death of Meursault’s mother is ambiguous, but the phrase changes meaning through its repetitions.

Immediately after Meursault feels inclined to tell Marie that his mother’s death wasn’t his fault, on page 20, he decides, “it doesn’t mean anything.”  Camus implies that, regardless of who is at fault for a death, it does not change the reality of the death.  Apologies are pointless, and guilt is useless, because a person’s words and emotions can’t change the results of their deeds.

Camus shocks his readers, on page 35, when Meursault tells Marie that love “doesn’t mean anything.”  Although the statement sounds cold, his actions toward Marie are genuine and warm; he looks forward to seeing her every Saturday, keeps his dates with her, declines the company of prostitutes, and even agrees to marry her.  The word “love” is meaningless to Meursault. His actions define the relationship. Marie’s marriage proposal on page 41 is where Camus shows marriage to be about companionship, not love. This is why Salamono is just as content to live with a dog as he was with his wife, and why Meursault would have easily married another woman.

Camus calls man an animal, conditioned to physical responses, when Meursault explains to his lawyer his behavior at the funeral; his love for “Maman…didn’t mean anything” (65), and that his behavior was a response to heat and exhaustion.  Meursault’s relationship with Marie is also a physical response.  On page 115, Meursault finds that “remembering Marie meant nothing,” because it was their physical bodies that tied them together.

Meursault’s sentence of execution reminds the reader that everyone is sentenced to death.  Meursault concludes, on page 114, “that it doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or seventy” of old age or gunshot or guillotine, because the world will go on without you.  Even faith in God is “unimportant” (117), because believing in God will not prevent death.  Camus proposes that believing in God, and the after-life, prematurely kills what makes man human– living and experiencing the moment. This is why Meursault tell the chaplain that “he was living like a dead man” (120).

By the end of the novel, Camus’ opening paragraph has changed meaning. It is the death of Meursault’s mother, not the content of the telegram, which has no meaning. Death is meaningless because life is meaningless.  Camus understands how terrifying an irrational world is to society, and kills Meursault to reflect the general appreciation of his philosophy.  Meursault is a sacrificial lamb.  The Stranger suggests that all anybody has is a single life, defined by arbitrary actions and choices; that none of these details matter in the “indifferent world” (121); and that we should all be grateful for the opportunity to enjoy the physical pleasures the Earth offers, while we can.

You Are What You Eat
Food Inc. is a documentary representative of the organic food movement. This film creates an argument for change in the way the American public acquires food, whether it be plant or animal based, by revealing faults in the current system. Food Inc. exposes the corporate reality behind the myth of Agricultural America, dissolves deceptions that have interpolated individuals into purchasing factory farmed foods, reveals the commodity fetishism that creates an artificially low exchange value for subsidized foods, creates sympathy for its cause by correlating the reification of animals to the alienation of the worker, and offers alternatives to the current food model.
The film shows a supermarket, the American icon of consumer choice, with a focus on the meat labels. Each shows a beautiful, pastoral scene with rolling hills, post fences and red or white farmhouses. The marketing concept behind these kinds of labels means to create a perception of wholesome food and recall in the consumer an “H”istory of simpler times, when the local farmer brought his products to the local grocer and kids could play safely in the street. It’s a fantasy. These images suggest that farms are family owned and that purchasing a Hillshire Farms smoked sausage perpetuates small town American values. There are numerous labels for what appears to be several products from different companies.
The next scene shows a brown landscape, cows crammed into pens, and no green hills anywhere. No happy cows, either. This exposes the factory farm, a place where animals live on Concentrated Animal Feed Lots until their slaughter, at one of thirteen American slaughterhouses (there were thousands in the 1970’s) operated by one of four meat processors that control over eighty percent of the market. All the pretty labels belie the reality of monopolies producing our food. Food Inc. has made it clear that Americans don’t know where their food comes from.
American’s also don’t understand why their food is making them sick. We live in a time when actors are politicians and spinach is poison. Food Inc. seeks to show our regulatory agencies (the FDA and USDA) as being the “toothless” puppets of the meat packing industry, and puts faces behind their hegemony. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and the FDA’s director of enforcement Michael Taylor are both former employees of Monsanto, a multi-national corporation that is responsible for the expansion (more than 70% of processed foods) of genetically modified foods. When Food Inc. reveals that Thomas wrote the bill that allowed Monsanto to obtain a patent on seeds, and that Taylor decided that labels indicating whether a food product contains genetically modified organism are unnecessary, they are making it obvious that policies designed to protect the public actually protect corporations. Along with policy, this documentary also explains “veggie libel laws” that protect the meat industry from consumers publically speaking out against health issues (a felony in Colorado) or photographing and publishing images of Concentrated Animal Feed Lots and slaughterhouses. These are examples of the state apparatus intervening when anyone challenges corporate hegemony. By revealing the efforts that the food industries undertake to hide and maintain their practices, this film is exposing the source of power that must be resisted.
How did the food industry become this powerful? Food Inc. examines the materialistic realties that allowed this to happen. The majority of food processed in this country is processed for the fast food industry, including the food sold in the super market, and the processing is fashioned after the fast food factory model. The demand for uniformity of Mc Donald’s burgers across the nation necessitated the demand for uniformity of food production. Large packing companies purchased family farms, placed farmers into indentured servitude through loan programs (so their farms could meet required standardized upgrades), and a lack of marketplace keeps the farmers from selling their products to any other buyer. There is none.
How did we allow this to happen? The desire for cheap food has kept America’s curiosity at bay. The film shows a family in the grocery store, an overweight minority child asks for some pears (which are ninety-nine cents a pound). The mother says no to the pears because she can purchase candy for cheaper, and no to broccoli because it cost as much as two hamburgers at a drive through. Food Inc. makes food a class issue. By showing a family that buys fast food because they are too busy with work to cook, they are saying that these food companies are preying on the working class. The film states that the number one predictor of obesity is family income and that half of all minority children will develop Type-two diabetes. A deleted scene demonstrates how full service supermarkets won’t do business in depressed neighborhoods (while showing the sodas and chips available in the local liquor store). These concepts are placed in this film so that the consumer will ask, “why are the bad calories so inexpensive?”
The same deep trench of hegemony that creates monopoly-friendly food policies is responsible for creating an artificially low exchange value for factory-farmed foods. The cost of producing corn is subsidized by taxpayers, creating an excess of product available at below the price of actual value. The excess of corn is fed to animals (that haven’t evolved to digest it) and fed to poor Americans (who are also made sick by it). When the film exposes the large number of cheap food products that are actually made of subsidized corn (soda, peanut butter, Cheez-its, Velveeta, chips, ketchup), they are implying that the poor are denied access to substantial nutrition through a manipulation of the true value of fruits and vegetables. It also suggests that the poor are fed the same diet as animals.
Food Inc. argues that the reification of animals in the food industry results in the reification of food industry workers. One scene explains how chickens have been adapted to grow “faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper”, another exposes recruitment in Mexico and the bus services to bring in cheap, non-union laborers. One scene shows chickens being gathered for slaughter under cover of darkness to minimize resistance; a later scene shows Immigration officers gathering undocumented workers at night to increase passivity (and in small numbers to avoid production delays). One scene shows a dumpster full of dead chickens (unable to survive the breeding process), and a deleted scene recounts meat processors terminated for dismemberment. Both the animals and the workers are designed for temporary use, and used for the acquisition of capital. “Efficiencies” built into the systems of breeding and processing result in greater degrees of alienation for the worker, and a deleted scene discusses the species-being of the chicken, by allowing it to express its “chicken-ness”. Food Inc. manipulates sympathy for one into sympathy for the other, simultaneously gaining the support of animal lovers and human rights activists.
This film also insinuates that the food industry has reified the consumer who provides their profits. A blatant disregard for human life is expressed by failures to address systems that have increased food borne illnesses. Hegemony this powerful can believe that there are more customers to replace the dead ones, and that the cheapest means to an end (profit) is the most effective. Food Inc. compares the damaging health effects and power structures behind the food industry to “Big Tobacco”, and compels its viewers to destroy the system.
Throughout the film, horrors of factory farming are countered with the idealized Polyface Farm. This farm creates a vision of what all food systems could look like, and means to create a demand for their products to become available to the Food Inc’s viewing consumer. Polyface has a business model that creates high quality food products that respect land, animals and workers, but is incapable of competing with operations like Tyson and Smithfield. Food Inc. places this farm in the film to establishes a Hegelian Dialectic between factory farming and (its antithesis) organic farming, and suggests that the synthesis to resolve these conflicting practices is more big food business. Businesses that were established under practices similar to Polyface– Tom’s of Maine, Kashi, Naked Juice, and Stoneyfield– have since been acquired by giants like Colgate, Kellogg’s, Pepsi, and Dannon. Consumer demand for organic, humane and non-GMO foods has led to these acquisitions, and Food Inc. implies that these acquisitions are a direct result of growing consumer hegemony. When a product is truly main-stream, it ends up in Wal-Mart– culturally perceived as the opposite of business with integrity.
These arrangements have a positive impact on the larger community- safer food with a smaller global impact. But when asked if Kashi and Naked juice have “retained their soul” through acquisition, the answer was “jury’s out”. Food Inc. has their eye on the big picture, and the means to this end are sleeping with the enemy and making a commodity of their principles. For a film with such strong overtones of Anti-capitalism, it offers no solutions that involve circumventing the capitalist system that created the monster in the first place. The acquisition plan still fails to address the exploitation of the working class’ limited food dollar. Having more (expensive) organic options at Wal-Mart won’t make it any easier to feed hungry families. Concepts like reducing meat consumption, using fertile lands to grow food for people instead of food for food-animals, and planting victory gardens in homes and schools offer soul-satisfying solutions that should be removed from the realm of alternative activism.

Turning Freudian Tricks

There is no doubt that psychoanalysis is useful in interpreting Aimee Bender’s story, “Quiet Please.” But the easiest interpretation of the text– that the librarian fornicates with every man in her library to act out her repressed desire to sleep with her dead father—misses the fun that the author has at Freud’s theoretical expense. “Quiet Please” deserves more than a simple Female Oedipus or Electra interpretation; despite the sex with men, “Quiet Please” is a lesbian text.
Applying the Electra complex to “Quiet Please” does seem to work. It would be easy to say that the librarian is overcome with grief at the sudden loss of her father; that, by means of transference, she replaces the lost father with the numerous men in her library. It could be argued that she chooses sex with random men to act out her repressed desire to sleep with her father, which was formed in the genital stage of her development. It might even be reasonable to say that the librarian chooses the day of her father’s death to sleep with so many men because her father was the living embodiment of her super-ego. His death provides a temporary reprieve from the watchful, judging, behavior-modifying super-ego, and the animalistic id takes free reign. Nevertheless, this interpretation fails because it requires that all the men she has sex with to resemble her father in some manner. It doesn’t take into account why the men are all so different.
Bender reworks the Oedipal Complex, the idea that young boys sexually desire their mothers and want to kill their father to assume the role of Mom’s sexual partner, by replacing the boy with a little girl. This is evident on page fifty-eight, where the librarian expresses guilt for wishing her father dead, and graphically imagines having killed him herself. This is reinforced by her reaction to her mother’s phone call; after hearing her mother’s voice “climbing up and up” (58), she is overcome with the “want to go fuck someone else” (58). The “someone else” in this phrase does not refer to a want for yet another man to penetrate her, but the want to have any man serve as a substitute for the mother she actually desires.
The librarian has sex with the first man as a reaction to her guilt for wanting her father dead. Fornicating with men is not the librarian’s id taking over. She has no repressed desire to have lots of random sex with lots of random men. The sex with men is an act of ego-defense. She is trying to reinforce the idea that she never wanted her mother sexually. Sex with the first man is to confirm her heterosexuality. When this fails, she keeps trying with every man she encounters; this is the reason that each of the men is so different. When the young bookworm falls short of her goal, she tries on a businessman, an artist-type, and three more, random men before lunch. The muscleman after lunch is a representation of the most masculine archetype.
The “well-known” (59) mural on the library’s ceiling further develops Bender’s lesbian take on the oedipal theme. The interlocking, loose-haired fairies represent intimate female relationships, and the decision to make them “fairies” is a direct allusion to homosexuality. Bender also uses the fairies to play with Freud’s ideas of the uncanny and repressed. The librarian “does not like to see” (59) the fairy who is missing a mouth. It makes her uncomfortable because it is uncanny; it is a visual reminder of id’s desires. The missing mouth indicates an inability to express oneself, and means to reflect the librarian’s frustration with her unexpressed desire to sleep with women.
Bender also makes use of Freud’s emphasis on contiguity to highlight the librarian’s lesbian intent. Immediately after she stares at the dancing fairies, the librarian is “amazed…to see how many attractive men there are” (59); the placement of this intends to show that the librarian is really only amazed at being attracted to the men, instead of the fairy-lesbians that normally attract her attention. These are the same men who are always at the library (Bender indicates this with the first man “always [at the library] to check out bestsellers”), and the only reason she notices them, on this day, is for her use.
Another device Bender creates to play with Freud is making a library the setting, and a librarian the protagonist. It is a genius metaphor of the repressed. A library is a place where silence is order, and the librarian is the keeper of the silence. The silence is broken when the muscleman carries her out on the couch. The businessman makes an exclamation, she screams and she covers her mouth. The librarian still isn’t ready to deal with her repressed desires for a dead father and sexualized mother. She is upset by the books thrown open on the floor because they symbolize her true intentions being exposed. They are dusty because her desires have been long repressed. Only her drawing of the mute fairy’s mouth reveals her actual feelings. By having sex with men, she has been “dancing against her will….with her mouth wide open and screaming” (61).

Marxist Stigmata

George Saunders’ “Sea Oak” is both a Marxist and Capitalist text that examines class structure by rationalizing the condition of the poor; exposing the motivations of the rich; and revealing the role Christianity plays in oppressing the working class. “Sea Oak” is an instruction manual for elevating one’s place in the social strata, but warns that buying into a better lifestyle comes at the price of selling one’s body.
Saunders uses Min and Jade to explicate why the poor are detestable in our society. They are nearly illiterate morons who believe that “regicide is a virus” (5) and debate the number of sides on a triangle. They are lazy (microwaving processed junk like “beanie-weenies” or “stars and flags” instead of cooking) and believe that the reason to get a GED is to “watch TV and not be at all distracted” (5). They are unwed, single mothers. The reader is not meant to sympathize with these characters because they serve to stereotype our belief that the poor choose poverty over hard work. These characters feed into the myth that poverty is a moral condition, as expounded on by Eddie with his “let me tell you something…about this country” speech on page 15. However, Saunders does not allow these characters to represent the entire poor community. Min and Jade are counter balanced with Aunt Bernie and Thomas, the protagonist. Both of these characters work and contribute to the household.
The Sea Oak housing project also illuminates the living conditions of the poor. Child gangs, the “Big Scary Dawgz”, shoot up baby walkers and leave brass knuckles in the kiddie pool; the laundry room hosts an “ad hoc crack house” (8). Between the gang violence, the drug addicts, and the stupid-lazy-unwed mothers, it’s no wonder that there is a stigma attached to poverty. This is why Tomas is too humiliated to be seen by his ex-girlfriend at Joysticks, his economic status associates him with these kinds of people. Saunders offers three options for rising above the shame of poverty: get someone else to support you; accept your place with feigned gratitude; or prostitute yourself up the economic ladder through work.
Saunders uses Canada to represent socialized nations where all needs are provided for. It’s a Shangri-La where someone else is “springing for dinner” (8), paying for college, and offering up a sweet-life (denoted by the cobbler at dinner). Nevertheless, Saunders calls Canada a “moot point” because how other countries work out their economics has no benefit for Americans. Other entitlements the poor may hope for are inheritances (Aunt Bernie from Grandpa, or the kids from Dad) or support from parents into adulthood, but as the free rides never pan out, that leaves the other two options for consideration.
Aunt Bernie is Jesus. She represents a passive acceptance of poverty and is a false prophet of gratitude in her lifetime. She is a slave to charity, sacrificing her own happiness to serve her father (for no reward). She works a terrible job, keeps peace among her ungrateful nieces, and dies a virgin. The way her non- bitterness upsets other characters is Saunders’ way of saying no one should be happy with this kind of life, and that Christian values keep the oppressed from trying to achieve more. It’s a literary interpretation of Karl Marx, who wrote in “Estranged Labor” “the more man puts into God the less he retains in himself” (324). Her role as a Jesus figure is unearthed with her resurrection after death, and like Jesus, she performs miracles (glowing thumbprints, prophesies) and offers salvation. Her rotting corpse symbolizes the death of Christian oppression and its ability to anesthetize the masses. What she learns in death is that her “life was shit” (21) and she instructs her apostles to get ahead by showing their legs and cocks. Because being good failed to satisfy her soul, she comes back wishing to wear sexy bras, fly on airplanes, and take lovers with “big shoulders shining” (21) – she replaces the spiritual void with consumer desire. With the failure of feigned gratitude, the only option left is work.
Joysticks is a strip joint because Saunders shows all work to be a form of prostitution. Thomas is so far removed from his work, so deeply a commodity, that his name is almost nonexistent. He talks about himself at work in the third person –“offers me ten bucks for a close-up of Thomas’s tush” (3) because the work he performs is so far removed from his species-being. Saunders assails the devaluation of the worker in contemporary society. The worker, like poor Lloyd, is disposable because no can “be thought cute forever” (4). Saunders put the health department agent in his story just to emphasize that the dancers are pieces of meat. The corporate culture (as demonstrated by Mr. Frendt when he asks “am I supposed to let you dance without vigor just because you need the money), will always prioritize profit over people. And the customers who are appeased fuel the culture of estrangement. No one cares if the worker is having a bad day. Like Aunt Bernie, Thomas has to fake it to get through the day.
What Saunders achieves at the end of his story is a realization that even if its sleazy and gross, we all show our cocks to get ahead. The reward for selling ourselves is a better neighborhood, with good schools, so our children can have the best possible chance to grow up watching The Worst that Can Happen or How My Child Died Violently, and become even more successful cock sellers. This text criticizes Capitalistic values, but offers nothing to replace it.

The Wolf Internal
Angela Carter presents a modern approach to fairytales in her book, The Bloody Chamber, and her short story, “The Werewolf”, is a variation on Little Red Riding Hood. Caroline Bynum explores the role of werewolves in Carter’s tales, but dismisses this one with an oversimplified synopsis within a single sentence, recommending “In the Company of Wolves” for a “more feminist reading” of Red Riding Hood. Although this story is very short, it is dense enough to develop transformations that uncover the predatory nature already inherent within humans. Carter’s monster is a hybrid with human body and bestial cunning; her werewolf is a metamorphosis in women’s social identity, and Bynum is incorrect in her swift disregard for this text.
This short story differs from other werewolf texts in that, unlike Bisclavret or Lycaon, the werewolf grandmother is not a man, and her transformation does not represent her consistent personality—either loyalty or blood thirst—in all shapes. In fact, her personality is non-existent in this text, because the aged woman is not recognized as possessing a fully human consciousness. It also differs from the classic Red Riding Hood Tale in the theme not being about a good girl (virgin) who must stay on the path (follow directions) to avoid being eaten (raped); the little girl in this tale is not passive or naïve.
“The Werewolf” is a sinister tale of ageism, sexism, cunning, and greed. This short story is an anachronistic fairytale; though the setting creates a once-upon-a-time feeling, the motifs are as contemporary as digital media. This hybrid of timeless/modern within the tale illuminates the constancy of ageism and sexism through history, and reminds the reader that society has not transformed past “the old days” when women were objectified or ostracized. The first sentence of this tale, “it is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts,” (Carter 108) serves to direct this tale to a very specific place. The “northern country” with “cold weather” that Carter refers to is her native England; the “cold hearts” are the hearts of her countrymen who would worship youth or take advantage of an old woman. Though her tale is place specific, its cultural implications travel across Western culture.
The first indication that Carter is decrying the veneration of youth and sexuality is within the setting of the homes; the “crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle” (108). The “virgin” references the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, and the “guttering candle” infers a votive. These little details represent worship of youth and maidenhood; the Mary is almost always depicted as young girl (even in works of art where she is holding the crucified, thirty-ish body of her son) and consistently referred to as a virgin, despite producing children with Joseph in the conventional manner. Carter’s choice of the word “icon” signifies the universality of worshipping youth, and clinging to a virgin myth and the word “crude” denotes Carter’s opinion of the practice—it is vulgar. The sole value of a woman is her sexuality, when she can no longer leverage this asset she is useless. The use of the virgin and candle also implicate religion in institutionalizing ageist and misogynistic practices; this is made more explicit when the grandchild “crosses herself” (109) before alerting the neighbors of the horror she has discovered. Placing a privileged value on youthful virginity requires an oppositional counterpart to marginalize, and Carter has old women playing this part.
The explicit werewolf in this tale is the grandmother, but the only evidence of her being a wolf is the wart on her index finger and her granddaughter’s word. These are arbitrary indicators of guilt. The value of the granddaughter’s word is based on a cultural bias for youth, and the wart is a matter of convenience. The witches in this tale are discovered through inductive necessity. Old women become suspect by having their cheeses ripen or their cat follow them (not essentially indicative of magic, but common occurrences imbued with paranormal meaning and attached to disliked women) and are searched for marks of proof. As almost everyone would have a telltale wart, mole, or birthmark to prove as a “supernumerary nipple” (108), making the witch or werewolf label is universally applicable; but only bestowed upon old women. Old widows are most vulnerable because they no longer resemble the virgin, and don’t have the physical strength and protection of their husbands. The metamorphosis of old woman to werewolf is not an actual, physical transformation of human to beast. It is the transformation of identity, where age is the equivalence of monstrosity—in this manner, the child does free her grandmother from her unpleasant, transformed state. The myth that this pseudo transformation exaggerates is that age is a transformation to avoid.
The grandmother in “The Werewolf” poses no actual threat; she is sick in bed and possesses valuable property. She is a burden to care for, a child must venture a “five miles trudge through the forest” through “winter and cold weather” (109) to bring oatcakes and butter. The long distance that grandmother lives at is indicative of the current tendency to place old age at a distance, often in nursing homes. This text does not suggest that the grandmother take a place within the family home. The obligation to care for the old woman is not a task the child takes on without bidding, which is a reflection of a cultural desire to abandon responsibility toward the elderly. And Granny is frightening. Carter writes her as “squawking and shrieking like a thing possessed” (109). The word “thing” emphasizes the dehumanization of this character. So long as the old woman isn’t recognized as human, it is acceptable to dismember, stone, beat and kill her. Women’s aging, then, serves as full transformation from a being worth veneration to a non-human being, or as Bynum states in her Metamorphosis and Identity, she “goes from an entity that is one thing to an entity that is another” (30).
The true monster in this tale is the grandchild, and Carter depicts her as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, “the child had a shabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she knew the forest too well to fear it but she must always be on her guard” (109). The “coat of sheepskin” does reference a cliché; it also emphasizes the artificially innocent appearance of the child. Her sheepskin is superficial, but her cunning is innate. The shabbiness of the coat and her need to “keep out the cold” speak to her motivation for implicating her grandmother; the child has no wealth or shelter of her own, and her grandmother’s property is easy enough to claim. The phrase “she knew the forest too well to fear it” aligns her with the “wild beasts in the forest” that Carter describes on page 108, and being “on her guard” is an indication of keen awareness of her surroundings.
The grandchild’s cunning is exposed on page 109, as she approaches her grandmother’s house, “soon it came on to snow so thickly that the path and any footsteps, track or spoor that might have been upon it were obscured.” This child, who is put out by the long journey to care for her grandmother, and in want of her own property, sees this opportunity to take what she desires. Carter does not intend the reader to believe that the grandmother is a wolf or a witch. The snow is a cover for the child’s deception. The phrase “might have been upon it” implies that there should be doubt to the girl’s story; to denote honesty, Carter could have used “were upon it” instead. The options for “footsteps, track or spoor” (which means animal tracks) also tend toward an ambiguous interpretation; this phase makes it unclear who, what, or even how many creatures entered the home. The child sees an opening for an indisputable story, and creates the forest wolf attack to excuse her making a bloody stump of her grandmother’s arm. She is certainly able to accomplish the task, the text describes her as strong, and knowing how to wield a hunting knife; and it doesn’t take much strength to overpower a sick, old woman. The guilt of the child is clearly implied with her taking the house as her own and prospering in it. She just had to remove an inconvenient barrier.
The girl as a monster is not an incidence of her transforming shape, or even consciousness. She is a monster of hybridity, as Bynum explains, she is an expression of natures that are “contradictory to each other, encountered through paradox” (30). She has the delicate, venerable appearance of a young girl, the instincts of a wild beast of the forest, and the strength of her father’s hunting knife. The young girl is certainly a wolf in sheep’s clothing. However, Carter’s story also implies that femininity is an unstable state of transformation. The female in this tale may start her life as on object of idolatry, nearing godhead, but she will end her life in a state of bestial or supernatural rejection; her worth is directly proportional to her youth and usefulness.
Although the labeling of old women as werewolves, in order to take advantage of their vulnerability and property, may seem like an ancient practice, it is very relevant. Caroline Bynum is correct in asking that we reconsider our feeling “that these are hardly myths of our time” (Metamorphosis and Identity pg.176) How easily can a close family member say that their aged matriarch is senile, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, or otherwise incapacitated to maintain her power of attorney? How frequently are the aged sent far away to nursing homes to die neglected, the journey to visit being too burdensome for family to bear? Angela Carter’s story may express the hybrid of the human with a wild beast’s nature, but it is also a plea for a metamorphosis toward more compassion for the elderly.