Turn 'em into
Turn 'em into flies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand I decline
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand I decline
It's the end of the world as we know it...
That's a few lines from a song called It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) by REM that I was reminded of when I read Feed.
As for Feed being a parallel to modern life, I think that in some cases it is accurate and in some it's not. The main point of Feed, our manipulation by the big companies, is only partly on base. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but to me, there's one major factor making the representation in Feed inaccurate: Advertisements aren't that effective. The most effective example of advertising that I've ever seen was having a restaurant play the food channel in the waiting area to make customers hungrier. In Feed, all of the advertising is like that; manipulative on the subconscious level. But now a days, even if everything is really that well thought out, most of it doesn't work that well. A picture of a bullet shooting through a bottle of wine and exploding out the bottom as a car is cool, undoubtedly, but it doesn't make me want to buy the car.
The main inaccurate parallel however, the one that really bothered me, was the complete lack of panic. This is odd, in my opinion, because irrational panic is one of the more commonly cited potential reasons for the collapse of society. In my last post I talked about the phenomenon of Hype; how when we talk about things a lot they seem like a bigger deal than they really are. This also ties into Hysteria. One example I used in my last post was the Swine Flu madness that's going on, and how it seems like so much bigger of an issue than it really is. We can compare that to the other health issues in Feed--like the lesions or the Nostalgia Feedback. It might be true that we tend to ignore catastrophe that's far away or happening to something else (like climate change, for example) but the second anything happens to us (in this case, our bodies falling apart) we freak the heck out.
I think that for something like this a more accurate parallel would be the Titanic going down. The Titanic was supposed to be the epitome of luxury, the "unsinkable ship" (like those companies being "too big to fail," ha ha). When it hit the iceberg everyone in storage knew right away that they were in trouble, but the people in first class just complained about the little bump. For a while, the staff convinced them that everything was fine, and got them into their life jackets without really making anyone that nervous. But once the water started coming in and everyone knew they were going down, no amount of cheery violin music could stop the panic. As far as I'm concerned, Feed may be right about us ignoring the warning signs for a while. But once something goes wrong enough close enough to home people will run around screaming like lunatics until it gets fixed (or at least gets far away again).
That's a few lines from a song called It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) by REM that I was reminded of when I read Feed.
As for Feed being a parallel to modern life, I think that in some cases it is accurate and in some it's not. The main point of Feed, our manipulation by the big companies, is only partly on base. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but to me, there's one major factor making the representation in Feed inaccurate: Advertisements aren't that effective. The most effective example of advertising that I've ever seen was having a restaurant play the food channel in the waiting area to make customers hungrier. In Feed, all of the advertising is like that; manipulative on the subconscious level. But now a days, even if everything is really that well thought out, most of it doesn't work that well. A picture of a bullet shooting through a bottle of wine and exploding out the bottom as a car is cool, undoubtedly, but it doesn't make me want to buy the car.
The main inaccurate parallel however, the one that really bothered me, was the complete lack of panic. This is odd, in my opinion, because irrational panic is one of the more commonly cited potential reasons for the collapse of society. In my last post I talked about the phenomenon of Hype; how when we talk about things a lot they seem like a bigger deal than they really are. This also ties into Hysteria. One example I used in my last post was the Swine Flu madness that's going on, and how it seems like so much bigger of an issue than it really is. We can compare that to the other health issues in Feed--like the lesions or the Nostalgia Feedback. It might be true that we tend to ignore catastrophe that's far away or happening to something else (like climate change, for example) but the second anything happens to us (in this case, our bodies falling apart) we freak the heck out.
I think that for something like this a more accurate parallel would be the Titanic going down. The Titanic was supposed to be the epitome of luxury, the "unsinkable ship" (like those companies being "too big to fail," ha ha). When it hit the iceberg everyone in storage knew right away that they were in trouble, but the people in first class just complained about the little bump. For a while, the staff convinced them that everything was fine, and got them into their life jackets without really making anyone that nervous. But once the water started coming in and everyone knew they were going down, no amount of cheery violin music could stop the panic. As far as I'm concerned, Feed may be right about us ignoring the warning signs for a while. But once something goes wrong enough close enough to home people will run around screaming like lunatics until it gets fixed (or at least gets far away again).
Remy,
ReplyDeleteI found it nice to read your post. You have a lot of thoughts to express in many ways. You use many examples from the real world and movies which help your thoughts brighten up the reader.
To you parallels in Feed are accurate at times and not at others. You use the example of the Swine flu issue to talk about the phenomenon of hype. You use the example of The Titanic to show your readers how we seem to ignore signs at first, but go around screaming our heads off when something hits us hard.
This connects to many other parallels to Feed. In my post I talked about how getting lesions connects to getting plastic surgery. Also how we are always in the need of new products. Many people want to get plastic surgeries so that they can become more “attractive” or look more like a favorite celebrity. In Feed they are always coming across advertisements trying to sell them different materials or the latest thing out there. In our world today we are known for the latest product, and who has which since technology gets better and better day by day.
To sum it up I liked reading your post. To make it better I think that you should have connected the points of Feed to your own life and how you differ or have similarities with it. Also I think you have some assignments missing, you should post those up so it won’t impact your grade much.
After reading about your thoughts on Feed, it makes me consider the points you came across. I agree with most of what you had to say, and this gave me new ideas to build off of as well. Like the Swine Flu and Titanic examples.
It was nice to look at your ideas; I look forward to seeing more.
Amber M.