Manufactured Landscapes

Britain's national newspaper, The Guardian, started off their review on "Manufactured Landscapes" by describing the film as "a magnificently handsome documentary, worth watching alone for the re-creation of massive-scale works by Edward Burtynsky." However, even as I watched this documentary with a room full of classmates, I felt really taken aback and "alone" without having the heed The Guardian's advice of viewing the film alone--just me, myself, my popcorn, and I. As I watched the camera capture the seemingly never-ending factory aisles and mountains of waste that showed that the sky really was the limit, I realized how a landscape could be manufactured.

When I first thought about the title of this documentary, I thought it was a total paradox. How could people manufacture a landscape? I suppose that this made me realize all of the previous inclinations I had about nature; the fact that I did link "landscape" with the "ideal" form of nature where beauty was hidden behind the palm tree fronds and embodied in the towering waterfall that escalated down a soft beige rock that was free of blemishes. However, just sitting there and digesting the photos that Burtynsky captured made me realize that China was manufacturing, among numerous other products, landscapes. The grandeur of the factories and the scale the labor force reminded me of nature as a force to be reckoned with.

Also, I noticed the beginning of a long string of ironies encompassed in this documentary. For example, despite the obvious economic progress that China is making, the rising country is producing an immeasurable amount of byproduct that felt like it is actually going backwards in terms of the environmental goals that the general global community has been setting out. In addition, after realizing what these third world countries have to do with recyclables, it blew my mind to think that China produces the same products that goes back to them as waste. It's as if one man's trash is the same man's treasure. They are producing so many consumer products on such large scales and probably making a lot of profit, but these products comes back full circle to them as toxins to their citizens and communities. I also never thought that I would ever feel even slightly guilty about recycling. I had never given an afterthought to what happens to the bottle that I simply toss in the recycling bin. Instead, I assumed that I was doing my part and helping the environment. Now that I have seen it from the perspective of the people receiving these recyclables, it makes me think that we are just passing our burden onto these less fortunate countries.

After viewing a segment of this documentary, I really appreciated the different perspective it gave. I saw a larger part of the big picture and how some of the assumptions I made regarding environmental responsibility and sustainability doesnt fit so well with what really happens. Even with this realization I feel like there are still so many unanswered questions. For instance: does progress always come with such a high price tag? how can we make sure that fulfilling our responsibility doesnt impose a negative burden on others?

Examine Some Parts of Food Inc.

In class last Tuesday, as most of you know, we watched a good amount of Food Inc. I'm going to discuss just some of parts of the movie that I found to be rather interesting and try to explore some of these a little more than what we were able to see or discuss in class. If anyone has read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser then they may have noticed a lot of the similar points that he expresses both in his novel and in the book such as domination of the meat industry by a few corporations ,the cruel conditions of animals prior to being slaughtered for our consumption, and the consumption of tainted meat leading to death.

The First issue that should be brought up are the cruel living conditions of animals prior to being slaughtered for us to eat. As most of you know or probably have seen, these animals live in crowded spaces most often living in their own feces. Both crowded living spaces and having to stand in their own feces increase their likelihood of getting sick, and if one animal gets sick the odds are it will happen to others as well. As Food Inc pointed out there are instances, more frequently than we think, in which these sick animals are also slaughtered with the healthy ones and the spread of diseases just contaminates all the meat, but I'll discuss this later in more detail. One thing I'd like to point out was a commonly viewed clip which also appeared in Food Inc of a sick cow being pushed by forklift because it couldn't move on its own. These conditions must be put to end in order to ensure healthier meats for consumers.

The issue of the meat industry from slaughtering to packaging being dominated by a select few companies is definitely a serious issue. The most important reason why this issue is so serious is because the large number of animals being slaughtered in one facility increases the chances for meat to become tainted. As Food Inc pointed out, most of the meat we eat doesn't come from just one animal. For instance the ground beef that we eat in our hamburgers, either fast food or at home, is likely to come from hundreds even thousands of cows that are killed in a slaughterhouse. Thus the likely of eating contaminated meat increases because if one cow is infected with E. coli once it is killed and it's meat in thrown in with the rest it all becomes contaminated.

Lastly, I'd like to address the tragic instances in which people have died eating tainted meats. In Food Inc we hear the testimony of a woman about the death of her son Kevin who ate a hamburger at a fast food restaurant and about a week later died; the cause of death resulting from tainted meat. If anyone is interested Fast Food Nation details multiple cases of this in which Schlosser gets rather detailed in one case a boy's brain melts, he gets dementia, can't member his mom or dad, and dies less than a week after being diagnosed. This issue is a direct result of poor living conditions of animals which make it more prone to getting sick which in turn leads them upon being slaughtered to spread the disease into thousands of pounds of meat. The simple solution to solving this problem is to enforce stricter policies on the meat industry. Seems simple, however as Food Inc pointed out many of the top people at the FDA were former heads of meat industry corporations. Another problem is the power these corporations have by lobbying in Congress in order to ensure these policies don't become implemented. These corporations also have bought out politicians by financially supporting them when election times shows up.

The meat industry is a ruthless and cutthroat. As Kevin's mom stated in Food Inc, all she wanted was an apology and they wouldn't even give her that. This only further illustrates what kind of industry people are trying to battle in order to ensure safer more healthy meats to eat. Anyway, I hope this helps some folks out by explaining a little more in depth some of the issues from the movie. I'd highly recommend reading Fast Food Nation if anybody hasn't; the book will at least make you stop and think about what you eat even if you don't change your eating habits (like me), but its beneficial just to get an idea of where activist are coming from.

----Jordan Rodriguez

Hey guys and gals!

In my effort to find an object for the upcoming project I read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I won't actually be using it, BUT I encourage the rest of you to at least look up information on the novel and to look at the plot/political message in light of the film we watched in class, Food Inc. It's surprisingly eerie how similar the topics addressed in each work are. I'd be curious to see what the class may think about the similarities (keeping in mind that The Jungle was published in 1906). Does how little our food mechanization system has changed since the industrial revolution scare any of you?

Anyways...food for thought ;)

Jordan Willis

Farmer's Market

Instead of having class today at 9:30 AM, we had a field trip to the Farmer's Market near Shattuck Ave. that is open from 3 PM to 7 PM on Thursdays. Unlike most markets and grocery stores, the Farmer's Market is a small, outdoors market with many vendors that mainly sell organic produce that are locally grown and very fresh. The vendors were very kind and willing to answer any questions about their products. There were also some vendors that allowed people to sample some of their products, for example yogurt and strawberries. I think this method of advertising their products is a great way to show how much better they taste in comparision to the local grocery stores.

Although my first visit to the Farmer's Market was in the blazing sun, overall, I felt a relaxed atmosphere while I was visiting each stall. Parents could bring their children with them as they shop for fresh goods and there was even a person entertaining a group of kids. The Ecology Center seemed to be a great source of information, which I did not find useful initially until I asked them if they knew which foods were in season.

Organic Stories

In this week’s reading we got a chance to look at selected chapters from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Perhaps one of the most interesting chapters that we read from this book was chapter nine, which was titled, “Big Organic.” Pollan sums up the importance of this chapter in one sentence, “the word ‘organic’ has proved to be one of the most powerful words in the supermarket.” Though true, it is beginning to appear that the word “organic” itself is not enough these days. As Pollan described in his story on his trip to Whole Foods, foods today come with stories attached to them that paint a naturally idealistic portrait in which the animals are in a pure state of bliss before they are slaughtered, processed, and packaged. Though the demand for organic foods is high, it would seem that consumers are demanding even more, the comfort in knowing that the animal meats they are buying are from animals that were “living in beautiful places” and were “free from unnecessary fear and distress.” Addressed in the later chapter concerning Pollan’s pig, perhaps this demand is to push away the disgust instinct that humans associate with dead and processed meats, or perhaps it is another instance of humans attempting to idealize nature for their own aesthetic benefits. Whatever the incentive may be, the fact of the matter is that grocery shoppers don’t want an image of factory assembly lines when they are buying their meat, but prefer to think of animals on open fields under the care of a local farmer before they are led into the slaughterhouse. Pollan reveals later on in this chapter, however, that these ideal stories may paint a different picture than reality actually reveals. “But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old¾for fear they’ll catch something outside¾and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.” Perhaps in the food industry ignorance is bliss.

The statement that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the food industry is shown best through Pollan’s experience with hunting and “cleaning” a pig. As Pollan and his hunting guide were processing the pig, Pollan began to have trouble being able to imagine ingesting this animal. “And yet now the prospect of sitting down to a meal of this animal was unthinkable. Pâté? Prosciutto? Ventricina? Just then I could have made myself vomit simply by picturing myself putting a fork to a bite of this pig.” This is the image that markets and food producers attempt to avoid by making the idealistic stories mentioned above. Our natural instincts have deterred away from hunting and preparing animals to buying and cooking meat, so even thinking about killing and cutting an animal open brings about the disgust instinct that should only be associated with eating things that would be detrimental to our health. It is interesting to notice how our natural instincts have changed and how our society has changed to adapt to these instincts, keeping the natural aspect of killing and preparing meat behind a closed curtain

Sam's Post

      This past week, I was thinking about themes and issues that kept coming up in our readings and class discussions. The main one that’s covered over and over is the issue of whether civilization or even humanity is a part of or is compatible with our cultural views of a perfect nature. But one thing that’s been prevalent in some of our materials that has had little discussion about it is that much of humanity tries to recognize things within nature that resemble us, not necessarily whether we’re compatible with the environment. I’ve especially seen this in the search for similarities in regards to the family unit.
      In the excerpt from the Teddy Bear Patriarchy, the author Donna Haraway describes how the stuffed gorillas at the American Museum of Natural History resemble “a natural family of close human relatives”. Even though that is not the focus of her book, she still acknowledges that one thing people are bound to notice that the gorillas are very closely related to us. In fact, she even points out that Akeley wanted to kill only as many gorillas as it would take to form a “natural family,” and also took pictures of a group of elephants that obviously represented a “perfect family.” This sentiment is again reflected in the Cold War 1950s, where “Americans upheld the nuclear family as a safe haven,” and the shows of the time like Adventure capitalized on this, showing instances in nature that reflected the perfect family, and equating the Soviets with animals like bees that abandoned their mates and had no sense of family. We also see this need to look for the family unit in the films we were shown in class, like the Disney film that portrayed the polar bear family that everyone “awwwwwed” at. Again, we see the family unit, and we are engrossed, especially when that unit includes two playful cubs.
      The question I have is why we are so intent on finding the model family in nature, even when nature is a artificially constructed entity like the taxidermy exhibit at the Museum. It appears to be a constant theme over time, but why is it so important? During the Cold War, people were afraid and could find solace in shows like Adventure, but Akeley lived during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and today we aren’t scared of the Russians and don’t need to find solace. I think that maybe the overall reason we look for the family in nature is to equate human society with animal society, and draw comfort from the idea that sometimes nature seems to reflect us instead of us always having to reflect and become more like a perfect wilderness. In other words, maybe our constant seeking of the family unit is a way of ensuring that we in fact are “natural” beings just like animals in nature, since we both divide ourselves into family units, and are therefore closer to nature than might otherwise be imagined.

The Description of Animals in "The Land of Little Rain"

One of the most striking and interesting chapters that I found in Austin’s “The Land of Little Rain” was The Scavengers, particularly because of how she described the different animals of the desert and how they interact with one another in this ecosystem.

I was, however, interested in one line in particular, which was when Austin described how different animals feed off of the carrion that they manage to find when food sources may be scarce. She stated, “Once at Red Rock, in a year of green pasture, which is a bad time for scavengers, we saw two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.”

What interested me the most about this line was how Austin managed to describe the interaction of the various animals living together. I think that it is quite unusual to observe such a variety of different species of animals feeding and sharing a single piece of food. Usually, it would be suspected that only animals of the same species would even consider sharing food because many would probably be inclined to be territorial to what they manage to find.

This also touches on a discussion point that was brought up, which is that Austin may sometimes humanize her description of nature especially in this particular chapter. This could be noted in the above quote in how she described the presence of the coyote eating the communal piece of food. She described the animal as being “ashamed of the company,” and this may be because it is the only animal in the group that is not a bird, and therefore may seem out of place.