Sally wakes up to her alarm on a typical Friday morning. She showers, dresses, brushes her teeth, and twenty minutes later emerges into the kitchen, freshly scrubbed and ready for the day. She is momentarily flummoxed by the slew of colorful labels in her pantry, but "all natural" catches her eye and she reaches for a box of Bare Naked Granola Cereal. Then she leaves for work. Work for Sally is a mundane task: there is absolutely no motivation to keep her alert and excited at work. Her mind wanders as she stares at her computer screen, and after two hours or so, her stomach starts growling. After some deliberation, she puts down her papers and heads to the vending machine for a bag of Doritos, silently promising herself only to eat half a bag. However, half the bag is already gone by the time she gets back to her seat, and as she reaches for the last piece she even considers getting another bag...
During her lunch break, Sally walks to the nearby Starbucks to relax and catch up with an old friend in town. As she walks through the doors, all thoughts of papers and boring official text leave her head. Together, her nose, her palate, and her eyes soak in the delicious aroma of the latte in front of her. She feels relieved for escaping the formal atmosphere of work. After work, she finds a pleasant surprise waiting for her at the door: her boyfriend taking her on a surprise dinner date. What a great way to end the week! She cannot contain her smile as she gushes at the thought of her wonderful man. When the waiter hands her the dessert menu, she orders that double-layered chocolate cake without a second thought.
Sally, like the rest of us, goes through her daily life without much thought. She goes through each step of her routine instinctively, without considering why she does what she does. Even had she done so, she could have come up with very simple explanations for each of her actions: she showered because it's gross if she doesn't. She ate cereal because it was healthy. She bought some chips because she was hungry. She did all of these things because she wanted to, one way or the other, and that was the end of it.
Or was it?
What Sally does not know is that corporations have infiltrated nearly every aspect of her daily routine, and even her thoughts. She thinks of herself as “health-conscious” and feels proud for eating her all-natural cereal... but what does that even mean? How can cereal possibly be “all-natural”? Cereal doesn't grow on trees (or at least, we hope it doesn't). Somehow, the average consumer today has this concept that cereal is healthier than “junk” or snack foods, but as a matter of fact the one is just as processed as the other – so where does this notion come from? Why do we think the way we do? We hope to unravel the answers to these questions through extensive analyses of the different angles in which the food industry creates, markets, and handles its food in relation to consumers -- beginning from the very cereal boxes on Sally's pantry.
Although Sally is lacking in actual nutritional knowledge, visual cues on the boxes such as facts, figures, and pictures convince her that what she seeks to buy is a sound nutritional choice. Foods today often promote themselves with additive claims of “essential nutrients” and/or fatty acids and the like, and one of the reasons they are so effective is because companies track the media and seize upon the latest health trends as soon as they come out. If we look closer at how the claims are phrased, however, the choice of words, what is omitted and left unsaid (or hidden by smaller text), we can unearth a plethora of information the average consumer never noticed or understood. By analyzing the rhetoric behind nutritional claims, we hope to disentangle some of the complexities which lie behind capitalistic marketing, and, going further, investigate some of its socioeconomic motivations as well as its roots as seen through the lens of history. By point of fact, when Sally dropped her coins into the vending machine, she was most probably not thinking about the history of Doritos or how they came to be. Yet only a few centuries ago, proliferate snacking did not exist. People did not cram junk foods and soft drinks down as they studied, or stuff themselves with popcorn inside a movie theatre. The fast pace, fast food culture of modern day life is something that has only developed recently in the world, and the food industry has taken no prisoners in its effort to make the most of it. Sally cursed herself for even considering a second bag of Doritos, but she does not realize that the combination of ingredients inside the Doritos have been meticulously administered precisely to achieve the effect that she experienced: wanting more.
In a way, Sally has been buying not food, but the products of her own mind. When she bought cereal, she was not really buying cereal, but the "nutrients" - or so she thought. Considering the true nature of additives in food, all she really bought were the colorful labels (and her own peace of mind). When she bought Doritos, she bought convenience, choosing speed over health. When she bought Starbucks - well, Starbucks, as so often advertised, is not really about coffee but about the "Starbucks Experience"; in paying for a cup of coffee, Sally also paid for space, relaxation, and comfort. And every time Sally buys chocolate, she is unbeknowingstly purchasing slave labor of some sort.
We have begun by looking at cereal boxes. We will continue by examining the speed of modern day life through a film called Hunger, or La Faim in French. Produced in 1974, this animated short tells a cautionary tale of greed and gluttony, in particular highlighting the dangers of consumption. It is not a happy tale. To underscore it, we move on to the relationship between food and spaces. Throughout history, many living quarters have had separate eating spaces dedicated to separate occasions: a "formal" space for guest entertainment, and an "informal" space for day-to-day dining. Coffeehouses, on the other hand, do not fall into either category. With neither the formalness of the restaurant nor the privacy of the home, the coffeehouse is not even somewhere to consume a real meal. They thrive precisely because they provides a third, in-between space, whether it be in the 16th century Ottoman empire or modern day Starbucks.
To conclude, we re-examine Sally’s chocolate cake through the critical eyes of Roald Dahl and his famous children’s story, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This novel explores the ability of marketing to cover up essential facts regarding labor exploitation. Willy Wonka, a chocolate mogul, employs different strategies to boost the sale and production of his world renowned chocolates. For example, while Wonka’s workers, the Oompa Loompas, may seem like cute and cunning characters, they are actually meant to symbolize the African slaves working on cocoa bean plantations. The entire village was smuggled from its mother land, only to be trapped in servitude inside the locked gates of Wonka’s factory.
Every one of us eats, every day. What we are not aware of is that at the same time, we are also being eaten. Somehow, the complicated machinery of society, capitalism, and the corporation has intertwined so deeply with our lives that we cannot get out. It is a symbiotic relationship.
Before you take another bite of that chocolate bar in your hand, stop and think. And if you don’t know what to think, read on, and be enlightened.
II. The Rhetoric of Health Claims: Opening Pandora’s Cereal Box
“A health claim on a food product is a strong indication it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat”
-Michael Pollan
Walking down the cereal aisle in Andronico’s Market in Downtown Berkeley, the typical consumer becomes nearly overloaded by the superfluous nutritional information cluttering almost every cereal box stored on the shelves. Bright and colorful logos, grandiose statements backed by esoteric associations, and clusters of facts and figures formatted in all sorts of different ways unnecessarily complicate cereal-buying decisions. Crafting the cereal box interface has evolved into more of an art than an exact science; cereal brands have been implementing more creative marketing strategies to entice the consumer than ever before. One essential part of this interface is comprised of health claims, which attempt to communicate the often-convoluted and suggestive nutritional value of cereal. These health claims, which are also known as nutritional claims, have become ubiquitous among most every brand and collectively represent the discourse that addresses the consumer when he decides which cereal to buy.
As Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food suggests, health claims play a significant role in determining how food manufacturers communicate with consumers to influence dietary habits and trends (154). Common sense tells us that there must then exist a connection between health claims and the manner in which we perceive and evaluate certain products. The relationship here appears surprisingly simple: consumers interpret health claims, attribute them to products and purchase those products. However, with so many variables playing into consumers’ decision-making processes, it would be unjustified to imply that a certain conclusion applies to all consumers throughout the entire food industry. For the purposes of this essay, I will limit its argument’s scope to encompass only different brands within the cereal industry, one in which some of the biggest culprits of health claim manipulation flourish. Indeed, we consider cereal brands culprits because they facilitate the dissemination of essentially false information only to pass it off as scientifically substantiated fact. The result? Health claims oversimplify nutritional qualities and rhetorically present nutrition as an “absolute,” thereby perpetuating a haphazard understanding of nutrition among consumers.
Background
The front panel of the cereal box is home to health claims—concise statements that suggest the nutritional and health value of the product. When I visited Andronico’s Market for field research, I found that these nutritional claims were just as diverse as the brands that conveyed them. A typical nutritional claim relates one of the product’s ingredients, say fiber, to medical research that reveals a possible link between fiber and the treatment or prevention of a certain medical concern, say high cholesterol. A box of Honey Nut Cheerios demonstrates the result: the cereal company ostensibly prints the phrase “Can Help Lower Cholesterol” on the front of the box. The phrase suggests (with quite a bit of certainty) that Cheerios has demonstrated a positive effect on cholesterol levels. Though no specific accredited medical association has endorsed this claim or is referenced to it, the phrase nevertheless takes center stage on the cereal box. This illustrates one of the major issues surrounding the nutritional claim: they are too loosely regulated. The history of the struggle between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and cereal companies is shadowed by the FDA’s almost consistent submission to cereal companies’ arguments surrounding nutritional claim leniency. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 marked the FDA’s first attempt to regulate “false and misleading” statements on food products. A specific provision of this law prohibited health claims of any kind to appear on food labels. Food companies soon challenged the law and successfully overturned the provision. Every few decades or so, the FDA drafted new versions of health claim regulatory guidelines for them only to be opposed and disputed by food manufacturers. Consequently, the current guidelines set for these nutritional claims are so loose that cereal brands have been able to get away with producing claims that are “outright fraudulent.” Kellogg released such an absurd claim not too long ago: “sweetened breakfast cereals help support your child’s immunity” (Nestle and Ludwig 771). Although this claim was quickly removed due to a lawsuit, it still demonstrates the audacity that cereal brands can sometimes have in trying to promote their products through these claims.
How Nutritional Claims Operate
While exploring the faces of the many cereal boxes at Andronico’s, I identified four distinct types of nutritional claims. I came across the claim “Whole Grain Guaranteed” on a variety of General Mills’ brands.
As auspicious as it may sound, this claim is merely self-endorsed since no accredited health organization explicitly supports it, only General Mills. The phrase “Whole Grain Guaranteed” is essentially an unverified promise made by the very company that is selling its product to the consumer. Since the consumer interprets the message just as the cereal company had intended, he is deceived into thinking he is buying a product that meets some illusionary whole grain “standard” and thus believes the product is healthy. “Whole Grain Guaranteed” is written across the General Mills product line, artificially upgrading the consumers’ perception of the cereals’ health value. The particular product I found the claim on, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, is one most people do not usually associate with being made from whole grains but rather from lots of sugar and cinnamon.
Ironically, the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch contained another type of nutritional claim related to its (supposed) hearty whole grain content. The words “Crispy, Sweetened, Whole Grain and Rice Cereal” appeared toward the top of the box beside the giant logo. The peculiar part about this nutritional claim is reflected by the words “Whole Grain” and “Rice” written in boldface and all caps.
This is an obvious rhetorical move; the boldface and all caps formatting of the claim captures the consumer’s attention and emphasizes the “healthiness” of the cereal. This may seem like a strange yet acceptable practice, but when the cereal brand selectively emphasizes information, it gives the impression that the cereal is made of only these “healthy” ingredients. The claim misleads the consumer into thinking that the sweet and delicious cereal brand he has been used to has just now magically become as “healthy” as the other brands.
One particular brand that carries a well-established reputation for being “healthy” is Bear Naked granola. The first feature of their box that stands out is the fact that there is none—the granola comes in upright white bags. Quite possibly one of the few cereal brands that lists almost all of its ingredients on the front of the packaging (since they mostly comprises of fruits and nuts), Bear Naked stamps its own nutritional claim on its bags: “100% pure and natural”.
This is one type of unverifiable claim because it is inherently ambiguous and unclear. What does it even mean for a food product to be pure and natural? Does it mean that it lacks processing? Well, that surely is not the case. Bear Naked entices its consumers through favorable buzzwords like pure and natural, which align with its “healthy” reputation as a cereal, though fail to carry out the validity of the product’s true health value.
The final type of claim I investigated was similar to this last one; it involved the over-use of the terms “real” and “natural”. In a particular example of a box of Banana Nut Cheerios, the phrase underneath the logo stated: “Flavored with Real Banana and Natural Banana Flavor”. Simply put: this phrase confuses the consumer. It is also ambiguous because the brand fails to make a distinction between the terms “real” and “natural” though it still artificially appeals to the consumer. While on the surface claims may seem persuasive, we will soon realize that taking a closer look encourages us to challenge the claim’s message.
How Consumers Interact with Health Claims
As research suggests, consumers either rushed or overloaded with nutritional information often rely on health claims as a quick evaluation of the product’s nutritional value (Wansink 2004). If a particular consumer is concerned with attaining his daily dose of whole grains, he views the “Whole Grain Guaranteed” claim as a substitute for consulting with the nutritional facts label. These claims therefore operate as proxy for more detailed and substantiated nutritional information located on the product’s nutrition facts label. But, how exactly do consumers evaluate a product based on its health claims? Research done by Wansink et al. suggests that two conclusions that often result. The consumer can be either overloaded by too much information and or not approached with “enough” claims on the food packaging. Cereal brands in particular attempt to strike a balance between the two situations since too much information can distract consumers from the health claims’ messages while too little information can cause consumers to make unjustified assumptions about the product (660). These unjustified claims, closely related to general evaluative thoughts such as “this cereal is good (or bad),” occur when the consumer views the product as a whole but overlooks its specific features. Wansink’s team found that when the consumer is overloaded with information or cannot adequately understand it, he it more likely to make general and over-arching claims about the product. An example of such an over-arching claims is thinking that a product is “healthy”. Producing inaccurate judgments, however, may not be such an unwelcomed result for food manufacturers; if the nutritional claims lead consumers to believe that the product’s health value is greater than it actually is, the company benefits.
Nutrition versus Health
Before we delve further into how nutritional claims portray health as an absolute, we must first clarify the dichotomy between “nutrition” and “health”. The two phrases “health claim” and “nutritional claim,” when made equivalent, blur the line between health and nutrition. The implications here are very important: since the wide majority of cereal claims suggest good nutrient content, the consumer interprets the product as simply being “healthy”. However, a product containing artificially injected nutrients is not necessarily healthy. Michael Pollan makes this crucial point explicit:
“More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances (nutrients) was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters…Nutrients—those chemical compounds and minerals in food that scientists have identified as important to our health—gleamed with the promise of scientific certainty” (Pollan 20).
Here, Pollan exposes an important issue: when the concepts of nutrition and health are blurred among consumers, they are subject to believing that a product containing any nutrient of scientific interest automatically generalizes the product as being healthy. In a particular study of food commercials done by Lank et al., 77% of the products advertised as having “low cholesterol” ended up having significantly unhealthy amounts of fat (1992). So while the consumer buys the product because it contains low amounts of cholesterol and therefore thinks it is “healthy”, the product turns out to be unhealthily fattening. This leads us to find that, by using health claims, food companies capitalize upon focusing on one nutritional issue, say cholesterol, promote it as being “healthy” while not address the many other concerns. With so many cereal brands artificially injecting vitamins and nutrients into our morning breakfasts, it is easy to see why the consumer sees all cereals to be “healthy”. However, is the consumer justified in ostensibly claiming that a cereal is simply “healthy?”
Health as an “Absolute”
Michael Pollan describes one of the latest changes in food consumerism as one “from food to nutrients”. In fact, he devotes an entire chapter within In Defense of Food to discuss this enormous shift in consumer behavior. The manner in which this shift has happened is simple: as consumers became more aware of the importance of vitamins and minerals, food companies targeted their health claims to address the rising nutrition concerns among consumers. Consumers bought these products with the assumption that they were “healthy”. Almost instantly after a new study merely suggests a nutrient as being healthy, cereal companies find a way to “enrich” their products with the nutrient to boost sales. This has happened with polyunsaturated fats, fiber, polyphenols, amino acids, carotenoids, antioxidants and probiotics, among many others (27). As consumers added these elements to their already haphazard understanding of what is “healthy”, they subject themselves to an ever-growing variety of products that register as “healthy” in their minds.
In this way, food companies perpetuate a deficient understanding of nutrition through the health claims that they promote. When the media or some medical journal suggests that omega-3 fatty acids are essential for development, the consumer (knowing that development itself is healthy) considers food products containing these fatty acids to be healthy. Omega-3s are added to an entire toolbox of nutrients suddenly making even more products seem “healthy”. If omega-3s are deemed healthy, products containing them must also be healthy, right? Consider this fictitious example: McDonald’s just announced today that scientists have found traces of omega-3s in Big Macs! Big Macs now contain health labels stating: “Rich with omega-3 fatty acids potent for healthy development”. Without a doubt, a large influx of consumers flood McDonald’s demanding Big Macs. This makes Big Macs healthy, right? No, Big Macs are still very unhealthy.
The fact of the matter is that food companies are not trying to sell nutrients—companies producing vitamins sell nutrients. Food companies sell food. With this shift in food consumerism from “food to nutrients”, consumers now select food based on nutrient content. Trying to eat healthy, consumers buy the products enriched with those nutrients. This same phenomenon occurs in the cereal industry. Cereal boxes labeled as containing omega-3s, antioxidants, probiotics, and fiber fly off the shelves. Are these cereals necessarily healthier than the rest? No. But they seem healthier. When consumers continue to harbor that nutrients can make any product healthy, what seems healthy wins beats out the competition. The health claim is no longer related to a product’s ingredients, it is now related to the product itself.
Greater Implications
It seems like we have indeed stopped buying food and started buying nutrients. On a larger scale, should we worry? As Michael Pollan suggests, yes we should. We have seen how health claims can have tremendous effects on how we perceive and choose the products we consume. As long as we, as consumers, continue to rely on these claims to guide our nutritional decisions, our future diets look inauspicious. If we think about what kinds of companies can afford to promote their products using health claims, we seem to rule out local farmers and small-scale food producers. This means that, on the whole, bigger food companies are most likely to have the budgets and marketing prowess to not only package their products but also label them with enticing yet dubious promises. As Michael Pollan explains, “generally speaking, it is only the big food companies that have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world” (154).
Big food companies’ overuse of health claims puts smaller farmers and food producers at a severe disadvantage. Take, for example, health claims relating to antioxidants. Assuming there is great consumer demand for products containing antioxidants, cereal brands will “enrich” their cereals with them. Fisherman producing salmon, which has naturally occurring omega-3s (presumably more healthy), do not have the budget or the resources to place health claims on their packaging. For a consumer to buy salmon for its omega-3 benefits, he would have to already know that salmon naturally contains the fatty acid. With cereal, the fact that the cereal contains the omega-3s is written (probably more than once) directly on the box. As more and more people become used to getting their essential nutrients from cereal, they will further expect all the healthy ingredients they need from similar processed foods. This is the phenomenon that Pollan describes when he says “food [has been] gradually disappearing from the shelves” (19). As our demand for unprocessed food like fresh produce decreases and our reliance on processed food grows, product variety will shift to the shelves holding imperishable products in the middle of grocery stores. But remember, this is largely fueled by health claims—they seemed innocent, did they not? They are indeed a unit of manipulation through which food companies trick us. They are especially crafted to entice and deceive us while suggesting to us that nutrition is much simpler than we think. When we elect to learn our nutrition lessons at the mercy of large food companies, however, we end up deficient. The cereal box interface—which, in itself is a marketing tool—does not have the ability to convey substantiated and unbiased nutritional fact. Instead, crafty language appeals us and drives us to buy the product we presume is healthy. Health claims, in some way, are traps that companies put out to capitalize on poor nutrition knowledge. The language that cereal brands use often fools even some of the more nutritionally adept. We almost cannot escape the corporate agenda—all of us have been tricked into thinking what we were eating was healthier than it actually was.
Nutrition Revolution
To our dismay, it turns out that cereal brands and large food manufactures care much less about our nutrition than we think. They would much rather present nutrition as an “absolute” and sell as much product as possible. The term “absolute” here is ironic—in the company’s mind nutrition is always changing. And because these companies produce processed foods, their products are easily adaptable to the ever-changing nutrition consensus. This is exactly what Pollan suggests: “Yet the beauty of a processed food like margarine is that it can be endlessly reengineering to overcome even the most embarrassing about-face in nutritional thinking” (33). Here, Pollan is discussing margarine, a product that was thought to have been a better butter—without the cholesterol and saturated fats. Once trans fats were discovered and margarine was shown to contain a lot of them, food companies changed the recipe to again capitalize on the market: “trans fats gone…margarine marches on, unfazed and apparently unkillable. Too bad the same cannot be said of an unknown number of margarine eaters” (33). How has it been possible for margarine to rebuild its trust with consumers? Trans fats are looked down upon as one of the worst ingredients used in foods today. Margarine may have worked to reduce its trans fat content, but surely it still carries some unfavorable reputation. Alas! The old “face” of margarine has been covered up by health claims concerning—you guessed it—omega-3 fatty acids!
Now what is a consumer aught to believe? This “new” margarine is still healthier than butter, right? Not necessarily. Once again, the margarine merely seems to be healthier. In an extremely short span of time, margarine has regained its reputation for being a healthy alternative to butter.
Concluding Remarks
As consumers, we seem to be surprisingly forgiving to big businesses that have developed bad reputations for misleading us. It is not surprising that books and movies out rightly criticize certain food companies’ dubious practices. However, as we have seen, the food industry operates in such a way that companies’ reputations can be rebuilt. New brands may enter the market promising all sorts of new health claims, only to be tested by consumers and end up either on the shelves or being phased out. New and pre-existing brands both share a common interest of utilizing health claims to appeal to consumers. In some ways, the health claim is merely a tool that gives brands leverage and a method to differentiate themselves from their competition.
These claims, however, are to be strictly avoided. As Michael Pollan writes, “it is the products of food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often erroneous science—the dubious fruits of nutritionalism” (154). Misleading claims propagate just like the wheat grains that food companies use to make cereal. We simply cannot rely on cereal brands or any food company to tell us what is healthy. Unfortunately, we cannot seem to rely on the federal government either—the FDA has failed numerous times in setting reasonable guidelines for food companies to follow. We must, then, become better informed and more cautious about the foods that we eat. If we do not, big food companies will further enjoy eating us for breakfast.
Works Cited
Byrdbredbenner, C., 1994. Designing a consumer friendly nutrition label. Journal of Nutrition
Education 26, 180–190.
Feick, L.F., Herrmann, R.O., Warland, R.H., 1986. Search for nutrition information: a profit
analysis of the use of different information sources. Journal of Consumer Affairs 20 (2),
173–192.
Lank, Nancy H., Connie E. Vickery, Nancy Cotugna, and Daniel D. Shade. "Food Commercials during Television Soap Operas: What Is the Nutrition Message." Journal of Community Health 17.6 (2005): 377-84. SpringerLink. Web. 22 Apr. 2010.
Nestle, Marion, and David S. Ludwig. "Front-of-Package Food Labels: Public Health or Propaganda?" Journal of the American Medical Association 303.8 (2010): 771-72. JAMA. Web. 21 Apr. 2010.
Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food. New York: Penguin Group, 2008. Print.
Wansink, Brian, Steven T. Sonka, and Clare M. Hasler. "Front-label Health Claims: When Less
Is More." Food Policy 29 (2004): 659-67. Elsevier. Web. 19 Apr. 2010.
III. Implications of Taste Within a Capitalistic Society
Hunger/La Faim was a short animated film developed in 1974 addressing the implications of greed in modern society and how it came to be. Through an extensive analysis of this film, I will examine its themes in light of gluttony, and how this relates to the food industry.
The film opens with a man in a business suit, looking relatively hale and healthy. His weight echoes that of the average American a century ago, before the explosion of fast food chains and the existence of the phrase "junk food." His setting and behavior, however, do not. Three times he pops a sweet into his mouth. The first time, his face is frozen immediately afterwards, to give viewers a better look at our protagonist. The second time, he is on the phone yet does it anyway -- and his face is frozen in the act of, to better highlight consumer greed and the first hints of addiction. The third and last time our man pops a sweet into his mouth, he leans his head back and chews with an expression of utter bliss on his face. This brings us back to an old saying, "Third time's the charm." This man is hooked. From the very beginning the viewers are given this information.
Let us pan out and examine this opening scene from a wider lens. The background is stark orange, a color previously observed by scientists to boost appetite. More accurately, they found that colors with warmer hues (red, yellow, orange) tended to help augment appetite, where as colors with cooler hues (blue, green, grey) tended to dampen it. This is why McDonalds signs are red and yellow, and hardly any large chain restaurants sport logos which are blue in color. On the other hand, the man has no color at all. He is completely white, and outlined by - not black, but grey lines. This, coupled with eerie background music and the choppy quality of animation, lends the entire film a very ethereal feeling. In fact, the bleached color contrast, the digital animation, and the odd beep of the music with the constant rhythm of drums actually create a very mechanical atmosphere. The man's short-cropped haircut and business suit are reminiscent of a large corporation, and the ringing of the telephone only adds to the flavor. When the second phone rings and his head splits into two, he may look a bit like a monster, but there is actually a word amongst modern-day youth which describes him perfectly: multitasking.
Multitasking is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to be, firstly, "the concurrent performance of several jobs by a computer," and then "the performance of multiple tasks at one time" (Merriam-Webster dictionary). It is exactly what it sounds like. The pace of life in the world has been getting faster and faster over the past few centuries, what with the Industrial Revolution and mass urbanization, and people no longer have the luxury to stop and go about their tasks one at a time. Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology from the University of Hertfortshire, led a study in 2007 which revealed that average walking speeds have increased by about 10 percent since 1994. An extract from the Times reads as follows:
...the results were significant because walking speed was a good indicator of the pace of people's lives.This has not only impacted people's everyday lifestyles but also the food industry. In 1959, McDonalds only had about 100 restaurants open across the entire United States (as opposed to nearly 25,000 worldwide now), and the word "junk food" wasn't even coined until 1974 (Schlosser). The catch is, these phenomena developed because consumers' lifestyles had sped up, not the other way around. Quick, cheap, dirty food emerged because society demanded it. As Alfred Marshall put it, supply and demand are two blades, one pair of scissors. One cannot exist without the other. The man in our video is not eating those sweets just because he wants to or because he is addicted (though he may very well be both), he is also doing it because it is convenient. Eating and talking on the phone at the same time, after all, is also "multitasking."
Previous research by Robert Levine, of California State University, who measured walking speeds around the world in 1994, has shown that they are linked to other indicators of behaviour and even health. As people move faster they become less likely to help others, and also tend to have higher rates of coronary heart disease. (Henderson)
If we continue to follow our man, we see that he dons the cap and takes the elevator. Interestingly enough, there is a set of stairs right by the elevator -- the same color as the background (as well as the trash can and the walls), which makes the stark white of the elevator stand out even more. Everything that requires buttons and some sort of technology, it seems, is white. The phones, the elevator, the couch-woman who tells the time, the cashier at the delicatessen... the world has, undeniably, become more and more technologically dependent over the past couple of centuries, though we must keep in mind that this film is hardly recent by current standards. Created over forty years ago (the same year that the word "junk food" was coined), the animation is, at best, primitive. The car resembles popular "muscle cars" of the 60s and 70s, and the main character's hat is most definitely dated. Still, the film exhibits indisputable traces of the impact technology has had upon society. The main character completely ignores the stairs (and so does the film's color scheme) even though they are right there. He presses a button, which calls up a woman, who then checks her watch and transforms her head into an analog clock. The funny thing is, so much automation is still not enough for him. The woman's head has to flicker from analog to the digital number "5" several times before he acknowledges her and she sinks back into the couch. Either the man has trouble reading an analog clock, or he has to internally convert the analog to digital before it registers. Either way, it reflects the physical and mental changes the Information Technology Revolution has had on us.
On one hand, it produces "infoglut," masses of continuously increasing, badly organized information that keeps getting stuffed into our heads. It is the epitome of quantity over quality, speed over attention, everything more, everything faster. On the other hand, however, technology has also made people markedly lazier. The man took the elevator instead of the stairs. He drove off as a car instead of walking . Somehow, a culture so focused on speed, efficiency, and impatience actually turned out even lazier than before. This can be better illustrated, perhaps, through Ray Bradbury's coments in the fictional world of Fahrenheit 451:
I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur! That's a rose garden! [...] Isn't that funny, and sad, too? (Bradbury 9)
This passage may be slightly exaggerated, but it highlights an important problem: loss of value. A certain mental laziness is required for the lack of appreciation, and perhaps with it comes the physical laziness. Buttons for the time, buttons for the elevator, not-quite-buttons for the car, more buttons at the cashier -- no wonder the average man has been getting fatter! This is precisely the sort of mentality which the fast food industry has seized upon and thrived. While it is true that the rapid growth of the fast-food industry "has been driven by fundamental changes in the U.S. economy," an undeniable cultural aspect is also involved (Schlosser). That said, it must be acknowledged that sociological factors have also pushed the culture forward. As sociologists Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni observed, the rise of working women has "greatly increased demand for the types of services that housewives traditionally performed: cooking, cleaning, and child care" (Schlosser). In fact, to quote Eric Schlosser once more, "Americans now spend more money on fast food than they do on higher education, personal computers, software or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music - combined" (Schlosser).
Consider the vending machine. Vending machines sell soda, chips, "junk food" - precisely the sort of food that does not require human supervision to maintain. The quality of the food is forfeited for convenience, the importance of a meal replaced by a snack-food culture. Now, snack machines were not yet popularized at the time of this animation (though gumball and soda machines were), but if they were the entire delicatessen could very well have been replaced with a single vending machine. Consider our main character's behavior at the delicatessen. He pressed some buttons at the cashier and went through some sort of automated payment instead of actually paying a real person. The man behind the counter was a man, to be sure, but he did not move, his shirt buttons functioned as a machine, and, really, he may as well have been a robot. This echoes a familiar anti-IT argument, which is that "it's bad for jobs... [as] new software becomes more widespread, we can expect more unemployment and under-employment" (Sale). For contrast, pro-ITers argue that it empowers the people, that Information Technology has created "fabulous tools of enormous power, getting out to almost anybody who wants them... [and are] completely based on sharing rather than exchange" (Sale). While both sides present valid points, they fail to address an important factor: namely, that technology isolates.
Throughout the film, our main character is very, very alone. He starts off by himself, his only form of communication through a telephone (technological device, check). The first two people he meets, the couch-woman and the store clerk, are both essentially machines (pseudo-technological device, check), displaying no sign of social interaction whatsoever. He travels by car (technological contraption, check), and it may be noted that whenever he is outside, the background is blue - a cold, uncaring color reflective of seclusion and loneliness. As a matter of fact, there is a pop song called "Dark Blue" whose lyrics ask, "have you ever been alone inside a crowded room?" (Jack's Mannequin). In modern day life, it may be more accurate to ask whether someone has ever been alone on a crowded street. With the urbanization of modern culture, the lonely person with a pair of earphones plugged into his ears has become increasingly common, especially in the most crowded of places. Social networking through digital devices takes the place of face to face contact. Likewise, society's attitude towards food has changed, turning what was originally a communal activity into a solo activity. Snacks are designed precisely to be eaten during work, to be eaten while doing something else. A U.C. Berkeley student who prefers to remain unnamed reveals, "I'd rather get take-out. That way I don't have to eat it all at once... and I can take it to my room and eat while I play WoW" (Hartoog) (footnote WoW?). Another college student admits to "being a hermit." "I'm too tired to eat with people," she said. "It's too much effort. I'd rather stay here and order take-out from my room" (Lee). Our man, in the beginning, does not cook but buys food from a delicatessen and eats out at a restaurant. Later, he does not even bother to leave his car, neon "IN" and "OUT" signs of the supermarket oddly reminiscent of the popular In-N-Out burger chain of California. The signs, however, are cold white framed with blue -- no signs of the cheerful yellow actual fast food chains try to promote nowadays.
So we see that changes in modern culture and advances in technology have pushed changes in society, and with it undeniable changes to the food industry. Yet our protagonist seems to go beyond even this, taking consumption to a whole other level. We see hints of this in the beginning, when he takes that third sweet and leans back to chew with an expression of bliss on his face. This becomes apparent in the restaurant scene a few minutes later. He looks perfectly normal while ordering and speaking, yet when he reaches for the food his mouth deforms into a monstrous, misshapen mass, expanding up to twice its size and all but giving him the look of a monster. While this may seem grotesque to some people, science has shown that there are some foods we find more palatable than others. Sugar, for example, releases opioids and dopamines in the brain, which cause us to "feel good" and thus prefer the taste over others. According to one Canadian study,
At the beginning..., getting a reward was easy. When an animal pressed a lever once, it earned its first reward. The second reward came after three presses of the lever. Next six lever presses were required. A fourth reward took ten lever presses, a fifth took sixteen, and a sixth took twenty-three presses of the lever.
[....] Rats generally worked harder - that is - they pressed the lever more - to get higher concentrations of sucrose. On average they pressed enough to earn five rewards of a solution without sucrose, about six rewards of a 10 percent sucrose solution, and about eight rewards of the 20 percent solution. To get that eighth reward of 20 percent sucrose, a rat had to press the lever forty-four times. (Avena)
Similar results were found with fat, which, while it "[does] not elicit suprathreshold taste percepts such as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami," can definitely still be detected with the human tongue (Stewart). David A. Kessler takes this one step further in his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, where he spends an entire chapter evaluating "how eating promotes more eating" and concludes with the statement, "When offered a varied selection and large portions of high-sugar, high-fat, high-salt foods, many of us will eat them in excessive amounts" (Kessler 13, 17). Sugar, salt, and fat, it seems, are a magic combination of sorts which override our self-regulating mechanisms and cause us to keep eating, and eating, and eating. One interview with a leading food consultant revealed that the food industry has known this for a long time.
...he was remarkably candid, explaining that the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the "three points of the compass." Sugar, fat, and salt make a food compelling, said the consultant. They make it indulgent. They make it high in hedonic value which gives us pleasure.
"Do you design food specifically to be highly hedonic?" I asked.
"Oh, absolutely," he replied without a moment's hesitation. (Kessler 18).
This explains the hedonic look on our protagonist's face as he shoves a whole pig in his mouth and chews blissfully. However, it does not explain why he then shrinks to a short, fat, ugly state, balls up the tablecloth, and shoves that in his mouth as well. The background darkens to a fuller red as he does so, reflecting his greed. But is it simple greed?
Throughout the film we see patterns of degeneration whenever the main character eats. He is marginally self-possessed while observing the food outside the delicatessen, then warps all at once into an inhuman shape in order to enter the store and pick out the food he wants. As he eats in the restaurant, he begins with fork and knife, then eventually falls back on his hands. In a later scene at the dinner table, no utensils are in sight. He is hunched over, fat (not a semblance of good posture left), he grabs the food greedily with his hands, and eventually grows many mouths and arms to help him eat, turning into a true monster. Originally our character walked into the restaurant intending to eat a meal of his own, but what he does not see is that each letter on the restaurant sign possessed eyes and teeth of its own -- perhaps in some way the restaurant is actually consuming him, and not the other way around. From the previous interview we see this is very plausible, as the food industry is using certain scientific knowledge for their own benefit. In fact, a study conducted in 2007 by Princeton scientists revealed that "intermittent, excessive intake of sugar" can directly cause the brain to formulate neurochemical adaptations. A group of rats were deprived of food daily for 12 hours, then given access to rat chow and sugar solution for 12 hours. After a month on this feeding schedule, the animals "show a series of behaviors similar to the effects of drugs of abuse" (Avena). They binge, suffer opiate-like withdrawal symptoms, and experience enhanced craving. Further investigation revealed "significantly enhanced" mu-opioid binding, a significant decrease in enkephalin mRNA, and repeated dopamine release in the accumbens, whose balance was then upset when the rats were taken off sugar. These are all symptoms that draw strong parallels to several drugs of abuse, most prominently morphine.
If we go back and examine our man again now, we discover another trend: his pleasures are short lived. When he walks into the restaurant, the background music changes from the eerie, mechanical drone to a quick and upbeat melody. However, this melody does not last long. By the time he starts eating with his hands, it has reverted to the old music of before, and his expression at that point no longer reflects enjoyment, but rather monotonous, unthinking desire -- desire without pleasure. Likewise, he has a moment of love with the girl who transforms into an ice cream cone, in which the background turns pink and the music turns romantic. However, he has hardly taken a lick before the background fades to cold blue once more, and they whisk off to the supermarket. Let us couple this with another study, also conducted on mice:
We found that extended access to a highly palatable cafeteria-style diet resulted in overeating and weight gain coupled with progressively elevating BSR thresholds in rats. This effect on BSR thresholds can be explained by gradually decreasing responsiveness of brain reward circuits.... As in these findings in rats, [responses... show] that [... it is] likely to occur in humans as well. (Johnson)
This study, we must note, is not just conducted on sugar but a "highly palatable cafeteria-style diet." David Kessler defined palatability earlier for us as a food's "capacity to stimulate the appetite and prompt us to eat more," and pointed us towards sugar, fat, and salt as possibly one of the most palatable combinations out there (Kessler 12). Taking this to be our definition, it is fair to assume that the gourmet foods our character has thus far been consuming (whole pigs, whole chickens, large fish, large dishes with wine... etc) are very "palatable." What the research essentially found was that continuous consumption of such palatable foods gradually decrease the responsiveness of our brain pleasure centers. In short, it takes more and more for us to stimulate our pleasure centers enough to reach the same amount of pleasure we experienced the first time. If we pay attention, our character starts out with three dishes on his table. When he orders again, his small, round, one-person table is filled with a whopping seven dishes. By the time we reach the dinner at his house, a much larger table is filled with countless dishes, which also seem to be self-replenishing (when he grabs food from a plate, the same amount of food remains on the plate), yet his face does not reflect the same level of bliss he took from the very first candies which he popped into his mouth. His pleasures have degraded, and he does not seem to notice.
An interesting thing to note: in the introduction of the very same scientific study mentioned above, the second-to-opening sentence reads, "Nevertheless, the hedonic mechanisms contributing to obesity remain poorly understood" (cite!!). That's twice we've seen the use of the word "hedonic" now, on completely separate occasions. The word is referenced two more times in the aforementioned introduction, once as the "hedonic aspects of feeding behavior" and once as "diet-induced hedonic dysregulation." While unflattering words such as "hedonic" and the colloquially misunderstood "Epicurean" seem normal in everyday conversation (and acceptable in an interview, though somewhat appalling), its usage in a full-out technical report is striking. Even science, with all its basis in facts and figures, refers to gluttony as though it were the temptation of the devil. And perhaps in a way it is. The devil is often referred to as Satan, spreader of evil, tempter of man. One cannot deny that whatever the scientific bases, the desire to consume more (and more and more) is very "tempting," so to speak.
When our man sits down at his dinner table with a feast before him, he is just a fat man indulging himself in the pleasures of some gourmet food. His mouth chews the food - not very aesthetically pleasing, to be sure, but just a physical mouth and the physical act of chewing. But then he morphs and grows, actually physically expanding in size and transforming into a monster who is no longer in control of his own actions. A mouth appears on the left side of his cheek: the mouth of society, pushing him to eat faster, faster, work faster, faster so he can feed it. A mouth appears on the right side of his cheek: the mouth of his own insatiable greed, of his less and less responsive neurons demanding more and more, killing itself more and more in the process. As he feeds all of his mouths he grows larger and more deformed, and arms grow out of his back so that he looks less and less like a man and more and more like a monster. Numerous mouths appear all over his body, each one demanding to be fed; when he feeds them, things do not get better but worse, because he just grows bigger and develops even more mouths. There are mouths on his chest, on his face, cheeks, belly. There are mouths in places where no mouth ought to be. At some point the mouths stop looking like mouths which are there to feed the man, but rather a disease infiltrating his body, like smallpox or measles. There is no satisfying the corporation, no satisfying society, no satisfying his own pace of life or even his own brain. He is like a wheel rolling down a hill, going faster and faster with no hope of stopping unless he crashes into something and flies apart into a million pieces. In the end the man is not even a man anymore, but the machine: one cannot be told apart from the other.
The very end of the film is also composed of many mouths -- mouths of starving children, latching onto the fatty flesh of our protagonist. This brings to mind a phrase often used in relation to business, "Social Darwinism," a slightly ironic reflection of the sharp business suit our main character sported in the beginning of the film. As Lu Xun suggested during Communist China, it's a man-eat-man world out there. Eat or be eaten. When it comes to the food industry, this can perhaps be taken more literally than in the normal sense, because what one eats or does not eat actually does make a difference. In fact, our world may not be so different from the cannibalistic one presented by Peter Foldes. David A. Kessler often refers to the "obesity epidemic" which has overtaken America, but he never dreamed that all of today's problems have already been foreshadowed by a film produced over forty years ago!
Works Cited
Avena, Nicole M., Pedro Rada, and Bartley G. Hoebel. "Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake." National Institutes of Health (2007). Web. 22 Apr 2010.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Ballantine Books, 1987. Print.
Hartoog, E. Personal Interview. 04 May 2010.
Henderson, Mark. "Modern life: it's one step at a time, only much quicker." Times Online (2007). Web. 6 May 2010.
Johnson, Paul M. and Paul J. Kenny. "Dopamine D2 receptors in addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats." Nature Neuroscience (2010): n.13 p.635-641. Web. 22 Apr 2010.
Kessler, David A. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. 1st ed. Rodale Books, 2009. Print.
Lee, Melody. Personal Interview. 06 May 2010.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. "Information technology revolution: boon or bane?" The Futurist (1 Jan 1997). Web. 5 May 2010.
Schlosser, Eric. "Fast Food Nation: The True Cost Of America's Diet." Rolling Stone Magazine (1998): n.794. Web. 04 May 2010.
Stewart, Jessica E., Christine Feinle-Bisset, Matthew Golding, Conor Delahunty, Peter M. Clifton, and Russell S.J. Keast. "Oral sensitivity to fatty acids, food consumption and BMI in human subjects." British Journal of Nutrition (2010): n. pag. Web. 13 Apr 2010.
IV. Coffeespace
The name Starbucks Coffee should not be a stranger to any modern day Americans. Not only do most of us depend on the beverages they serve, but also we seek the confines of Starbucks as a space of comfort and relaxation from our otherwise hectic schedules. We quickly recognize the phrase “let’s grab coffee sometimes” as an invitation for an informal conversation. We seek these “coffee breaks” to catch up with old friends, work when we seek solitude yet don’t want to be completely alone, or to just relax on a random afternoon. For many of us, Starbucks is essential for our daily caffeine boost and also our lifestyle. However, coffeehouses have not always served with this purpose. Tracing the history of coffeehouses back to 16th century Ottoman Empire, coffeehouses and Starbucks are vastly different yet similar. The coffeehouse was also a main gathering place for artisan, poets, and miniaturists during the Ottoman Empire as examined through Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red. However, the reception of coffee contrasts enormously from then until now. I believe the primary source of change stems from the way Starbucks markets itself as the “third place,” a space that is neither public nor private and allows for intimate social gathering. When customers buy a cup of Starbucks, they are actually purchasing an entire “Starbucks Experience.” In here I will show how various details in a Starbucks store constitute to their aim.
But first though, I will define what the “Starbucks Experience” is. Perhaps the single phrase that summarizes the “Starbucks Experience” is the comfortable “third place,” coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg and popularized by Starbucks CEO Howards Schultz. The “third place” is a “neutral, safe, public gathering spot” (Clark, 78) with home and work being the first and second places. This “third place,” as stated by Oldenburg, usually revolves around a form of beverage. Through conversing at the “third place,” people are allowed to engage in casual conversations. Casual conversations are characterized as an informal gathering of people around a central form of beverage where the people can converse in any random subject they please; this is also known as “coffeetalk,” coined by Gaudio. In contrast to coffeetalk, “if someone mentions talk explicitly (e.g., let’ go have a talk), it would be appropriate to assume that they have a particular topic they want to discuss – probably something serious” (Gaudio, 669). Through the coffeehouse, the need of individuals to socialize can be fulfilled. At the same time, the “third place” alleviates the potential threat people feel when someone tries to penetrate their guestrooms, entering into their private sanctuary. In the coffeehouse, people can have guestroom-conversations in a public setting. At the same time, the ‘third place” remains informal from the work environment where conversations are structured. Such institutions have existed throughout history in various forms such as the Irish pubs and the Chinese tea houses; however, “the eternal sameness of the third place overshadows the variations in its outward appearance and seems unaffected by the wide differences in cultural attitudes toward the typical gathering places of informal public life” (Oldenburg, 20). Howard Schultz knew this concept all too well that he described his company as “a third place bringing people together through the social glue of coffee” (Clark, 78). People see Starbucks as more than a coffee store because they long for a comfortable, casual place where they can socialize and relax between the work and home. By marketing Starbucks as more than a coffee store but a “third place,” the popularity of Starbucks soared throughout the United States and internationally.
The coffeehouse functions no differently in the Ottoman Empire. Coffeehouses also served as the “third place” outside the formal work space and the privacy of the homes. As sociologist Brian Beeley states: “As a public, commercial institution, [the coffeehouse] is to be distinguished from the gathering of friends and relatives in the guest room of a private household, though in both situations the opportunity for contact and communication is of major functional significance within the society” (476). Similar to the way Starbucks provide a place of gathering that is informal yet public. The coffeehouse takes the formality out of social contacts that would have been present in the guest room and the world realm. First of all, no party needs to play host when gathering in the coffeehouses. And second, the coffeehouses allow people of different social statuses to comfortably converse. Through the coffeehouses, social hierarchy dissipates. Beeley goes on to say: “The coffeehouse, as a public place, is available to younger, more educated groups who feel uncomfortable in the traditional hierarchy based largely on age and wealth. In the coffeehouse the young secondary-school graduate can speak; in the guest room he would have to content himself with silent observations” (481); the “young secondary-school graduates” symbolize the rise of the newly educated bourgeoisies that fall outside the traditional social hierarchy. The coffeehouses serve a gathering place for the newly educated population that does not have a place in the private formal guestrooms. In both cases, coffeehouses and Starbucks provide the “third place,” a casual space outside the private guestrooms and the public work domain where people can gather and socialize.
If the function of the spaces remains the same as we move from the Ottoman Empire into the 21st Century, then Starbucks played an important role to remove the cloak of sin from the image of coffee. To provide a perspective, I will examine how coffee was viewed during the Ottoman Empire. The coffeehouse has subtly and not so subtly served as the primary gathering place for the team of miniaturists in the novel. However, this is different from the quiet studio setting because in the coffeehouse, miniaturists are allowed to relax and discuss the project at the same time. The coffeehouse serves as a public forum for groups of artists, poets, and novelists to discuss the latest ideas and thoughts. This is different from Starbucks today, for while public groups still convene at Starbucks, its primary purpose is still for intimate “private” conversations in a public place (we can see from the small round tables and the couches at Starbucks). Furthermore, Starbucks provides a place for people to seek solitude yet do not want to be alone. As seen from the picture, everyone in Starbucks was alone.
This is increasingly becoming a popular trend. Coffee back then was seen as the anti-religion for caffeine is a stimulant that arouses those who consume it. Not only is coffee harmful to one’s physical health, but also it is harmful to one’s emotional health: “those who believe in the harmful effects of coffee, believe not in the commandments of our good religion, but in the Devil himself” (Pamuk, “Tree” 50). To willingly drink coffee is to willingly allow the stimulant to take over the body and senses, thus not thinking on clear grounds. For this reason, coffee dominates the soul of the person instead of Allah. Therefore, coffee and Allah conflicts and as a result, coffee symbolizes the Devil. Coffee also “dulls the intellect” (Pamuk, “Dog” 12). By placing coffee along the same caliber as the unskillful, coffee becomes the symbol of the anti-educated. Finally, coffee is often tied with immoral desires. In Pamuk’s novel, coffeehouses are located in the vicinity of the brothel or the slave markets. Its regular participants often visit during the end of the day and stay late into the night. The characteristics of the coffeehouse contrasts everything that religion stands for: “Exaulted Muhammad had turned down coffee even though it was offered to him by a beautiful woman – Satan in disguise” (Pamuk, “Esther” 351). Because of the bad receptions around coffee, coffee consumption was “a crime punishable by death” during 17th century Ottoman Empire (Clark 142).
However, tension around coffee was also apparent in the Ottoman Empire. Intellectuals find themselves drawn to coffee for they believe the beverage would perk their minds. This is how Shekure describes Hassan when he quits coffee: “furthermore, he quit drinking coffee, and naturally, his brain stopped working” (Pamuk, 48). Thinkers and artists constantly crowd their local coffeehouses to engage in discussions on current events while at the same time coffeehouses are believed to dull the intellect. The Ottoman coffeehouses find themselves with two distinct, yet similar, crowds: the daytime artists who convene around the coffeehouse for discussion on the latest current events (in the novel, it is about the Sultan’s largest project) and the nighttime visitors who convene around coffee to have a good time. Without coffee, the Ottoman Empire would be a little bit more depressed: “one hundred and twenty years ago, there being no coffee then, the respected Hoja, whose story we’ve begun, was simply steaming with rage” (Pamuk, “We Two Dervishes” 308). Overall, coffeehouses in the Ottoman Empire were the fusion of Starbucks and our night bars. It echoes Starbucks in the respect that it provides a “third place” for social gathering, and it echoes our night bars in the respect that people are drawn to the place for a night of guilty fun.
Coffeehouses today, however, are rarely if ever regarded as a sin. Rather, coffee today is a necessity for many people their day depends on the stimulant. How does coffee take on such a radically different reception from the 16th century to today? I argue that the change in coffee image primarily started with the rise of Starbucks Corporation, specifically with the cunning ways in which Starbucks incorporate the “third place” concept into their coffee. Prior to the rise of Starbucks, while coffee was apparent, it did not enjoy the popularity that coffee enjoys today. Starbucks penetrates deeper than simply popularizing coffee; it has completely transformed modern day culture. From introducing signature lattes to providing a comfortable “third place,” Starbucks has let Americans (and the rest of the world) know that they need Starbucks in order to live comfortably. Here, I examine four main tactics that Starbucks engages in to make themselves the largest coffee corporation in the world.
The first step that Starbucks normalize is a simple yet prominent step: brewing good coffee. In 1923, MIT researcher Samuel Cate Prescott conducted an experiment to find the “ultimate coffee elixir” (Clark, 18). Through his experiment, he concluded the three key steps to brew good coffee: “1. Use one tablespoon of freshly ground coffee for every eight ounces of water. 2. Force these grounds through water that is a few degrees short of boiling, inside a glass or earthenware container. 3. Never, ever boil or reheat coffee, and never reuse the grounds” (Clark, 18). While these steps sound like common sense to us coffee lovers today, they were not well known until Starbucks. So between the time that Prescott concluded his experiment and Starbucks, Americans continue to brew bad tasting coffee. According to Donald Schoenholt, head of the Brooklyn-based Gillies Coffee Company, “people would just run the tap water as hot as it could go, put a teaspoon of instant coffee in the cup, and shake it up” (Clark, 19). With this kind of attitude towards coffee brewing, it is no wonder that the popularity of coffee prior to Starbucks plummeted. Coffee tasted either too bitter, too tart, or too hot, none of these are qualities you’d find at Starbucks coffee. Brewing good coffee is crucial in the “Starbucks Experience” because good tasting coffee appeals to one of the five senses. The “Starbucks Experience” engages with all the senses of the customers. The first thing people have noticed about Starbucks was their good tasting coffee. America soon fell in love with the bold taste of Starbucks for they are consistent in their brewery and quality. Consumer also went wild after Starbucks introduced the Café Latte, steamed milk with an espresso shot, a drink inspired after Schultz came back from a visit to the Italian coffeehouse. Because the American palate is more accustomed to the sweeter, milky taste, Starbucks tailored the latte to fit that palate and America fell in love.
Starbucks did not just stop at brewing good coffee, however, it re-introduced and popularized Oldenburg’s concept of the “third place.” While social communities in America are decreasing (people who live in the suburbs barely know who their neighbors are), Starbucks boasts that it provides a comfortable and safe place for people to convene without the pressure of penetrating one’s space. Starbucks marketing executives know how to tailor to customers’ wants, thus we tend to think of the “third place” and the “Starbucks Experience” as equivalents. Wright Massey, the head of the Starbucks interior design team, spent countless hours creating everything from the coloring scheme to the shape of the tables in order to truly capture the essence of the “Starbucks Experience.” The new “experienced-focused design engaged each of the customer’s senses, from the obvious (sight, taste) to the not-so-obvious, like touch” (Clark, 103). There are primarily four color schemes in any Starbucks store to capture different essence of the store: earthy green for “grow,” fiery reds and coffee browns for “roast,” watery blues and coffee browns for “brew,” and airy pastel yellows and greens “aroma.” The next two pictures are paintings hung on a local Starbucks; as one can tell, these color patterns are consistent to their theme. This painting captures the essence of “aroma” with soft pastels.
And this picture represents “roast” with is fiery red and the tree.
Now in addition captivating our taste buds, Starbucks has successfully captured our eyes by creating an environment pleasing to the sights. It is interesting to note that by limiting the interior design to four pre-set colors along other cost saving patterns, Starbucks was able to save up to $96 million (Clark, 105). Starbucks also focused much of its interior assets to the “touch zone,” a zone from knee- to eye-level. Take a look at the contrast between attention to details and designs between the ceiling and the general space.
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Even the shape of the tables have a rationale behind them: they are circular so that people can come in to Starbucks by themselves and not feel alone since there are no “empty seats.”
The careful design does not just focus on sight; there are also elements of smell brought into the stores. It is by no means accident that the as you enter the doors, your nostrils fill with the sweet aroma of coffee roasting. Starbucks Corporation recognizes the importance of smell in creating the “Starbucks Experience” that they will sacrifice their beans if they have been left out for over 10 days. In order to be consistent on the image and quality of Starbucks coffee, when the beans are grounded and brewed, it should always release an appetizing aroma. One aspect of the “Starbucks Experience” that we often do not notice is their careful music selection. It is almost unimaginable for us to think that prior to Starbucks, music playlists in small shops are only to provide background music; thus it received only residual attention. However, the music played at Starbucks has all undergone careful selection to ensure that they exude the right vibe of the day. Finally, the “Starbuck Experience” appeals to our last sense: hearing. Through careful planning, the allure of Starbucks skyrocketed and people no longer remember the days when coffee and coffeehouses were seen as the Devil’s works.
Consciously or subconsciously, Starbucks has successfully created a new phenomenal called the “Starbucks Experience” that has forever changed the meaning of coffee drinking. Maybe advent coffee drinkers are aware of the tactics Starbucks engages inside the store, but these tactics often do not face oppositions because customers will only willingly walk into a Starbucks store if they want the “Starbucks Experience.” Most of the oppositions Starbucks face is on their real estate and expansionism. Now that Starbucks has perfected the “Starbucks Experience,” their new focus centers on how to lure unwilling customers into their stores because they know once the customers step inside their doors, the next step is easy. Starbucks Corporation focuses on convenience; never do busy drivers have to go out of their way to buy a cup of latte. But convenience is just a synonym for unavoidable. When Starbucks arrives, it never just opens in town; rather, it makes sure its entrance wouldn’t go unnoticed. Don Schoenholt describes “it was like. Boom! ‘We’re here, baby!’” (Clark, 119). Before Starbucks decides to expand into a new city, it runs a statistical rundown of their three desirable characteristics: high income, high population, and high level of education. Of course, Starbucks’ strategies are more complicated than these basic rules-of-thumb, but once Starbucks sets its eyes upon a city, there is not stopping it. Often described as “cannibalization,” Schultz never thought twice about placing Starbucks stores across the streets from one another. This approach has little to do with serving customers but everything to do with driving out competitors. Journalist Taylor Clark comments on this approach: “this is a major reason why Starbucks doesn’t franchise: Schultz always intended to blanket cities with outlets, but franchisees would surely protest every time the company wanted to jam in another store and endanger the franchisee’s sales” (121). Ironically, the decrease in sales for the stores is only temporary, new customers soon fill in the loss of sales and both Starbucks (right across the street) prospers. This phenomenon shows the trend that Starbucks on society: coffee is here to stay. The “Starbucks Experience” becomes popular primarily because people are often forced to experience this phenomenon.
But the most important aspect to Starbuck’s success comes from its careful crafting of their image. Not only does a Starbucks entry generate publicity, but also Starbucks exercises the tactic of tying the opening of their stores with a charitable cause, often donating a proportion of their sales to the charity or something similar. The intuition is this: this is great Public Relations and also since the charity would like to rake in as much donation as possible, they would provide free publicity for Starbucks. However, Starbucks’ primary strategy lies in incorporating their image into their space. Instead of spending millions on advertisements, Starbucks constructs its stores to be a self advertising “third place.” Right as you walk into the store, you can spot the Starbucks logo from the paper cups down to the corners of your napkins. Because of the attractive attributes of the Starbucks to-go cups, many young adults desire to be seen walking down the streets with a cup of Starbucks in hand. Starbucks becomes like an accessory similar to how designer handbags function. Celebrities photographed with a cup of Starbucks in their hands are as common as celebrities wearing sunglasses. Starbucks took advantage of their rising popularity to rake out every cent from coffee lovers. Soon enough we are seeing $4+ lattes, the amount McDonalds charge for an entire meal. Ironically, due to Starbucks’s adamant policy of no-discounting, signature lattes further exert the image of luxury which in turns generates more demand. On the practical sides, Starbucks stores manage to speed up the serving process in order to maximize the number of customers served possible. Their goal is three minutes average per customer, dubbing them the title: “World’s Fastest Latte.” It is through the innovative research of Starbucks that new espresso machines are introduced where a machine has the ability to stop steaming at the precise temperature and also brew several shots of espresso all at once. In addition, the concept of adding the milk and sugar yourself is introduced. Today, almost all coffeehouses have the feature of adding your own cream and sugar; however, the concept was introduced initially by Starbucks in order to cut serving time. The efficiency of Starbucks not only satisfy the demands of busy customers who just want their morning lattes and move on, but also Starbucks also meet the demands of those who are seeking a comfortable “third place” to relax in the middle of their day. The smart tactics engaged by Starbucks allow coffee to become America’s favorite beverage as well as a necessity. The cloth of sin originally put upon coffee by the Ottoman Empire has now sheds and a new cloth of luxury, necessity, and comfort takes its place.
Not only did Starbucks craft their products as desirable, but also their products enjoyed high visibility. All these attributes play an important role in shaping what the “Starbucks Experience” means in the minds of consumers. Let us travel back to page five of this paper and examine how your mind work aw you see a Starbucks logo (or how Starbucks intends for your minds to work). When you see, appealing to the sight, the green mermaid Starbucks logo, your minds enjoy a temporary break from whichever tasks you are committed to and reminisce on the last time you are inside a Starbucks. Momentarily, you smell the fresh aroma of the roast of the day (Pike Roast?) and your nostrils enjoy a microsecond of euphoria. This smell travels down to your palate where you anticipate that first sip of coffee. Your tongue has been salivating for a few minutes now because you have smelled this aroma from the minute you enter this door until now when you finally received your cup of coffee. All the while, music plays in the background and brings you into a fantasyland with no work and no meetings, just a soft woman’s voice telling you to relax. All the while, your eyes savor the entire moment by zooming around the store. Plastered yet subtle, the green Starbucks logo peeks at you from the corner of the napkin, to the center of the cups, down to the side of the window. So while walking down the street randomly one day and you spot that green Starbucks mermaid, your mind revert back to the savory experience and all five of our senses light up, if only momentarily. And you wonder why you are so tempted to go in the next time you pass by a Starbucks store… and there are so many stores.
I started this paper trying to explore the path of the coffeehouse culture with the main question “why are coffeehouses so essential in our lives today?” It is almost fact that the number of Starbucks on the streets while traveling through America has become numerous; in addition, the number of local coffee shops has also grown 54% since the 1980s. Armed with the question, I began to investigate the origin of coffeehouses. Close reading the coffeehouse culture of the Ottoman Empire through My Name is Red provides fundamental background knowledge into understanding our coffee culture today. The coffeehouse atmosphere functions similarly yet differently from the modern day Starbucks. Coffeehouses in My Name is Red served as a gathering place for artisans to exchange ideas and speak one’s mind. However, Starbucks today mainly contain small separate gatherings. Several tables consist of two person unit but a vast majority of the tables are only occupied by one sole person. People seek the “Starbucks Experience” because they want to be alone yet at the same time not to be alone. The paradox of social gatherings encourages the growth of numerous informal yet public spaces such as Starbucks. The image of coffee was vastly different from how we perceive coffee to be today. In the ancient days, coffee was considered a health hazard and a sin. But through Starbucks’s careful efforts, consumers now see coffee much differently. This shows that the foods and beverages we perceive as “health,” “unhealthy,” or “stimulating” depend on our culture rather than nutritional facts. Although most customers are aware that they are paying $4+ for a cup of milk with coffee, they still find themselves going to Starbucks because of the ways the store captivates them. Not only does Starbucks satisfy consumers’ taste palates, but also Starbucks provides a momentary escape from the mundane lives of modern day people. So even though consumers might be aware of what is at stake when they purchase a cup of coffee from Starbucks, they are still willing to pay in a moment of crisis when they seek escape.
Works Cited
Beeley, Brian W. “The Turkish Village Coffeehouse as a Social Institution,” Geographical Review, Vol. 60, No. 4, Oct., 1970: http://www.jstor.org/stable/213769 American Geographical Society
Clark, Taylor. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007
Gaudio, Rudolf P. “Coffeetalk: Starbucks and the Commercialization of Casual Conversation,” Language in Society, Vol 31, No 5. 2003: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4169298 Cambridge University Press
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1989.
Pamuk, Orhan. My Name is Red. Trans. Erdag M. Goknar. New York: Vintage International, 2002
V. The World's Most Desirable Sweet
Usually, children’s stories have lessons that teach kids to live morally through interesting, fantastical plots. The lesson of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory explores what makes children or adults either good or bad, depending on their vice or virtue. Willy Wonka represents one of these vices—unlimited candy and chocolate. Chocolate is a commodity that can either be a reward for one, or an over-indulgence for another. One day, Willy Wonka decides to open his factory to five lucky children and their parents. Wonka hides golden tickets beneath five wrappers of his famous chocolate bars to be sent to stores, worldwide. The finders of these tickets will allow them admittance and a tour of the great chocolate factory by Willy Wonka himself. Five children, the greedy Augustus Gloop, the spoiled Veruca Salt, the competitive gum-chomping Violet Beauregard, the chocolate-hating techie Mike Teavee, and finally the honest, kind, and true hero, Charlie Bucket, find the golden tickets. Upon entering the factory, these characters finally discover the identities of Willy Wonka’s new, mysterious workers who now make all the chocolate. After waves of espionage from competing chocolate companies whose spies stole Willy Wonka’s original recipes, Wonka quickly fires everyone and replaces them with villagers from a far, fictional land called Loompaland. Willy Wonka only trusts these workers, called the Oompa Loompas, to manage his chocolate, and even tests his newest products on them as if they were his laboratory animals. Roald Dahl, furthermore, uses the Oompa Loompas to fictionally portray the very realistic slaves working on plantations who cultivate the cocoa beans for the big chocolate companies of today.
While Charlie and the Chocolate Factory takes a more fanciful approach to tell the story of a big chocolate company and its exploits, the documentary, Chocolate Country, on the other hand, tells the story of the poor cocoa farmers who work in rural Dominican Republic for little to no wages. The thirty minute documentary primarily focuses on the Loma Guacanejo Cooperative’s efforts in the El Factor village to “secure better profits for farmers while protecting the local rainforest” (chocolatecountryfilm.com). Somewhere between a trade union and an entrepreneurial enterprise, the group has stirred hope in the rural community. The film follows several very quirky and spirited members of the village who are in charge of the different aspects of maintaining a cocoa bean plantation. The small group of men, women, and children whose lives revolve around cocoa teaches us how the precious plant goes from pod, to bean, to powder, and ultimately to a delicacy.
Constantly dealing with the global economic struggle centered on chocolate’s value, the villagers rely on the Loma Guacanejo Cooperative to get chocolate buyers to purchase their organic cocoa beans. However, the day-to-day struggle of supplying enough beans to the ever growing demand for chocolate troubles these farmers and leaves them poorer and poorer while the middle men and chocolate companies pocket all the profits. This offbeat yet empathetic documentary presents a very real story of chocolate farmers suffering from overseas competition.
Various sorts of media have been investigating how chocolate production relates to slavery and how the consumer might be contributing to the violation of fair trade. In the past hundred years, people have been publishing and producing newspaper articles, statistical reports, novels, and films in order to educate the consumer about this supposed long forgotten violation of basic human rights—slavery. In this paper, I will be comparing and analyzing what the language of a fictional story of chocolate’s history—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—does to a real representation of cocoa labor—Chocolate Country—and how both of these views shape chocolate’s perception in the consumer.
To put the effects chocolate’s portrayal has had on consumers, manufacturers, and humanitarians alike into perspective, I will begin by analyzing Roald Dahl’s satirical children’s novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In this book, a chocolate maker, Willy Wonka—an eccentric yet well-meaning role model for children—opens the largest and most revolutionary chocolate factory in the world for a tour to five lucky children. Wonka plans to finally reveal his profound inventions that make his world renowned chocolates—a waterfall that mixes up the chocolate, whipping cows with whips to make whipped cream, and trained squirrels which perfectly crack open walnut shells. These inventions, amongst many others, are all run by the mysterious Oompa Loompas. Dahl allegedly described these workers in an early, unreleased edition as being “African pygmies who work for a wage of cacao beans” (roalddahlfans.com). They pass their time in the factory by singing songs that resemble tribal chants and allow themselves to be the laboratory rats of Willy Wonka’s newest inventions. The Oompa-Loompas live in the factory and, therefore, seem as if they are forced into servitude. Roald Dahl symbolizes and thus reveals to the reader the similar—yet not so fantastical—African slaves who work on cocoa plantations to supply today’s big chocolate companies with beans. There are several scenes within the book which feature these Oompa-Loompas and their relationship to the factory in order to, perhaps, explore what extent people will go to for chocolate to be cultivated, produced, and bought all to please the consumer’s sweet tooth for the dessert.
The first time the chocolate factory’s workers are mentioned is when Charlie discusses Wonka’s factory with his grandfather, Joe. Charlie, like every other child, adores chocolate, despite his family’s inability to afford it. He listens with awe and disbelief to his grandfather’s stories about Willy Wonka’s factory when the town’s citizens still were the ones making the chocolate. This period, Grandpa Joe explains, ended when Wonka’s employees were fired and banned from the chocolate factory due to spies from competing chocolate companies stealing his beloved dessert recipes. Grandpa Joe leans closer to Charlie, almost insinuatingly, to reveal what he’s heard of the new workers’ appearances: “But most mysteriously of all, Charlie” he begins, “were the shadows in the windows of the factory. The people standing on the street outside could see small dark shadows moving about behind the frosted glass windows…The place is full of workers! But nobody’s gone in! The gates are locked! It’s crazy! Nobody ever comes out either!” (Dahl 17).
Here, we see a perfect, yet somewhat light-hearted example of the plantation slaves in Lowell J. Satre’s book titled Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business. On an expedition through Angolan cocoa slave routes, an English journalist, Henry Woodd Nevinson encountered “shackles that bound hands and legs to prevent escape [that were] hung from the lower limbs of trees; if needed, they could be recovered by later [slave] trading parties” (Satre 1). His report was intended for Harpers Monthly Magazine to reveal the slave trade in Portuguese West Africa in the early 1900s to the British public.
In Dahl’s case, his personal experiences during childhood inspired the fantastical world of Willy Wonka. Charlie and the Chocolate factory is not a mere fictional children’s book that is drawn from thin air. It is, in fact, a social satire criticizing the behemoth chocolate companies’ tactics of earning the most amount of profit by any means necessary. More specifically, when in school, Dahl saw two competing British candy firms, Rowntree and Cadbury, send so many spies—the basis of Wonka firing the town workers—to work in competitors' factories that their espionage became world renowned. This devious corporate practice served neatly as Dahl's premise to incorporate the Oompa Loompas as the replacement workers in the Wonka factory. Consequently, the Oompa Loompas reveal an unconstrained parody of chocolate company competition which has resulted in the exploitation of labor in places like Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso in Africa.
Dahl introduces the secluded workers who symbolize African slaves as being trapped behind “gates [that] are locked! Nobody ever comes out” (Dahl 17). According to The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) study, a reported 200,000 children are trafficked yearly in West and Central Africa. The slave trade spans across African countries including Cameroon, Nigeria, and Ghana. Some countries, such as Cote d'Ivoire and Mali, are either the suppliers or receivers of the children in the slave trade (Salah 3). More specifically, cocoa farms in Cote d'Ivoire are violating children's human rights in that they are involved in both child trafficking and hosting them as the site of forced labor (savethechildrencanada.ca). Dahl initially leaves the identity of Wonka’s workers unknown to further emphasize the similarities between Oompa Loompa and African slave: just as nobody in the world of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory knows what the workers look like, who they are, or if they even exist, so too very few people in the real world know that the blistering hands of an impoverished countryman once hand-picked the cocoa beans used to make the chocolates they enjoy to satisfy their craving for sweets.
Chocolate Country, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, deals with the global issue of labor in the cocoa farming business. In the first scene of the documentary, Hilario Rosario Quezoda begins by stating that his grandfather owned the portion of rainforest his village occupies today. Hilario’s “father cut cocoa and [his] grandfather cut too,” and now he cuts cocoa (Chocolate Country). While Hilario gives a brief background of his village and surroundings, the camera pans across the lush, green scenery of the Dominican Republic rainforest. There is no urban city in sight and poorly constructed homes are sparsely spread amongst the vastness of nature. The next scene follows one of Hilario’s daily duties: he is shown carefully cutting a cocoa bean pod from a tree and bringing it back to the village for curing. Unlike in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Dahl reveals the Oompa Loompas’ identity only after rousing suspicion in the reader, Chocolate Country, on the other hand, quickly shows the village’s common farmer. He is dressed in modest, haggard clothing which has, maybe, experienced his many years of hard work in the cocoa forest. Ruth Lopez describes the millennia-old process of cultivating the cocoa in her book, Chocolate: the Nature of Indulgence. This is the same procedure that Hilario and his fellow farmers use on their beans in the Dominican Republic. The tradition traces back to the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations in what is Mexico and Central America today. The workers used to follow a very strict process of making the chocolate:
“Pods from the trees with machetes…within a day or two after harvesting, the pods must be split so that the seeds, or beans, may be removed by hand along with the slippery pulp. The pod husks are often left in piles to collect rainwater and to create breeding grounds for potential pollinators, and the beans and pulp are prepared for fermentation. Exposure to the air transforms the color of the beans from purple to the deep brown we associate with chocolate today.” (Lopez 19).
Just as the Mesoamericans produced their chocolate, so too do the villagers of El Factor. In the scene following that of Hilario, Louisa Santos Suarez, an elderly citizen of the village, describes how her mother used to cultivate the cocoa in the same fashion. Chocolate, in this village, carries a notion of tradition, adopted from ancient civilizations and results in the feeling of perseverance. However, one significant difference between the chocolate farmers of today and those of thousands of years ago must be taken into consideration: the Mayans and Aztecs cultivated enough cocoa to sustain their villages with Xocolatl (a spicy, chocolate drink) (Coe, Coe 76). The people of the cooperative, however, must constantly serve to the ever growing demand of the big, international chocolate corporations which, in turn, supply the ever growing demand of consumers.
While Louisa reminisces on her past in the village, the camera follows the villagers perform the steps listed about to make their beloved chocolate. The men, women, children, and even elderly all contribute to the cocoa bean’s production. A close up of these workers’ hands mixing a bowl of scorching hot cocoa beans reveals the wear and tear of the fragile skin from years of cocoa production. The smiling faces and uplifted attitudes of these people, however, counter their impoverished and depleted state of living. Hilario describes his lifestyle as a “life that’s good and bad” (Chocolate Country) because despite the economic crisis El Factor is going through, chocolate manages to keep everyone uplifted by supplying vitamins to both the stomach and spirit. As each villager, no matter young or old, smiles to the camera, they reveal the few teeth they have.
After Louisa describes the traditions of making the cocoa powder, her daughter, Ludovina Silverio Saurez, a leader of the cooperative, is shown working tirelessly at the cocoa, using her archaic, stone mortar. Although she heads the cooperative, Ludovina, nonetheless, contributes her own part to create the desired end product. Her hair is decked out in huge plastic curlers, is dressed in simple yet graceful clothing, and wields a cell phone on her belt holster. This charismatic character perfectly portrays the average farmer in El Factor: despite being deprived of medical care, proper education for their children, water, and electricity, they still somehow manage to relax on their front porches, sip on their “quality cocoa from Hispaniola,” and enjoy the few delights life has given them. Carol Off describes a very similar standard of living thousands of miles away in the African country of Cote d'Ivoire in her book, Bitter Chocolate: the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive:
“The community’s livelihood comes from growing ‘the good of the gods,’ but this is a long way from paradise. None of the children here go to school, and there are no services—no electricity, no phones, no clinics or hospitals. The farmers eke out an existence here in the hills, in a land infested by volatile gunmen.” (Off 6).
Chocolate Country gives an uncensored look into the daily lives of cocoa bean harvesters who produce some of the world’s chocolate.
While Chocolate Country examines the different hardships and joys of cocoa labor via worker interview and conversation, Dahl’s book, on the other hand, creates a more nuanced, undefined description of the Oompa Loompas. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not, by any means, a documentary or piece of professional literature published to reveal worker conditions in a far away land. I will look at this children’s book, instead, as a social satire, filled with seemingly discreet implications of global issues. When the children enter the factory, they finally discover the strange Oompa Loompas. In the chapter titled Oompa Loompas, Willy Wonka explains how he found his new and most beloved workers. Wonka begins by telling the tour group of their mother country, Loompaland, a “terrible country” that is filled with “nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous bests in the entire world” (Dahl 69). Willy first encountered the Oompa Loompas in their tree-homes, built high off the ground to protect them from the dangerous Whangdoodles that could eat a bunch of them and still have room for more. “They were practically starving to death,” Wonka explains, “…The one food that they longed for more than any other was the cocoa bean. But they couldn’t get it. An Oompa Loompa was lucky if he found three or four cacao beans a year. But oh, how they craved them” (Dahl 70).
Willy Wonka quickly learns and takes advantage of his fact—he does, indeed, use tons of cocoa beans a week to provide enough chocolate for the world. So he instantly proposed that if all the Oompa Loompas go back to his factory as his workers, he would give them all the chocolate they wanted. So Willy Wonka “shipped them all over to [his factory], every man, woman and child in the Oompa Loompa tribe. It was easy smuggling them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely.” (Dahl 71). Quite obviously, Willy Wonka has successfully exploited the Oompa Loompas with a cocoa bean bribe. How can the Oompa Loompas reject this offer? The cocoa bean is their most valued commodity. Here we see what Robert Burleigh meant in his book, Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest, where he states that hundreds of thousands of Africans were kidnapped, shipped to the Americas, and forced to work as slaves in cocoa and other plantations” (Burleigh 15). Dahl directly quotes the bloody history of chocolate by describing how a fictional chocolate mogul, Willy Wonka, acquired all the help he needs by means of slavery to mass produce his highly demanded product.
As the group continues to the “Chocolate Room,” where a great big waterfall mixes the chocolate, the greedy and overly plump Augustus Gloop falls into the chocolate river. He is sucked up by the pipe which transfers the liquid chocolate into the fudge room. While all the children and their parents watch in disbelief, Willy Wonka “turn[s] around and click[s] his fingers sharply” (Dahl 76) to summon an Oompa Loompa from nowhere so he can lead Augustus’ mother to find her son. The Oompa Loompa appears and “bows and smiles” to Willy in agreement, as if he is his servant. Wonka has not only forced these foreign villagers into servitude, but also has abused their loyal service to him. The reader can thus see how Dahl has incorporated subtle yet significant criticisms of his contemporary chocolate companies’ exploits in his seemingly innocent book for children.
Both Roald Dahl and the director, Robin Blotnick, of Chocolate Country use their book and movie, respectively as means to educate the public of the questionable living standards in cocoa plantations in some parts of the world. However, they both do so in completely different ways. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s main purpose is to educate children of morals that are applicable to their everyday lives. For example, Dahl includes punishment as a theme to separate the good children, who are dutiful and respectful, from the bad children, who are spoiled and boorish. A bad child, Dahl implies in his text, must be reformed through whatever means necessary, even through the wild and sometimes violent punishments seen throughout the novel. Punishments are necessary to create moral imperatives within Dahl’s stories. Because of this happily-ever-after ending, the story is generally viewed as a parable for children, a typical Dahl treatment of adolescent misbehavior. However, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is far more. Dahl himself was obsessed with brilliantly capturing the ethos of the modern era. While the Oompa Loompas may seem like cute and cunning characters, they are actually meant to symbolize the African slaves working on cocoa bean plantations. Dahl utilizes a children’s book as a foundation to reveal the terrors behind the sweet confections we indulge in today.
Indeed, Chocolate Country functions identically to relay the same message to the public. However, it does so in a more outright, uncensored fashion. The director and his film crew interview the various villagers of El Factor to get a firsthand account of the terrible working conditions. The film’s cinematography allows the viewer to get a real and unbiased sense of the day-to-day struggles people encounter, resulting from today’s economic crisis and blood-thirsty competition amongst the chocolate corporations. Any viewer can relate with this movie because of the film’s character diversity: every man, woman, and child give their lives to produce and cultivate the cocoa so that the viewer can enjoy their Hershey’s Kisses while watching the film.
Chocolate, although iconic, beloved, and used in a many different ways to satisfy human desire for the sweet, is laced with blood. Behind the sweet, chocolate-covered stories of the confectioners are gruesome reports of slavery and child-labor. Since its roots in Middle and South America over three hundred years ago, chocolate has undergone many different shifts of its representation in multiple societies. The cocoa bean was once was an ingredient used mainly for drinking. The Mayan and Aztec civilizations prized the beans and even used them as “money as well as foodstuffs” (Coe, Coe 20). But the beans quickly acquired huge importance in the social, religious, medical, economic, and, of course, gastronomical sectors (16).
Because cocoa beans are one of the world’s most desirable and profiting items, people have gone out of their way to mass produce the product. However, everyone likes to think that they are aware of the messages large corporations are trying to feed them, but it is jaw-dropping to realize to what extent, exactly, companies are willing to go to profit from chocolate. This delicious sweet often appears in the hands of consumers, adorned in wrappers of gold and silver; however, it is hard to imagine that the blistering hands of an impoverished countryman once hand-picked the cocoa beans used to make the Hershey’s Kiss that lies in your hands. Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Chocolate Country, however, function to create their own historical accounts of chocolate to reveal the big companies’ true trades via children’s novel and documentary. The two forms of media have created new images for chocolate and it is left to the consumer’s discretion to decide whether or not he or she will keep contributing to the global issue of slavery.
Works Cited
“Chocolate Country.” Dir. Robin Blotnick. Perf. Hilario Rosario Quezoda, Louisa Santos Suarez, Ludovina Silverio Saurez. Namshub Films, 2007. Film.
Burleigh, Robert. Chocolate. Harry N Abrams Inc, 2002. 15. Print.
Chocolate Country Films. “Chocolate Country: a Film from Namshub Films.” May 3, 2010. Website.
Coe, Sophie, and Michael Coe. The true history of chocolate. Thames & Hudson, 2007. 20, 76. Print.
Dahl, Roald, and Quentin Blake. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Puffin, 2007. 17, 69, 70-71, 76. Print.
López, Ruth. Chocolate. Harry N Abrams Inc, 2002. 19. Print.
Off, Carol. Bitter chocolate. New Press, The, 2008. 6. Print.
Roald Dahl Fans. “Charlie and the Political-Correctness Factory." 3 May, 2010. Website. < http://www.roalddahlfans.com/articles/char.php>
Salah, Rima. “Child Trafficking in West and Central Africa: an Overview.” (Paper presented at the Pan African Conference on Human Trafficking). 3. February 2001.
Satre, Lowell, and Association Libraries. Choice. Ohio Univ Pr, 2006. 1. Print.
Save the Children Canada. "Children of the Border-Child Trafficking in West Africa'” section. 3 May 2010. Website.
VI. Epilogue: A Typical Day of Sally the Secretary, Revised
Sally wakes up to her alarm on a typical Monday morning. But not a typical Monday morning, because Sally has reformed! Over the weekend she read an incredibly long academic article on the food industry and all of its hidden impacts on our everyday lives, and has decided that she will take control of her own life and be more aware. Alert and energized, Sally showers, dresses, brushes her teeth, and twenty minutes later emerges into the kitchen, freshly scrubbed and ready for the day.
There are still a slew of colorful labels in her pantry, but they no longer baffle her. “No trans fat” – but there’s still other kinds of fat, she thinks to herself. “All natural” – haha, yeah right! “Whole grain” – that seems okay... but when Sally examines the ingredients more carefully, she sees that high fructose corn syrup is one of the main components. I know what you’re up to, she thinks, and decides that she will no longer be fooled; she will go out later in the day and buy some better, truly healthy cereal, and eat that instead. For the time being she has some more Bare Naked Granola Cereal because she doesn’t have time to shop before work. When she leaves she does not feel healthy, she feels a little upset that she just had some healthy-but-not-really corporate food, but she tells herself that she will reform from now on.
Sally arrives at work. Work for Sally is a mundane task: there is absolutely no motivation with which to keep her alert and excited. Her mind wanders as she stares at her computer screen, and after two hours or so, her stomach starts growling. Instinctively, she puts down her papers and starts heading towards the vending machine – and checks herself. No snacks, she tells herself. No chips. There’s probably enough salt, fat, and sugar in all of them to indirectly kill a rat. She sits back down at her desk, upset and unsettled. Her stomach is still hungry, and silly thoughts begin flitting through her head such as, Well, the rats wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t turned them back on healthy food… as long as I keep eating the junk food I should be fine. This is ridiculous, because Sally wants to be thin. She also recalls reading that the advocacy of slimness and beauty is only another aspect of culture, but the thought of being fat upsets her. Her friends haven’t read this article; what would they think of her if she suddenly starting pigging out and putting on pounds?
One of her coworkers got Doritos. Sally can hear the crunching all the way from her desk. She wants to get up, shake the man, and tell him that salt, fat, and sugar just makes him want to eat more, but instead she just sits there. Her stomach is still growling. Snacking may be a part of this overly fast paced, modern lifestyle, Sally realizes, but since she is already living such a fast paced lifestyle, if she doesn’t snack – isn’t that worse? She is ignoring the cries of her belly for food. Sally does not end up getting the Doritos, but by the time she leaves for lunch break, she is very cranky.
Normally, Sally would go to the Starbucks downstairs for a cup of coffee, but she has resolved to be food smart. She must fight the temptation to succumb to Starbucks, which is infiltrating her town. She walks around the block trying to find something different, and settles at a bohemian looking local café. Inside, she orders her usual latte (she had to correct herself from a “tall” to a “small”) and sits down. However, this café takes twice as long as Starbucks to make her usual drink, and because of the walk to get here, Sally only has 20 minutes left to “enjoy” her break. In addition, when she looked at her receipt and realized that the coffee here cost her two dollars extra. Sally can adjust to the different music and the group of people intently discussing Obama’s latest health care reform, but this will drive her monthly budget up! Sally leaves, troubled and unhappy.
After work ends, Sally heads to a supermarket to try and purchase some better cereal. She soon realizes her mistake: there is no cereal that comes unpackaged with labels and ambiguous claims. Just looking at the ingredients, she can’t even find a cereal that’s devoid of high fructose corn syrup. Sally realizes that she may have to go to a special grocery store like Trader Joe’s to even begin finding any sort of marginally “better” cereal. Either that, or she should resort to less processed foods such as oatmeal or brown rice. Either way, it is sure to be a pain to find and possibly more expensive. Sally sighs as she starts heading back home. This was harder than she thought: she will just have to try again tomorrow. On the way back she thinks about all the chocolate in the sweets aisle and all the unknown labor that lay behind the cocoa beans, and it strikes her that since the chocolate is there already, the labor is already said and done – whether or not she buys the chocolate at this point does not make a difference.
What Sally has realized is that society has developed around this culture of eating and the so-called "obesity epidemic." What she regarded as a simple "problem" at first is not so simple as she thinks. She flashes back to a moment in time from years ago, back when she was still in college and lived a carefree life free of mundane worries. Back then they had a system of meal points, Sally recalls, and the lowest amount of meal points was still more than anyone could ever use - or she could ever use, at any rate. The food was overpriced and untasty: old dried meat, fried chicken that tasted more like fried than chicken, hamburgers with wilted lettuce and one slab of god-knows-what in the middle... There were many delicious restaurants right around the corner, but Sally never went to them, not even once, because they did not accept meal points. With a slightly bitter taste in her mouth, Sally realized that not only was she paying more for unpalatable food, she was being forced to keep doing so in order to avoid spending more money than she already had. The system had set her up.
There are many people just like Sally in the world. I am a Sally. You are a Sally. Perhaps your mom is also a Sally. What all of the Sallys of the world need to realize is that we have developed an intrinsic relationship with the corporations: we eat them, they eat us. And somehow the vicious cycle keeps going until we are tied so far we cannot get out.
Take a moment to reflect on your life. How many people you know are Sallys? Quite a few, huh. Let's take it one step further: How many are Sallys from the beginning of this essay and how many are Sallys from the end of this essay?
That's right - there are many Sallys in the world, but more of them are like the Sallys from the start: clueless, unthinking, being used without even realizing it. If more people educated themselves to the point of Sally in the end, perhaps all the Reformed Sallys of the world can get together and begin figuring out how to disentangle this convoluted symbiosis, one knot at a time.
Don't lose hope. Discover the Sallys around you, and pull them out of the cave of shadows, one at a time!
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