TOW #28 Food Inc. Documentary

   Beginning with the rise of the fast food restaurant in the 1950's, the way we produce and market food has changed dramatically in the past half-century. Food Inc. is a documentary directed by Robert Kenner about the food industry of the United States. The film, targeted at the general American consumer public, presents a look at the story behind the products that sit on our supermarket shelves. It reveals the methods that are used by the big food corporations and the adverse affects these often have on public and environmental health, including how the companies treat their workers and the animals, as well as the increasingly mechanized and biologically engineered ways of raising and processing animals and plants.
   The main purpose of the documentary is to inform consumers of the unpublicized ways that their food is produced and to encourage them to take make choices to prompt food companies to make safer and healthier decisions. Throughout the documentary, the giant food corporations are characterized as powerful, profit-hungry, bullies. As stories are told during the film, the actions of the corporations are described in plain white font that appears on the screen over simple background music. This makes the corporations seem like giant, faceless, impersonal organizations, and makes their actions seem more dramatic by presenting them in an understated way. Often throughout the film the phrase "[This corporation] declined to be interviewed for this film," appeared after the discussion of questionable methods and practices. The repetition of this statement emphasizes how the corporations are trying to keep information from the public and makes them look like the guilty ones. The power of the corporations is further demonstrated by the images of government officials influential in the food production are such as head of the FDA, who are then shown to have been lobbyists for or in other ways connected to the food companies themselves.
   This characterization of the giant food corporations is contrasted with the presentation of regular people who reflect the ideals of traditional farmers and the average consumer. During the film, a number of farmers and growers are interviewed, many of whom resist the practices that have become standard in the larger corporations. They are filmed on their own land, in their own barns or houses, talking to the camera in between nature shots, contrasting starkly to the footage of the machinery and labs of the corporations. The documentary also focuses on a woman whose son died from food poisoning, using the story to get the audience motivated to take action because of the threat current production methods potentially poses to their own families. The documentary begins with a lot of shots of grocery stores and their aisles of products, connecting the information the audience is about to receive to their daily life, and it ends with the insistence that consumers have the power to make choices about what they eat and buy, encouraging the audience to use its power to influence the corporations and change the system.

TOW #27: TOW Reflection

   Looking at my first and last TOWs and the progression in between, one thing that stands out to me is the change in structure and organization of content (also the length, but I'll get to that later).  My TOWs for the first half of the year were also written in single paragraphs, but by the time I got to marking period three I started experimenting with organization and multiple paragraph structures. My first TOWs follow more closely the instructions and steps listed on our original assignment sheet for giving a little summary, identifying the author and audience etc. while my more recent TOWs are written more freely, more like a mini analysis essay that identifies the purpose and analyzes the piece in the way that it applies to this purpose, while including anything I thought that was worth noting. My later TOWs also presented more of a cohesive thesis.
   After reading through many of my TOWs from over the course of the year, I noticed that there was a development of my understanding of how argument works, and its complexity. With most of my TOWs I was able to pretty clearly identify the purpose of the piece I was analyzing, but my earlier TOWs focused on a much more simple, easily stated purpose while in my later TOWs I tended to delve into the complexities of the purpose that interacted more with the context and the topic. Similarly, my understanding of how the author built his/her argument developed to be more complex. Much of my analysis in the beginning of the year is devoted to explaining the appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, because these are the patterns I knew how to recognize. Over the course of the year I expanded my knowledge of and ability to recognize how different devices and strategies are used by authors, and I also began to move away from the idea of specifically labeled "devices" and analysed the ways I saw the authors developing their arguments based on the topic, their audience, the context and other relevant aspects. I definitely noticed the influence of the concepts we studied in class when I began seeing how arguments were based on certain assumptions and used other arguments to prove their own (Inductive/Deductive reasoning and Toulmin Model!).
   Despite all this development, I have to say that I honestly think some of my earlier TOWs were of better quality. My more recent ones tend to be more rambling; some of them got pretty long, and they were less thought out before I started writing them. I think over the course of the year my ability to recognize and understand how arguments are put together improved, but the amount of effort I put into each individual TOW declined.
   Overall though, I'm pretty happy with the progress I've noticed in my understanding and my ability to apply new ideas to my writing. The TOWs were good practice and I am pleasantly surprised at the visible indication of how much I have actually learned this year!

TOW #26 "Letting Citizens Decide"

 

North Carolina's 4th Congressional District

 "Gerrymandering" is a word of which I was unfamiliar until now, but I have seen maps of the crazy ways congressional districts are laid out in the United States and heard of the ways that these districts are drawn in order to maximize votes for certain parties. In an article in the May 4 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Congressman Alan Lowenthal from California discusses the political manipulation involved in drawing congressional districts and promotes his proposed legislation called the "Let the People Draw the Lines Act". He does this by explaining the issue of gerrymandering and primarily appealing to the public's desire for elimination of political manipulation. 

   Lowenthal starts off his article by comparing the drawing of congressional districts to an unfairly run baseball game. He writes "Can you imagine a baseball game where... the rules are not just set by the home team, but that the home team players are also the umpires[?] This is what is happening in nearly every state in the nation when it comes to drawing congressional district maps," (Lowenthal par. 1). With this analogy Lowenthal attempts to make a connection to his general audience right away, by attempting to explain the unfairness of this issue in terms that a person not associated with politics is more likely to understand. However, I think the analogy serves less to clearly explain the complicated process of drawing congressional districts and more to get the audience to react to the issue by linking it to something that many Americans get emotionally invested in: namely, sports. This intro helps to prime the audiences emotions to react with indignation towards the unfair aspects of the issue discussed in the article.

   Through the body of the article, Lowenthal gives examples of who draws the districts now and how, citing the illogical shape of North Carolina's Fourth District (pictured above). He then explains the bill he proposed which would create standards for drawing the districts and allow committees of citizens to be in charge. Throughout these explanations, the article is infused with diction that appeals directly to the citizens ideas of their rights and freedoms to be involved in the government. For example, words like "control", "unfair", "undemocratic", and "electoral advantage" inspire resentment towards the current political practice and phrases such as "transparent, accountable, and democratic", "rebuild people's trust", and "fair and equal voice" help to encourage support in the audience for this legislation that the author believes will give them greater influence on the way the government is run. 

   I was left wondering at the end of this article why a California congressman would put this in a Philadelphia newspaper. It was personalized with the line "redistricting in most states, including Pennsylvania" but the rest of the article was about the country as a whole. This makes me wonder if this congressman is attempting to promote this legislation across the country and is submitting articles to cities in multiple states. The article appeals to Americans as a wider community who, as Lowenthal writes, "deserve true representation".