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Figure 1: Digital photo manipulation showing the strangeness of treating humans like lab mice.

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Tumblr Response #8

MIT 3932F

John Reed

Ryan Deveau

250748518

December 8th, 2017

Rat-Mart: The Science of Shopping

A company can act in particularly inhumane and unethical ways in the name of maximizing profits so long as it can properly dehumanize the subjects it works upon. Through adopting the mindset of the company, individuals within it no longer see other people as humans but instead test subjects and a means to gather vital data. The powerful reach of corporate capitalism motivates human beings to treat other humans as if they were lab mice. This report will show that the abuse of customers is similar to the abuse of lab animals for science.

Companies seek to reduce the relationship between human beings and their surroundings in order to maximize profits. Every choice a company takes to formulate a space or location is designed by its nature to alter and document the choices of the consumer. By isolating the person from their location they become a subject through which the slightest reaction or display of choice is held onto and documented. Karl Marx argues that the methods through which Capitalism alienates people from their surroundings and work is a form of social domination that operates through impersonal structural imperatives and constraints. (Ritzer 59) The key to understanding how capitalists benefit from the alienation of human beings from everything else is looking at the impersonal structures such as a supermarket. Everything in the supermarket no matter how small the detail is examined and measured in order to see the highest possible profit. The more vulnerable a place is towards people the better it is to exploit the land not for the sake of human needs but of profit. Take for example the situation Campbell remarks upon in the unethical case of the pre-dominantly poor and black South Side Chicago Altgeld Gardens housing community saying that it is because certain areas are not as easily independent and welcoming for humans that global corporations can exploit them for profit like in Altgeld Gardens. (Campbell 2012) Companies must keep people within spaces alienated and vulnerable in order to enable them for exploitation. If people in a community have no control over a location like a neighbourhood or a supermarket then they are easier to manipulate by those who can control the surroundings. Through manipulation of space, capitalism benefits through the ability to instruct and control the people within that location and make them submit to the structure.

If companies benefit from the domination of space through impersonal structures, then it is the information of the consumer that serves the alienation of space in the supermarket as the resource to be exploited. Through alienating the consumer from spaces and making them walk through and around space that is designed for the company not for them they can be monitored. Supermarkets, by observing through cameras, placing products commonly purchased closer together and altering the layout of the store to better react with neurology prove how companies use the layout of a supermarket as a lab to gather data on their customers. (Forscheninjuelich 2014) Once the consumer has been disconnected from the supermarket physically, then it becomes a place where companies can experiment on what habits the consumer uses to buy products. No step is ignored if through further industrializing it there can be an increase in profit. The alienation from space that supermarkets impose exists in order to further the needs of companies in order to influence and understand the needs of a consumer on a level of discomfort and vulnerability that is highly valuable to companies. The point of the alienation of space is to collect data of how consumers behave in what Ritzer describes as the active, animal functions that remain once people are pushed through impersonal structures. (Ritzer 54) When a consumer shows a company their habits at such a deep, instinctual level they are being exploited for the profit of a company. The discomfort people feel in a controlled space like a supermarket serves to alienate them only for the benefit of profit. Humans are made into test subjects through alienation that allows the supermarket to act as a laboratory observing human behaviour in consumer space.

The turning of human beings into lab-animals for the benefit of a company is a form of abuse. Given how the status of lab animals is so low to begin with the act of experimenting on humans without their knowledge is of equal measure to taking an animal and testing upon it. The same ethical question of abuse on unknowing creatures applies because both cases are made unaware that they are test subjects. Singer argues that the suffering of animals is morally wrong with or without human signs of pain being present and while they cannot be held to the same standard they should at least be understood that they are suffering. (Singer 11) Companies are committing morally wrong activities when they are putting humans in the same situations as lab mice or other test animals. Given that these tests are already involuntary and potentially harmful to the animals it is morally wrong to then put humans in the same space. Even if one does not believe in animal rights but only human rights it would be self-contradicting to say it is alright to abuse a person like an animal. The creative portion of this assignment is a piece of digital art making light of how humans have been reduced by the corporate mindset into laboratory mice through monitoring of supermarkets. (Figure 1) The purpose of the image is to strike the viewer with the realization that humans treated like mice is surreal and strange. Through making the situation absurd, the message about companies spying and experimenting on people unable to notice is unethical and abusive. This abuse can then also be transferred into an empathetic understanding of how mice feel performing under the same abuse for human benefit.

To conclude, the practice of companies using spaces like the supermarket to experiment for data on consumer habits is an act of abuse. Not only does it involve spying on people but it undermines their basic human rights. If the act of treating humans as if they are simply a means of gaining info is immoral than that also helps speak to how the act is abusive towards test animals.

Works Cited

Campbell, Margaret. “Environmental Justice.” Beautiful Trouble, Beautiful Trouble, 22 May 2012, beautifultrouble.org/theory/environmental-justice/.

Forscheninjuelich. “Hidden Connections - Data Analysis in Brain and Supermarket.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 July 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRzwEKAWlYM.

Ritzer, George, and Jeffrey Stepnisky. Modern sociological theory. SAGE Publications, 2017.

Singer, Peter. "All animals are equal." (1989).

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Figure 1: Representation of what an ad transparent about labour would look like.  Created by: Ryan Deveau

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Tumblr Response #5

MIT 3932F

John Reed

Ryan Deveau

250748518

December 8th, 2017

I Just Look at the Pictures: Educating on Speciesism Tumblr Response #5

The majority of people who consume meat products are not familiar with the methods of which it is produced and given to them. For the sake of convenience people are not shown just how they are given food from all around the world so quickly. Animals have become the invisible victims through which industries provide and make profit by exploitation of non-humans without ever engaging the people who that suffering is performed to service. But what if they could? If there was some way to help people engage with the labour that brings them the food they eat, this report will demonstrate what it will look like.

Before looking at methods to solve the problem of commodity fetishism and food production there is another issue that must be addressed and that is the issue of representation. To argue for change and social justice one cannot try to put down or belittle one group in favour of the other. If equality is the goal of a socially conscious person then the mindset of that person cannot contradict itself in favour of one group over another. Any attempts to spark resistance towards abusive systems must not in themselves promote the abuse of others. This much is mentioned in the work by Breeze Harper who discusses the actress Brigitte Bardot who advocated animal rights by critiquing the French Muslim meat eaters and leaving white French omnivores “exempt“ from her complaints. (Harper 5)

The act of making other groups more responsible or considered more likely to abuse individuals hurts the overall cause as it allows blame to be shifted away to others. Instead of focusing on the problems of a system that encourages abuse, if the communities or individuals are looked at then the overall message suffers. People will be able to worry less about their own potential for abuse if they heap the blame solely upon a group they do not belong to. Equality, as stated by Singer is tied together by separate groups no matter how much they may differ in issues remarking how it would be equally absurd for a man to have the right to an abortion as a dog the right to vote despite all being considered equal. (Singer 2) The issue is more complex than simply saying everyone should be equal. However what Singer and Harper argue and what will help the application of these advertisements is equal consideration for all individuals. If the purpose of this advertisement is to help educate people about equality it must not abuse other groups. In avoiding the abuse of other groups, the advertisement can allow itself a more concise, clear message. In being as clear as possible a greater amount of transparency will be allowed for the consumer to see exactly what abuse the product causes and focus on the system and not other groups. The capitalist system allows a great deal of abuses in order to maximize profits and must seek to hide these abuses otherwise an informed consumer will protest them. Workers in the capitalist society are made to feel a distance or “alienation” from the methods through which products are made with no connection or understand of them beyond the need to earn money and eat. (Ritzer 54) The purpose of the ad itself should be to bridge this gap, to bring the product back to it’s production. In doing so, the revelation of seeing just how passionless and industrialized labour has become will prove to the consumer that their purchases are abusive. The sticker on the package of meat serves as an example of how this is done where the process of force-breeding cattle for human consumption is made to be seen directly on the product thus reconnecting the consumer, the product, and the labour that created it. (Figure 1) Through seeing the image of what the capitalist process does to the animals that made it the consumer is brought back to labour and reminded that it should not be done for profit and through abuse. The sticker showing how the product is made removes the alienating divide that products attempt to create with their labour and removes the pleasant mask to show how the labour is truly performed.

Once the consumer has been introduced to the labour systems that produced the food, there must be more than just a realization that the labour is abusive towards animals. There can be a great amount of discussion and protest about the abusive practices of capitalism that allows the consumer to take action. Carol Adams mentions how “engaged theory” should work to make the act of resisting abusive social systems an empowering process. (Adams 2) The advertisement should serve to inform the consumer and provide them with the ability to pursue and engage with the problems they would have with the product. Once the abuses are shown to the consumer they must be also given the power to protest, otherwise the product will be unpleasant but not really have any empowerment for active change. The text below written by the hypothetical company in the advertisement on the ground beef package demonstrates how the advertisement could seek to not only engage but to empower the consumer rather than simply making them feel guilty by offering them a phone line that could link them to people with more information on the abusive practices in the picture. (Figure 1) Considering that the ALF is so dedicated to the cause of animal rights, making it mandatory to have their contact information (The one in the image is fake) on a package of meat might in one way to allow connection with those offended by the practices and those who can empower them to change things. It would also allow for people to understand animal rights not in terms of militant activism but rather information and corporate transparency.

In conclusion, it is easy to put an advertisement on a package of food that shows shocking images that reveal the abusive practices of capitalist society. What must be done is create advertisements that do not put down or demean other groups in favour of their message. In avoiding shock and demeaning other groups the ads can focus on empowering and helping consumers come to understand how they can help rather than scaring them away.

Works Cited

Adams, Carol J. The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2015.

Harper, A. "Breeze (2011). Connections: Speciesism, racism and whiteness as the norm." Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice: 72-78.

Ritzer, George, and Jeffrey Stepnisky. Modern sociological theory. SAGE Publications, 2017.

Singer, Peter. "All animals are equal." (1989).

Figure 1: A representation of what putting awareness campaigns on meat products might look like.

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Referenced image for Posting #3 

Michelob Brewing.Co

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MIT 3932F Posting Response #3

MIT 3932F

John Reed

Ryan Deveau

250748518

October 30, 2017

A Beer for the Lonely: Shock Top Packaging

Shock Top Belgian White beer was advertised using an anthropomorphized orange on the package to have conversations with strangers. The aspect of the commercials that set it apart from most talking mascots was the framing of the human actors as regular people pretending to be surprised they are being spoken to by a beer-tap or bill board. This report will demonstrate how Shock Top’s packaging is commodity fetishism that creates relationships with consumers utterly divorced from the labour that created them.

It is very important in the marketing of food products to appear as natural and fresh as possible in order for the consumer to make them forget the industrial nature of the its creation. If a product is to be sold, it must not remind the consumer it was created in a brewery by wage labourers because it is not pleasant to know. A brewery or a factory does not give the consumer an image of farmers and their fields, but instead of wage workers doing the bare minimum to get paid. To prevent this association, Shock Top features a beer package with a picture of a fully-grown field of wheat under a blue sky on both the package and the bottles. (MichelobBrewing.co) In order to make a product not resemble the process that created it every aspect of breweries, factories, and labour is removed. Only the product and its parts are allowed to be on display for the consumer who wants to know they are getting something fresh and natural. The purpose of the packaging labels is to not remind the person drinking how the beer was created, where the glass to make the bottle came from, or how the ingredients were obtained. The natural and healthy look of the packaging is described by Charlene Elliot as doing nothing to unsettle even the most timid consumer, and that when advertisers promote something as healthy it is straightforward and confident in its presentation. (Elliot, 192) The images on the Shock Top beer exist to offer the idea that nothing about its creation was industrial or unhealthy in any way. There is an effort to remove any imagery or ties to the beer that might intimidate or make the consumer uncomfortable. The purpose of having such packaging is to maximize comfort in the consumer while diminishing as much discomfort as possible in order to to create a personality that is utterly positive and affirming.

The concept of advertising having a personality and voice is particularly important to the understanding of why Shock Top is so problematic with its branding. In regards to labels, using an anthropomorphized food item and showing pictures of farms and fields are sadly not anything new or different. What Shock Top does so differently is how it goes about getting its marketing campaign directly to the consumer while they are already in the supermarket. Charlene Elliot mentions how most mass-marketing advertisements despite their mass viewership are tuned-out by the consumer and most advertising power comes from the moments in the supermarket where packaging decides who buys what product sixty percent of the time. (Elliot, 182) Mass marketing has become so ubiquitous that people have begun to tune out all the endless signs and images because they are so common. Elliot argues that it is the packaging that does the work for the most part in not reminding people the product exists, but rather to buy it with confidence and comfort. The packaging is not simply a container, it is an important part for engaging the consumer and making them feel at ease when they part with their money. Packaging has managed to overtake ads in the ability to connect with the consumer on an emotional level. Ads serve to remind the consumer of products, packaging is what that same consumer holds in their hands to comfort them when they buy what is inside. The most striking example of this is the Shock Top commercial that features a voice actor speaking over an actual package of beer making it talk to the consumer and trying to form an emotional bond with them ending with the tag-line: “Let it speak for itself” indicating the package now has the ability to connect with consumers on its own. (KMOCIOfficial, 00:01:35) The commercial shows how packaging engages the consumer in the store and tried to make them feel comfortable. The packaging is making an attempt to communicate with the consumer and establish a relationship that makes them trust the product enough to purchase it. The packaging for Shock Top has taken the step that Elliot speaks of and has shown a possibility for packaging to overtake advertisements in the way it connects with consumers.

To solidify this connection and cause the consumer to forget about the process of labour entirely is the anthropomorphized orange wedge mascot. The mascot is the character that speaks in the commercials and has human features such as a mouth and a nose. The character has a pair of sunglasses and a mohawk made out of wheat in the place of hair giving him an overall cool persona with the orange slice forming a face. (MichelobBrewing.co) The purpose of the Shock Top mascot is to put both an image of a face and a metaphorical face on the beer itself. The beer does not actually speak for itself, it is just beer. By making the character speak as if the beer is talking, the customer does not identify with the people who made the beer only with the beer itself. Through the mascot, the labour and manufacturing is obscured to the consumer who only comes to recognize Shock Top as the beer that talks to them. There is no connection in the consumers mind towards labour because that connection was severed. What the mascot represents fills in on a literal level when Ritzer said the products we make take on a “life of their own, separate from any human needs or decisions.”  (Ritzer, 58) The orange wedge in Shock Top has been framed to literally take on a life of his own and communicate with the consumer. The point is not to focus on labour, to ignore the workers who serve capitalism to produce the beer and embrace the charming image presented. Workers are alienated by their labour so much the talking beer does not even mention the ones who created it but exist to make the consumer forget that it is a manufactured consumer item meant to make money.

In conclusion the Shock Top package is an experiment in the ability of packaging to create within the consumer a feeling of comfort that causes them to ignore the labour process that allowed that product to exist in the first place. The face presented by the package and how it is intended to make people think the beer speaks enforces the idea that the only important thing is the relationship between a consumer and their product. The Shock Top package could be a very frightening glimpse into the future of how packaging and products seek to build a relationship with the consumer in order to make them forget it is a product for capitalist gain.

Bibliography

Elliott, Charlene. "Consuming the other: Packaged representations of foreignness in President's choice." Edible ideologies: Representing food and meaning (2008): 179-197.

KMOCIOfficial. “KMOCI - Shock Top Commercial: A Talking 6-Pack.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Feb. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_A8hgZK5c.

MichelobBrewing.co (2015) https://www.beverlyhillsliquorandwine.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image

/650x650/29783ce2d3850b4804346f1a1e9bc0c9/s/h/shock-top-belgian-white-ale-6-pack- bottle.jpg, 31 Oct. 2017.

Ritzer, George. Classical sociological theory. McGrawHill Publications, 2017.

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Tumblr Posting Response #2

MIT 3932F

John Reed

Ryan Deveau

250748518

October 12, 2017

Posting Response #2: Darwin’s Nightmare

The self-regulating market bring nations wealth through specialized trade. One nation specializes in producing one thing, the other nation trades with something else and both grow stronger as a result. However this idea that the global market despite it’s faults is an overall positive runs counter to John Bellamy Foster’s law: “Nature knows best”. The movie Darwin’s Nightmare provides examples of how human beings have let the market become nature and decide what is best for dictating their way of life.

The nature of capitalsim is to create an idea that everything that can be consumed is a positive step. Despite the potential negative drawbacks, overall the local community is expected to become stronger as a result of the market. Dimond, the factory manager in the film states that despite not being natural to the ecosystem the jobs the Nile perche provides is good for the whole country. (Darwin’s Nightmare, 00:13:21) The thinking that Dimond shows is in line with the idea that any bad stuff the market causes will be worth it. To focus on only the positive like Dimond is doing falls in line with the sister law Foster states: The self-regulatory market knows best. (Foster 120) Letting nature take a lesser stake than the market means that humans believe the damage done to the local ecology is just fine so long as the nation as a whole grows. All the jobs that have come to the region “depend entirely on Nile perche fish” as Dimond puts it further stating that the most important system in Lake Victoria is the system that serves the market. (Darwin’s Nightmare, 00:13:30) The production of fish has overtaken all other natural systems in the area in order to ensure complete dependency and service to the market that runs their lives. The system of nature is not as important to Lake Victoria as the system of the market.

The abandonment of natural systems however comes with it’s own issues. As seen in the film when the natural ecosystem is disrupted the market creates new ecosystems and often these systems are not designed to help anyone other than profit. Foster speaks of the market’s ecosystem as being unlike nature directed to only to maximize profit and it has no interest in anything else unlike nature which gravitates towards stability. (Foster 124) The market system occurring in Lake Victoria does not care about the development of the life-styles for people in areas it effects. The ideal it creates that the Market knows best as it will produce the most happiness in the end is not similar to actual natural selection because the subjects are not meant to thrive in the market system. In the film, the relatively stable nations are being flared up by violence due to weapons being smuggled into the country on airplanes at a run-down airport coming from Europe. (Darwin’s Nightmare, 1:35:12) Unlike natural systems which produce the best offspring for certain environments the market system disrupts these environments for the sake of lining profits. As Foster states life under capitalism is not about food being the natural need of survival but instead a means to gain profits. (Foster 122) What better example is there than the ecological damage done by the introduction of the Nile Perch? Where once any poor person could go down and fish for food now it only has fish too large to get alone or on a small boat. The market took the natural purpose of food to feed humans and remade the cycle to serve only profit.

The cyclical market life that now dictates lifestyle around Lake Victoria is a problem on a Darwinian level in that nobody may advance through it. Despite the economic benefits human beings have abandoned their natural ecological systems in favour of ones that only work to serve profit. Foster states that nature itself is a cycle but capitalist societies ignore the ecological laws they work on when deciding to maximize profit. (Foster 121-122) The waste that once served to recycle in the natural cycle instead becomes a pollutant that is not reinstated into the ecosystem but dumped somewhere else. There is no drive in the capitalist system to continue the healthy natural cycle and the ecosystem is left to deteriorate. The film scene of the woman with one eye is harvesting fish heads for little pay and she states that the work causes infections and disease to many of the workers and they are told to keep quiet about it. (Darwin’s Nightmare, 1:06:40) The local ecosystem slowly deteriorates and the people within the capitalist system are unable to progress any further. Once the local ecosystem is destroyed which the capitalist system slowly does there will be nowhere else to turn. As Foster states the capitalist system creates these wasteful effects with no concern of what becomes of them once they no longer serve profit and destroy the natural cycles. (Foster, 122) The things people seek to sustain themselves no longer work to serve them but the profits of companies. Natural systems of food gathering become dangerous cycles of profit generation that prevent progress for those working in it. What capitalist markets offer make the people entirely dependent upon them just like Dimond stated only there is no way forward and no way out.

The name of the film Darwin’s Nightmare is very appropriate when looking at it through the lens of Foster’s laws. Unlike the natural cycle of evolution the capitalist market does not allow the ecosystem to regenerate itself nor does it allow the humans within it to progress and get stronger but rather are kept in place to stay the same.

Bibliography

Foster, John Bellamy. The vulnerable planet: A short economic history of the environment. NYU Press, 1999.

Darwin’s Nightmare. Sauper, Hubert. Hubert Sauper et al, 2004.