well, i don't see the passion for take out food. i think i remember eating a burger from carrol's once, when i was a kid. i remember coming home from a long trip and dad treating us to Kentucy Fried Chicken. i didn't have KFC again for another 20 years. i was severely disappointed and haven't tried any since, tho on occassion i succumb to the whiff from the deli department at a grocery store when i've made the mistake of shopping after 4 pm. i tell my self it's a special treat for my son! :) like maureen, we were too poor for fastfood, which my mother felt was not a good investment in terms of what we got out of it nutritionally. i remember dad taking us out to a restaurant every so often, which was my mother's solution to the need for us to have a special treat (and her to have a night with no cooking, no dishes) since dad didn't take vacations.
but, i can see why maureen likes them so much. the burgers and fries are invested with a great deal of meaning. i have a similar love of dairy queen peanut butter milkshakes and buddy bars (i think that's what they're called). i had mononucleousis for 4 months and was so sick i couldn't even brush my own teeth. my mom got me a milkshake every day and we graduated to a buddy bar eventually!!!
the frugality of the women in my family stuck and i still don't go for take out (a happy meal for the kid when he was little and it would keep him quiet for a bit on a long drive). i stock up on good deals and i wash out the ziplocks and reuse them (altho, unlike my grandmother, i don't save every promise margarine tub i've ever purchased; she faithfully recyles EVERYTHING, keeping every plastic container she gets, despite a nice array of tupperware for storing food!!!!!! :) )
my objection is that the comment seemed to be completely unaware that some of us can't afford anything other than the walmarts, kmarts, and targets of the world. it is asking individuals to fix a system that can't be fixed at the individual level. it is blaming people for daring to live in a community that really doesn't have an alternative. in florida, you can pretty much bet that much of the development here occured after suburbania was the fashion and there never really were mom and pops to destroy. the pre walmart dept stories had already taken care of that.
it *matters* to me if i can purchase peanut butter for $1 a jar, instead of the typical $1.50. i can *always* get p.b. at walmart for that price, whereas the grocery stores run the special every so often. it matters to me that i can buy a coffee maker at walmart for $5 - $10 less than anywhere else. multiply that savings for every necessity i purchase--from p.b. to soap--and it adds up. i'll guess that i save, on average, $25 a week because these kinds of savings are available to me. i can also get a lot of things all at once, a convenience when you don't have a car to go bopping from store to store because, again, there was never really a downtown to speak of around here and what there was, was probably geared to the tourist industry anyway.
my objection has nothing to do with your very poor characterization of cultural studies attitudes here. most cultural studies i've read is concerned to explain how it is that people resist the dominant message promulgated by pop culture, how people use pop culture products in creative ways, reappropriating them for different purposes than may have been intended by those who mass produce it.
finally, my objection is born of living near fucking ithaca--the san fran of the east--for most of my life where the crunchies ran about denouncing consumption while sporting leather birks and some hippy dippy "indian" gauze skirt and peasant blouse made by some third world peasant, popping carob covered raisins and washing it down with some suntea they'd bought bottled at the Green St Market. then they hopped into their volvo wagon and sped away into the hills of outer ithaca, headed toward the greek revival "farm" they lived in (i.e., got a farm tax break for having a gaggle of geese and a small flock of sheep) which they got dirt cheap thanks to agribusiness which wiped out the livelihoods of small farmers.
lifestyle fascists!! :)
kelley
>One thing I notice in a lot of cultural studies people is the logic of 'if
>the ordinary people consume it, it's undemocratic and elitist to look down
>on it'. The consciousness of ordinary people is like that of everybody
>else in one important sense - it's conditioned by our being. And our being
>ain't all beer and skittles. It enforces and encourages just the sort of
>bland standardising crap Carl was on about earlier. And that's what we're
>talking about, for mine. The remorseless decline of human experience and
>sensation ...
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.