In “The Embodied Rhetoric of ‘Health’ from Farm Fields to Salad Bowls,” Jean Retzinger closely examines the messages imparted by print advertisements for designer fast-food salads. Her investigative question is two-fold: what do these images tell us about the potential health and value of our bodies as consumers and what stories do they exclude with respect to the bodies of those who labor to grow the ingredients for these salads? In answer to the first question Retzinger concludes that, far from suggesting that these salads will nourish us on the inside, providing our cells with essential energy and nutrients, the message in ads for fast food salads has everything to do with appealing to our narcissistic desire to look good on the outside. She writes, “Instead health (and pleasure) are reduced to a set of numbers--and the numbers that matter most are those found on the bathroom scale: the slim salad promises the slim body” (154).
In approaching her second question she suggests that if it is the potential external appearance of the consumer that matters most in these ads, we also need to look critically at the disappearance act performed by the bodies of the workers who produce the salad’s ingredients. As Retzinger writes, “those who labor within agricultural fields, though, bear the brunt of American political and economic policies related to food. The class and ethnic markers of their bodies are strongly implicated in both the material conditions under which they labor and the (limited) attention those labors receive. To a great extent, agricultural labor remains invisible” (151). In this way, Retzinger positions the fast food salad as the successful end-product of commodity fetishization. Instead of seeing the bodies of the workers in the Central Valley of California who picked the lettuce we see the body of the hip (but not too curvy) urbanite consumer. The social and political power structures that give meaning and value to the product remain hidden.
In “ Materializing the Fetal Body, Or, What are those Corpses doing in Biology’s Basement,” Lynn Morgan traces to historical materialization of the fetal body and details the ways in which the process of materialization inscribed social and political meaning on that body. She quotes Judith Butler, “To speak...of bodies that matter is not an idle pun, for to be material means to materialize, where the principle of that materialization is precisely what ‘matters’ about that body, its very intelligibility” (55). If the body of the agricultural worker remains unseen or dematerialized in advertisements for agricultural products, then this must mean that it does not matter to us.
In considering the invisibility of the farm worker’s body in the visual discourse of agricultural advertisements and having attempted rather unsuccessfully to find examples of advertisements or literature that included representations of this marginalized body, I was reminded of one “ethnic” agricultural body that was ubiquitous at one point in history (specifically my childhood): Juan Valdez. As the authenticating figure for Colombian Coffee Juan Valdez was featured in many print and commercial advertisements. But here is the paradox: Juan Valdez does not actually exist. He is the wholly fictional creation of the marketing department of Colombian Coffee. Living in Seattle, where freeze-dried coffee in an abomination, and not having owned a television for nearly five years, I set out to discover how Juan Valdez was represented in advertising for Colombian Coffee. What I found were two very interesting and very dated commercials prominently featuring Juan Valdez.
The first commercial opens with a rooster crowing and the view of what could be a rural farmhouse. There is a white picket fence and ample front yard. Inside Juan’s horse nuzzles the man of the house, rousing him from his slumber. However, once the man puts on his glasses the horse has disappeared. Similarly, his wife opens the pantry to find Juan and his horse there. Juan kindly hands her the canister she is seeking. Clearly she has not yet had her coffee. She must be seeing things. And, in fact, when she looks again, Juan and horse are gone. Lastly, we see the man at the train station, presumably on his way to work. As the train pulls in he sees Juan in the window and takes off his glasses to do a double take . A voice over swoops in to remind us to look for Juan on the label for Colombian Coffee, offering “you can’t miss him.” Yet it seems that the whole storyline of the commercial is about missing him. Now you see him; now you don’t. He is everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. This confused “principle of materialization” renders the body of Juan Valdez unintelligible in Butler’s terms.
The magical disappearance act also goes straight to the heart of Retzinger’s argument about the invisibility of the agricultural worker. Perhaps we get glimpses of the body of the marginalized agricultural worker. It quite literally touches the food we eat, after all (food which we then wash interestingly, removing soil, potentially harmful chemicals, and the imprint of that body). But it never fully enters our field of vision, which, as Deborah Gordon notes, is the privileged sensory field of Western naturalist epistemology (32). Furthermore, the placement of this commercial in what looks like “the heartland” seems to authenticate the product, though, of course, the coffee is coming from Colombia, and it is certain that Juan Valdez--if he existed-- would not have a house like that.
In the second commercial we receive an in depth introduction to the work that Juan does to produce the coffee we savor. Coffee production is tedious work that requires patience and dedication. The voice over tells us that Juan tends each tree for five years before it bears fruit. Then he picks the beans by hand at just the perfect moment. He does this for one year, yielding two thousand beans, which is only one pound of coffee. All that work for one pound. The poor quality of the background music recalls a B-movie. At any moment things seem like they could turn ugly. Juan might realize that the cards are stacked against him and lash out with violence or he might become the victim of an agricultural accident or illness. The voice over concludes, “It is no wonder that Americans think it is the best coffee in the world. It is the richest.” But to say it is no wonder is also perhaps to say that there is no wonder, awe, or appreciation for the work that Juan and his compatriots do. It is the “richest” coffee not only because of its taste but also because of the value of the labor that went into its production. Yet that labor regularly goes unacknowledged. If we pay the worker less (both in terms of respect and money) we can keep more of that richness for ourselves.
Retzinger writes, “whatever its cause, invisibility allows and even encourages exploitative and dangerous worker health and safety conditions to fester, particularly with regard to pesticide use in fruit and vegetable crops” (151-152). More than simply being a case of a lack of acknowledgment of labor, the invisibility of the worker’s body has very real consequences for the health of that body. This made me wonder: what about advertisements for organic agricultural products? Here there is less risk of implication since organics are defined by their omission of pesticides. So would it be okay for ads for organic growers to reveal the skin tone of those laboring--perhaps even working physically harder since organic farming might be said to be more labor intensive in its rejection of conventional pesticide and herbicide use? I looked to the promotional media for Whole Foods Market for an answer (though it can certainly be argued that the scale and corporate structure of Whole Foods is itself problematic). I scanned their website hoping to find pictures of marginalized bodies linked with the bananas and lettuces on display. While I did not find this, I did note that the store workers pictured with the produce were representative of a more urban multi-cultural base (again the price of shopping at Whole Foods means that it remains largely the province of the elite, certainly putting it out of reach for the most marginalized bodies). I also found a link to a promotional video for the Whole Planet Foundation, a charitable organization that specializes in microcredit financing. In this video I finally saw the bodies I had been looking for. But the fact that these bodies are positioned as in need of our assistance is illustrative in and of itself.
All of this brings me to the question of globalization and food insecurity. The very existence of marginalized agricultural workers in the places they are, whether or not they are materialized visually in advertisements, is a consequence of globalization after all. With the rise in both global population and global economic and political interdependence our demands are beginning to exceed the supply of our food system. The countries on the front line of this battle are those with the greatest populations. In Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health Nancy Chen explores the situation in China and India. She writes, “Both countries face similar concerns: they must provide for largely rural populations of over a billion people in a context of global agribusiness that is increasingly influencing local agricultural practices” (97). Chen is interested in the rise of genetically-modified foods to meet this demand. In a sense, though, GMOs are simply a further evolution of the same idea behind using pesticides except that the new organisms have their resistance built into their genome and, theoretically, require less pesticide use. Both ostensibly increase crop yield but entail potential health risks.
Trying to find a different story I remembered hearing on NPR about migrant workers in the US suing over pesticide-related sickness, I happened upon a series of stories about the collapse of the so-called “Green Revolution” in India. This revolution occurred in the 1960s and 70s when Indian farmers adopted American farming techniques and pesticide use. However, today people are getting sick, the demands on the land and farmers are proving unsustainable, and some farmers are venturing into organic farming. This seems to bring up an inherent tension between global politics and economics and the very specific needs of local populations. The intention behind the “Green Revolution” was to address Indian needs with American means, but was it just another form of cultural imperialism? What if what works for one place does not work for another? Is it possible that what is called for is not a large scale overhaul but a multitude of more local interventions? This is what precisely what microcredit financing allows. It does not reject the reality of globalization (in fact the global economic infrastructure is what makes it possible) but promotes smaller scale interventions that fulfill individual, family, and community goals adding up to greater national and international stability. As America’s position in the global economy continues to shift I hope we will come to embrace our simultaneous interconnection and diversity and recognize all the diverse bodies that feed the human race. More and more we are all in the same boat. Let’s really see everyone on board.
Works Cited
Chen, Nancy. Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009.
Gordon, Deborah R. “Tenacious Assumption in Western Medicine.” Margaret Lock and
Deborah R. Gordon, eds., Biomedicine Examined Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. Pp. 19-56.
Morgan, Lynn M. “Materializing the Fetal Body, Or, What are those corpses doing in
Biology’s Basement?” Lynn M. Morgan and Meredith W. Michaels, eds. Fetal
Subjects, Feminist Positions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1999.
Retzinger, Jean P. “The Embodied Rhetoric of ‘Health’ from Farm Fields to Salad
Bowls.” Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato, eds. Edible Ideologies:
Representing Food and Meaning. Albany: State University of New York Press,
2008. Pp. 149-178.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHQAAfVvvOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTst3MUXe9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LykSSfK4j0c
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103569390
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102944731
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104708731
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