Module C: Elective 1
Sample Response: Feed
Response by: Kate Murphy
The Question
(not from HSC)
Context is a significant factor in shaping an individual’s perception of
themselves and others.
Discuss this view with reference to your prescribed text and at least
ONE other text of your own choosing
Prescribed Text: Feed, M.T. Anderson, 2002 (prose fiction)
Related Text 1: Life After George, Hannie Rayson, 2001 (play)
Related Text 2: 99 Red Balloons, Nena (song)
Introduction
refers to the key
ideas in the
elective
Individuals are socialised through their interactions with others and
the world around them. Through our communications, we are able
to test or reaffirm our beliefs, values and attitudes within our social
context. M.T. Anderson’s novel Feed depicts a dystopian society
and presents a satirical vision of advertising and consumer culture.
Anderson questions the contemporary impact of technology and
Communication is portrays individuals who have naturalised the materialistic images
which serve the interests of a consumer society. Hannie Rayson’s
shown to be a
play Life After George portrays a university lecturer whose idealistic
central aspect of
the prescribed and revolutionary beliefs conflict with his experiences in an increasingly
corporate work environment. Rayson examines Professor Peter
related text/s
George’s impact on the significant others in his life and his ability to
The context of
shape their values through his powerful verbiage. The Nena song 99
each text is
Red Balloons presents the responder with a different perspective
mentioned, as is
concerning the power of our interactions through examining the
its effect on the
cataclysmic effect of miscommunication in a Cold War context
text’s message
where international distrust leads to a tragic overreaction when
unidentified objects appear in the sky. Through these texts, the
pervasive power of interactions within a range of social contexts are
apparent.
The first main idea
is introduced
The idiomatic
language used in
the text is
discussed
Techniques are
mentioned briefly
as evidence for the
argument
In Feed, the protagonist is initially unaware of the sinister nature of
the technological device which controls, reads and often
humorously interrupts his thoughts. Anderson’s juxtaposition of
the feed’s relentless advertising slogans with Titus’s internal
monologue satirises the damaging and consuming nature of our
interactions with technology. Idiomatic phrases such as ‘null’ and
‘lo-grav’ occur throughout the narrative, enabling the reader to
understand the debasement of language in a technologically based
society which critiques elements of contemporary America. Driven
by the message that ‘fun’s fun, and fun’s what you can have’, Titus
is portrayed as the product of his time, and his thoughts are driven
by the series of images presented to him on his feed. The social
conditioning inherent in the feed’s role is heightened by Anderson’s
use of dialogue to explore ‘chatting’ between the characters, as their
slang is defined by the feed. Titus is only capable of describing his
girlfriend as ‘meg nice’ given that he has not been exposed to more
sophisticated modes of language, and despite his instinctual
realisation that corporations control his mind, he states that the
feed is ‘the only way to get’ knowledge. Ironically, the feed is a
method of suppressing and obliterating true insight and
understanding.
The context of
culture and its
effect on
individuals is
explored in
keeping with the
question
Characterisation is
discussed
Linking sentence
mentions a related
text
Titus and his aborted quest to overcome the feed which epitomises
the oppressive discourses of his materialistic society enables the
responder to understand how our culture can dictate individual
thoughts and desires. A designer baby and the victim of constant
data mining, Titus narrates the story in a tone which shifts from the
initial casual apathy of an individual who is content for ‘everything
we think and feel’ to be scrutinised by corporations. Essentially a
hybrid individual whose narrative is frequently interrupted by the
intellectually diminished messages transmitted by his feed, Titus is
constantly subjected to often hilarious and satirised versions of
adolescent pop culture. The song ‘Bad Me, Bad You’, with its
withering repetition of the word ‘bad’ (‘Bad baby/Bad, bad
baby/Meg bad’) creates a sense of context and reminds the reader
that the narrator’s understanding of relationships has been shaped
by the messages that his society exposes him to. Ignoring the
memories he receives from Violet because he does not want to bear
the burden of them, Titus is essentially portrayed by Anderson as
egocentric and hedonistic in a world where ‘the feed whispered to
me’ to distract him from the horror of Violet’s decline. The values
of the feed and its communications shape Titus as surely as the
resistant discourses of the protest era shape Professor George’s life.
The social and
historical context
of the related text
is shown to be
important
Rayson’s Life After George depicts a protagonist whose
involvement in radical social movements has shaped his personal
relationships and guided his interactions with significant others.
Each of Professor George’s three wives symbolise a shift in his
values and attitudes as the play moves from the revolutionary 1960s
to an era where corporate greed and elitism triumph over social
reform. His second wife, Lindsay, originally attracted to George
Characters are
because he is ‘alternative to the core’, is presented to the audience
used to represent
through a series of flashbacks where she comes to reinforce the
particular ways of
thinking in the text ‘bourgeois values’ that she professes to despise. By contrast,
George’s interactions with his third wife, Poppy, demonstrate his
need to influence her ideological values after Lindsay has wilfully
reacted against his own ‘core beliefs’. Seen by George’s bohemian
first wife as ‘the girl who somehow embodies the spirit of the
times’, Poppy’s posthumous destruction of George’s work in an
attempt to save his letters from the archives of Lindsay’s user-pays
university ironically represents an attempt to preserve her
husband’s integrity and protect his legacy. Thus the composer seeks
to examine the way an individual’s interactions with significant
others are shaped by his social and intellectual context.
The essay returns
to an individual in
the prescribed text
and their
Like the protagonist of Life After George, Violet’s heroic stance
against a social system which seeks to control her thoughts shapes
the action in Feed. Her self-perception, shaped within the context
interactions with a
hostile society
of homeschooling with her defiant and subversive father, is shown
to remain relatively untouched by the dominant consumer madness
of her society. Understanding that the mission of the feed is
essentially to ‘make everything even simpler’ in order to market
consumer goods to a brainwashed nature, Violet challenges the
values which Titus has naturalised. Anderson attempts to portray
characters who are so deeply embedded within their consumer
context that they become ‘ignorant, self-centred idiots’, oblivious to
the insights which Violet has gained about the controlling nature of
corporations. When Violet articulates controversial belief
statement, Titus believes that ‘it’s the feed, you’re not like that’,
attributing her thoughts to the malfunctioning technology which is
slowly killing her. In doing so, he misses the implications of
Violet’s desperate communications about the sinister dystopian
nature of their society, believing she is wilfully ‘looking for evidence
of the decline in civilisation’, instead of merely observing the
obviously corrupt purpose of the feed. The responder identifies
with Violet when her sincere concern for the state of the world is
dismissed by Titus, and Anderson chooses to explore Violet’s death
to demonstrate her helplessness in the face of a society
characterised by oblivion and ignorance.
A second, less
complex related
text is introduced,
and the theme of
the tragic effects
of
miscommunication
is developed
Written in the atmosphere of suspicion which defined the Cold
War, Nena’s 99 Red Balloons examines the tragic effects of
miscommunication when a government’s mistrust of other
countries leads to an apocalyptic tragedy. The nuclear war resulting
from ‘bugs in the software’ which misrepresent the harmless
presence of red balloons in the sky and cause a frightened
government to ‘call the troops out in a hurry’ is shown to result
from paranoia and fear guiding our communications. The
depersonalised ‘war machine’ and its absurd overreaction to the
balloons floating innocently in the sky alludes to the mistrust which
characterised Europe in the era which the song was written. As an
imaginative response to a particular socio-historic context, 99 Red
Balloons serves as a timely reminder to the responder of the tragic
consequences of misconstrued interactions. The dystopian
atmosphere which pervades 99 Red Balloons may appear to be a
more malevolent context than the consumer-driven environment of
Feed, yet Anderson’s depiction of mankind’s interaction with
technology is equally as chilling and prophetic.
The conclusion
links the texts and
summarises the
topics covered in
the response
Individuals develop their understanding of themselves through
interactions with others within the context of their society. Our
knowledge and insights are shaped through our experiences and
our ability to communicate, and the characters in Feed are tragically
limited in their ability to comprehend and respond to the
disempowering ideologies of their society. Life After George and
99 Red Balloons explore the socio-historical context of the latetwentieth century and its impact upon the way that individuals,
governments and institutions interact with one another.