I’ve got a special treat for you today: an interview with artist Nathan Meltz about his pieces on industrial food production. Nathan has shown his art in group shows around the country.  He received a Master’s degree in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a graduate student at SUNY-Albany, where he will be graduating this spring with his MFA.  He lives in upstate New York with his wife, Abby Kinchy, and their infant son Aldo. His artistic and musical exploits can be followed at The House of Tomorrow.

I went to grad school with Abby, so that’s how I knew about Nathan’s work. As a sociologist who specialized in food issues and rural communities, I immediately loved these pieces and thought many of our readers would too, so I convinced Nathan to let me post an interview and some of my favorites. (And be forgiving of my amateurish interview questions. I am not a Creative Type, and my general reaction to art I like is “You made a pretty!”)

—————————-

Animal Farm

What drew you to the issue of food?

I have to give a lot of credit to Abby, who is a sociologist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has done a lot of research on controversies surrounding genetically-modified corn and canola. [She’s currently working on a book about conflicts over genetically modified crops in Canada and Mexico.–Gwen].  A lot of the themes in my art developed from kitchen-table discussions we had while in grad school in Madison.  What was technology doing to agriculture? And then, from my end, what would it look like?

How did you come up with the idea of representing food products as machines?

I wanted a visual metaphor that would reveal tech taking over plants and animals.  Unfortunately, our most current tech can be hard to visualize.  A series of ones and zeros?  Some sort of digital technology?  I decided to combine elements of Dada collage with early modernist German machine aesthetic [Oh, yes, the early modernist German machine aesthetic! Of course!–Gwen]  to create my own visual vocabulary. One that, while not exactly 21^st century, would act as a symbol of science and technology for the viewer/audience.

What does your Animal Farm series convey about our modern food system?

Waiting for My Mechanical Bull

Enviropig

In my machine world, animals are put on assembly lines, cramped together in feed lots, and, in the case of the chickens in The Chicken Coup animation, reside in an agricultural system designed by sadists.  They all look the same because there is no diversity on the factory farm.

The Chicken Coup, pt. 1

The Chicken Coup, pt. 2

Many people have at least some knowledge of slaughterhouses and the treatment of animals, so the Animal Farm series is probably fairly accessible. But O Canola! is, I think, more complex and harder to understand if you’ve never thought much about bioengineering before, or why the song “O Canada” would be particularly meaningful in the context of discussing canola and bioengineering.

O Canola!

O Canola! was a project long in the making, very much piggybacking on the research Abby was doing at the time. I try to tell the story of Canada’s GMO [genetically modified organism] canola contamination* in a visual form. The clever riffing on the Canadian National Anthem (which Abby thought of) is meant to reflect the nationalist tensions inherent in the controversy, where a hybrid plant created by the Canadian government during WWII to produce a mechanical lubricant at the local level would years later be threatened by GMOs produced by agribusiness.

What about Food for Fuel?

Food for Fuel

Food for Fuel came after news reports kept coming in about food shortages around the world, particularly in Mexico, because so much edible food was being turned into fuel for vehicles.  The message on this one is pretty straightforward.

Food for Fuel, along with Animal Farm, definitely reflects my interest in Agitprop.  At the time I made these, I was sharing a studio with printmaker/activist Josh MacPhee, a member of the Just Seeds print collective, which promotes socially activist printmaking.  A lot of the work he was doing really influenced me, and I think these two prints reflect my desire to have a clear social message.

How have people reacted to the series? Do you get a sense that people react more forcefully, or emotionally, to the ones about animals than the ones about crops?

Reaction has been positive, or at least the reaction I hear about.  A lot of the prints have traveled around in various shows.  I think the animation The Chicken Coup has maybe received a little more attention than the prints among the art audience.  Static prints on paper have a hard time competing with moving images with sound, music, etc.  And I don’t think people care any less about the crop-based works than the animal ones.  I find people who are really into food/agriculture issues care just as forcefully about what is happening to corn as they do cows.

—————————–

* GMO contamination occurs when genetically modified seeds migrate to fields that were not intentionally planted with them, an increasingly common occurrence. Aside from the problems this can cause farmers who want to sell their products as specifically not GMO, and concerns about the ecological effects that could occur if modified genes spread into other varieties (or even related wild species), it also puts farmers at legal risk. GMO crops such as marketed under the Roundup Ready label and engineered to be immune to the effects of Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, are patented. Farmers are not allowed to plant them without buying a license (including saving seeds from their own crop to plant the following year, a traditional practice of many farmers to eliminate the cost of buying seeds each year; so-called “terminator” varieties are even engineered to produce only sterile seeds, thus ensuring farmers must buy fertile seeds from the manufacturer annually). Monsanto has sued farmers for patent infringement in cases where a field was contaminated with Monsanto’s GMO seeds when they blew in from a neighboring field. Conversely, a group of Canadian organic farmers sued Monsanto on the grounds that genetic contamination had made it impossible for them to sell their products as organic.

If you’re interested in the topic, you might try to get a copy of Abby’s new article, “Anti-Genetic Engineering Activism and Scientized Politics in the Case of ‘Contaminated’ Mexican Maize,” Agriculture and Human Values.

Caspian P. and his roommates sent us a link to the newest Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Playbook cover.  It seems it makes quite a departure from previous editions.  (D&D fans: I’m reconstructing this history from here, so let me know if I make any significant mistakes in my summary.)

Various versions of the D&D Playbook–e.g., regular or basic, advanced, and expert– have been published.  For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to treat them all equivalently.

The first D&D Playbook (1971):

1981:

Playbooks from the late 1980s:

You might have noticed that the covers include fantastical creatures and male warriors and wizards… but no women.

In 2000, ownership of the game changed hands and the new cover simply looked like this:

And then this (2003):

And then the Playbook went the way of the Evony ads:

Caspian wrote that he’s played D&D for years and always felt that it included great female characters.  So he was disappointed with the inclusion of a highly sexualized, part-naked woman on the recent cover, prompting him to send it to us.

Consider the new cover alongside our posts on Gossip Girl promotions, the New Beverly Hills 90210, the Burger King shower girl, this crazy post on hot horses and puppies, and the makeovers of Dora the Explorer, Holly Hobbie, Strawberry Shortcake, and the Sun Maid.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The figure below, sent in by Muriel M.M. and Josh P., shows the relationship between health care spending (on the left) and life expectancy (on the right). Perhaps the most stunning finding is what appears to be a rather loose correlation between the two. But a second finding is the inefficiency of U.S. spending (see it at the left top of the figure?): it is far above the other states included and is, nonetheless, translating into less-than-stellar results (if you measure by life expectancy).

Via National Geographic.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Rudo M. sent us a great example of how “normal” is socially constructed. The photos below are of the box containing a Vidal Sassoon hair dryer for “normal” hair:

It’s also, “good” hair, as is said, in so many words, the blurb on the box said so:

Not too fine or coarse,  normal hair is the most manageable hair type with the largest range of possible styles.  Though it’s fun to experiment, even the easiest-to-care-for hair requires a regimen of regular maintenance.  Proper styling tools with varying heats are crucial for keeping a healthy-looking shine, maintaining balance, and adding…

Yeah, so just in case it wasn’t clear already, “normal” hair is the bestest!  It’s “not too fine or too coarse,” has the “largest range of possible styles,” is “fun,” and is totally the “easiest-to-care-for”!

Rudo is an African woman who wears her hair natural, so she knew right away that Vidal Sassoon didn’t count her hair as “normal.”  So, what were the other options?  If you’re not normal, what are you? Well, according to Vidal Sassoon, you are, of course, “fine” or “coarse.”

But a lot of good this does Rudo, since even the models on the “coarse” box are white with essentially straight hair!  So much for a range of hair types!  Well, at least we know that even white women with straight hair can be abnormal!

And, just in case you didn’t know already that being abnormal means being WRONG, coarse hair is “hard-to-style,” fine hair is limp, and both tend to “frizz.”   What a difference from Vidal Sassoon practically falling over itself praising normal hair.

Here’s another example, sent in by @adentweets.  There’s “normal” and there’s “thick” hair.

Cara McC. sent us a Covergirl commercial selling foundation for “normal,” “oily,” and “sensitive” skin. Again, they include a range of skin types (and probably include women who represent three different races) in order to point to the diversity of skin types, but nonetheless label one “normal” (the one represented by the white woman).

For more examples of whiteness as normal and people of color as deviant (or, if we measure by Vidal Sassoon, non-existent), see our posts on Michelle Obama’s “flesh-colored” gown, Johnson’s lotion for “normal to darker skin,” bandaids and other “flesh-colored” things, why Sotomayor may be “biased,” families vs. ethnic families, and people of color add “spice.”

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Caroline P. sent in this stunning example of gendered socialization, gendered job segregation, and the social construction of skill.  Notice that the two photos below show an “electronic medical set” for a doctor and a nurse, with a photo of a boy and a girl, respectively.

Okay, so the jobs are gendered.  But more than that, notice that the sets contain essentially the same toys: a stethescope, pill bottle, syringe, thermometer, mirror, hot water bottle, clipboard, blood pressure thingy, and whatever that is in the bottom right corner.

So it’s more than just gendered jobs, it’s an acknowledgement that when boys and girls do the same job, it gets called something different and, more, better compensated when men do it.  We see this with other, real jobs that get split into gendered categories like janitor/maid.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Michelle D. sent in this cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly featuring Sarah Murdoch, which includes the text “why she wanted an all natural covershoot”:

As Michelle pointed out, the woman has visible wrinkles, but she’s clearly wearing a significant amount of makeup (and teeth that are either bleached or covered with veneers), leading her to wonder what “all natural” means. As it turns out, it means that she wasn’t airbrushed or photoshopped. If you google “Australian Women’s Weekly Sarah Murdoch,” you’ll find a ton of stories about it.

Now, let me be clear: I’m not trying to minimize the courage it took for Sarah Murdoch to insist that her cover be un-touched-up or to speak in interviews about resisting the pressure to hide all signs of aging. Nor am I saying that wearing makeup is evil.

I’m just saying that, as I was reading the many stories in other news outlets about the cover, and looking at that “all natural” on the cover, and then looking at her face, I couldn’t help but think that it says something about the level of inhuman youthful perfection we currently expect of celebrities that this woman’s face, which as far as I can tell is flawless, would ever “require” touching up at all, and that showing herself looking like this is a major act of bravery and resistance because under normal circumstances, her face would be defined as unfit for a cover without technological “fixing”…and that all that makeup, teeth whitening, and eyebrow sculpting don’t undermine the claim to being “all natural” because we just take those things for granted now.

James H. (of Town Creek Poetry) sent in this vintage Avis ad:

So the company marketed its cars to implicitly heterosexual male customers with the possibility of flirting, and even sexual access, to its attractive female employees (that is, “girls”). I have no idea if female employees were expected to actually wink at people.

Also see our post on Singapore Girls.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Sociologist Stephanie Coontz, in her acclaimed, fascinating, and fact-dense book, The Way We Never Were, illustrates the way that what is considered “traditional” must be socially constructed. For example, when people say “traditional marriage,” do they mean marriage between a man and his property? Between a man and more than one woman? Is the ideal age for marriage 13, 20 or 27? Is it for love, political maneuvering, survival, babies, or kitchens?  How you answer these questions depends on when, exactly, in history you’re talking about.  (See here for some humorous takes.)

The point: Since all of history is potentially a source of tradition, identifying any given period of time as The Traditional, and therefore deserving of our nostalgia, is arbitrary.

The Daily Show did a great job of illustrating this idea this week:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.