Food Studies Matter, Meaning, Movement Case Meat in Literature, Stephanie Couey

CASE MEAT IN LITERATURE STEPHANIE MEAT MADE MANIFEST BEEF , FERTILITY , AND THE IDEAL AMERICAN WOMAN IN RUTH MY YEAR OF MEATS Stephanie is a candidate in English at the of Colorado Boulder . Her work is on of the United States , and her dissertation examines race , gender , and national identity within works of fiction , and poetry that centralize food , hunger , and the body . She previously received her in Poetry , also from , and she teaches undergraduate courses in Literature and Creative Writing . 720 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

Learning Outcomes After reading and discussing this text , students should be able to Apply the process of close reading to descriptions of foods and food in literature . Analyze food writing through ment . Assess the value and utility of analyzing food to make unexpected connections , and to arrive at new or more fully developed cultural insights . INTRODUCTION Although food is an approachable subject , studying it closely and critically in literature can make some of our most potent and cultural visible . This case uses literary sis to consider not only the symbolic functions of a specific food within a literary text , but also its material . The text in focus is author Ruth 1998 novel , My Year of and the food in focus is beef . Although the novel features other commonly consumed meats and emphasizes their distinct cultural meanings in American ture , as indicated by the plurality of meats in the title , it is beef that takes center stage . In centering the novel on America animal protein , reveals how the violence inherent in the production and consumption of beef extends directly to women bodies following World War II . 1998 . STEPHANIE 721

PROCESS OF ANALYSIS This case focuses on two of the main subjects of 1998 novel women and beef . It employs the aptly named process of close reading over three observations to analyze the nuances of language . This detailed analysis generates a clear unpacking of ideas surrounding the relationships between meat and media , modern perceptions of American , and relationships . Close reading is a deep analysis of the writers focuses on the words on the page at hand , but it also always the context of the rest of the work . Effective close reading is a sequential process that starts small and works its way ward . Rather than immediately identifying themes , big picture ideas , or larger trends , it centers itself in diction and syntax . It then uses the emerging observations to build arguments . Close reading , rather than trying to prove a existing argument , allows for unexpected new inquiries . It is , by necessity , a personal engagement with the text . If close reading is performed in earnest , it is unlikely that you will arrive at the same conclusions as your classmates or those found in existing scholarship on the piece , though you will be able to point to the evidence within the text that brought you to your own conclusion . CONTEXT FOR OBSERVATIONS The central protagonist of My Year of Meats is Jane , an American documentarian of Japanese and descent . The three block quotations used in this study are all told from James point of View and carry her narrative voice , and as such , they are suffused with her attitudes , beliefs , and values . The novel begins with Jane reluctantly taking a new job on the reality show , My American , which quickly leads 722 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

her down a rabbit hole of deeply personal investigative ism . The show is funded by fictional American meat lobbying company , and is made by production . Its goal is to sell two things to a primarily Japanese base beef imported from the United States , and regressive conceptions of the ideal American woman and family , so as to Japanese housewives to become more similar to these ideals . Jane states that she made documentaries about an exotic and vanishing America for consumption on the flip side of the planet , and much of what is exotic and vanishing is the white , heteronormative , nuclear family in the United States . Initially , ane mission is to correct the shows proclivity for featuring homogeneous white families , but as she learns more about beef and about her own family history , she learns that beef production is not only ideologically linked to notions of white supremacy and sexism , but that is it also cally linked . Specifically , Jane learns about her mother being prescribed diethylstilbestrol ( DES ) a synthetic estrogen that was first used as a fertility treatment following World War II . The drug was heavily pushed upon women by advertisers and doctors , to encourage those who had taken jobs during the war to return to what was considered their central role for their country ing and rearing healthy DES has also been used as an agent for promoting rapid weight gain in cattle to yield more meat product ( beef ) with less feed . ane argues that DES changed the face of meat in America . Using DES and other drugs , like antibiotics , farmers could process animals on an assembly line , like cars or computer In the history Jane cites , the basic comfort and of cattle was deemed inefficient , and all . 1998 , 15 . Langston 2010 , 48 . 1998 , 125 . STEPHANIE 723

that mattered was how much weight they could gain and how quickly they could be harvested for America favorite staple . WOMEN , BEEF , AND TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES After the chief producer of My American Wife ! describes what he wants the show to communicate , Jane drafts the following eXcessive description Meat is the Message . Each weekly episode of My American Wife ! must culminate in the celebration of a meat , in its glorious consumption . Its the meat ( not the ) who the star of our show ! Of course , the Wife of the Week is important too . She must be tive , appetizing , and . She is the Meat Made Manifest ample , robust , yet never tough or hard to digest . Through her , Japanese housewives will feel the hearty sense of warmth , of comfort , of hearth and traditional family values symbolized by red meat in rural Meat is the Message , with a capital in message , is a satiric allusion to Marshall 1967 text , The Medium is the Massage . argues that the new electronic technologies of the information age control , psychologically , and than we control them . He contends , all media work us over completely any understanding of social and change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as Jane stating , however sardonically , that meat is the message suggests that meat is a form of media and thus is an active rather than passive substance with the power to work us over completely 1998 , Ibid . 26 . 724 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

Jane then employs what can be read as pornographic diction to analogize meat to both male genitalia and womens bodies , to contrasting ends . She exaggeratedly writes that each episode of My American Wife ! must culminate with a tion of a featured meat , and climax in the event of its That the glorious consumption of the featured meat results in climax communicates that Jane is making a direct comparison between male sexual release and the consumption of meat , as climax overtly suggests orgasm , since it is a colloquial synonym , and ion more subtly the same . In the context of the show , analogizing male genitalia to meat glorifies the penis and suggests its theoretical desirability and centrality as the star , but analogizing women to meat suggests diminishment and debasement and renders them into able objects . ane theatrical description of My American Wife ! mirrors mainstream pornography in how its the meat and not the who the In other words , women in the show are considered secondary to the animal over which they labor and to the men they serve . The way the women in the show are Meat Made Manifest reduces them into in a way not wholly dissimilar to how living cows are reduced and abstracted into The women on the show must be appetizing , ample , and robust , but never tough or hard to This suggests that viewing the women on screen is an act of consumption unto itself and they are intended to be consumed alongside the meat . And in stating that the Wife of the Week must be , ane alludes to the shows ence for white women although the women featured are rendered into props rather than people , women of color are marginalized further in the shows willful obfuscation of their existence and importance as American women . STEPHANIE 725

Finally , Jane ends the description with the that red meat symbolizes traditional family values in rural America , which are only vaguely characterized by a hearty sense of warmth , of comfort , of hearth and The unnecessary repetition of the preposition of alongside the alliteration of hearty , hearth , and home gives this sentence the bouncy , upbeat , and musical quality of a . ane use of such mnemonic devices makes this final sentence exude the very sense of warmth and white American nostalgia that My American Wife ! seeks to capitalize on in order to sell beef . DES AND ABUNDANCE Whether as a fertility treatment or as a fattening agent for feedlot cows , DES has been used extensively throughout the twentieth century , despite the fact that its use in humans has been linked to numerous health defects including cancers and reproductive organ Jane also learns that DES doesn just affect those who consume it directly , but that it can cause health issues in their discovery that led medical editor thia to coin of the term DES daughter in 1981 . Jane herself struggles with a precancerous condition known as neoplasia on her cervix , a misshapen uterus , and presumed infertility , which are resultant of her mother having been DES by an American doctor who assumed she was too delicate to carry Jane , an assumption with racial bias against Japanese women . Viewing an of her uterus , Jane recalls . Langston 2010 , 1981 . 10 . 1998 , 156 . 726 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

I ve always pictured the triangular uterine cavity as the head of a bull , with the fallopian tubes spreading and ing like noble horns , and that was what I was expecting to see what I saw instead was less symmetrical . The left side of the bull broad forehead was caved in , less triangular , as though my uterus had been In likening ane uterus to the head of a bull , makes the link between ane reproductive health and the American beef industry explicit . While the figurative bull head has been aged to the extent of appearing to have been coldcocked , or bashed in by a club , so too have ane sexual organs , suggesting that the bodies of both Women and cattle have been similarly lated and brutalized by DES . The imagined bull with its noble horns also functions to jure images of the frontier and Big Rugged 13 It evokes cattle ranching , as well as bull riding , which despite the Hispanic origins of rodeo , has long been thought of as a distinctively American 14 The imagery of ane reveals that the fate of her own body and future offspring and the fate of cattle are intimately linked due to toxic and exclusionary ideologies of American abundance . HUMANS , ANIMALS , AND , or the idea that , as environmental scholar Stacy argues , the human is always meshed with the world , 15 pervades the novel , in ways that go far beyond the usage of DES . The porousness of human , animal , and environmental bodies are highlighted when 12 . Ibid , 153 . 13 . Ibid , 14 . 1985 , 21 . 15 . 2010 , STEPHANIE 727

jane organizes an expose of Dunn Son , Custom Cattle ers in Colorado under the guise of an episode of My American Wife ! Rather than celebrating the glorious Colorado landscape , the ranch abundance of beef , and the ideal American wife for the shows audience , jane instead plans to film this episode as a documentary that exposes the inner workings of houses . The featured wife is Bunny Dunn , pitches to her boss as the shows best American Wife yet ! And Bunny is the shows , blonde , decades younger than her husband , dressed in rodeo queen outfits , and cooking not just beef , but her special recipe of Prairie Oysters , 17 or bull testicles . Along with her Prairie Oysters and the cattle at Dunn Son , Bunny body is on display for the audience of My can Wife ! to consume . When filming , she is treated as a dish and , at times , as an animal . even compares her to a cow as the camera crew film her the wavering ray of the sun gun finds Bunny face , illuminates 19 The subtle wordplay between sun gun and stun gun 20 likens Bunny to a cow facing slaughter . This likening positions her as a potential victim of the camera and the violence of media representation , and it positions her as one whose body , like a cows , is consumable . jane observes Bunny body closeness to , and fusing with , mal and environmental bodies as she studies her ample figure and rodeo queen ensemble 16 . Ibid , 230 . 17 . Ibid , 208 . 18 . Ibid , 209 . 19 . Ibid , 327 . 20 . Ibid , 283 . 728 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

Bunny had dressed for the interview in purple stretch jeans , alligator cowboy boots , and a purple checked shirt decorated with fringe and snaps that fought to stay attached across the expanse of her bosom . The upper snaps popped open to reveal a massive depth of cleavage And then there was her hair , golden , like spun metal forged into a nest by a mythical bird of prey , impossible to capture on Bunny is either wearing or embodying numerous animals , oysters ( and birds , and her name , in tion to being suggestive of a Playboy Bunny , is that of an animal . The diction describing her body also suggests the landscape of Colorado with the expanse and massive depth of her chest , and the lengthy , sentences suggest an quality to Bunny presence . Altogether , Bunny appearance is meant to suggest not only a nationalistic ideal of American , but also the permeability between human and bodies . Humans , animals , and the environment collide even further on the kill floor of the Dunn Son slaughterhouse . In an ironic reversal of what is usually human on animal violence , a pregnant Jane is pummeled by a cow massive swinging carcass on the kill floor , and she is knocked out when she hits her head on the edge of the knocking pen , an enclosure that contains an animal as it is knocked out or stunned before slaughter . When she returns to consciousness , ane realizes that her entire body had been drenched in blood as she fallen on the slaughterhouse floor , into the lake of blood , 23 with the lake a natural body of water . She finds herself crying and notices that every 21 . Ibid , 252 . 22 . Ibid , 284 . 23 . Ibid , STEPHANIE 729

time she wiped her eyes the tears were bloody 24 In this scene , ane body and those of the slaughtered cattle are shown to be thoroughly conjoined , and no matter how seemingly inert the body of the cow that swings into her may be , it has the to act upon her and change her life . Later , when Jane is in the hospital , Bunny holds her fractured head against her 25 brings the novels parallel treatment of women and cattle full circle , with ane fractured head connecting back to when she first saw her and observed that her uterus looked like a coldcocked 26 bull head . SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSION In My Year of Meats , Ruth the overt and nuanced values implicated in Americans love of red meat . For many , beef exemplifies American , barbecue , pot roast , and of course , the hamburger . however , highlights the related ways that animals and womens bodies are exploited throughout the twentieth century both are used to project an image of the United States as a land of wholesomeness and abundance , and both are given synthetic hormones to increase production of meat and children , respectively . The novel investigates how this mythic portrayal of the United States is defined by its fertile , moral , women , and its cheap , plentiful beef . Although in tone , the novel is too to be entirely funny . In using beef as the star of the plot , shows how American nationalism , the subjection of womens bodies , the male gaze , and the medical gaze are intertwined with the mass production of American beef . The novel shows how the production and consumption of meat is far more 24 . Ibid , 292 . 25 . Ibid , 293 . 26 . Ibid , 153 . 730 MEAT MADE MANIFEST

than just symbolic of the objectification of women . Rather , My Year of Meats illustrates the ways that human and animal bodies are interconnected and endure at times . Discussion Questions What are your first impressions of each of these three block quotations from the novel ?

What words catch your attention first ?

Circle them , without thinking about it too much . Compare the words you ve chosen with a classmate . Did you circle any of the same words ?

Why do you think these words stand out to you ?

What personal associations do you have with any of the topics raised in these three passages ?

How might your personal associations your interpretation ?

What field ( aside from literary studies might you conduct research in to support your tion ?

What explicit and implicit connections does the novel make between food and sexuality ?

How do you feel about the connections it makes ?

What do you consider to be America ( or your own country ) staple food ?

What makes it a national staple ?

Is there such a thing as any one national cuisine ?

If so , how would you describe it ?

If not , explain . How might a novel such as My Year of Meats change how readers think about a topic , situation , STEPHANIE 731 or relationship ?

How might it their behaviour or actions ?

Exercises Food in Popular Culture In pairs or small groups , select a food that has been featured in popular culture . List all of the times you ve encountered that food in movies , television shows , music , and describe how it was depicted . Was the food used to convey information or meaning in a way ?

Were those meanings similar or conflicted ?

Did the food item symbolize or represent anything outside of itself ?

Record and share your findings with the larger group . Close Reading Food Essay Select a food featured in a literary text and conduct a close ing . Paying close attention to just one food item or category , sider how imagery , setting , diction , syntax , point of view , form , characterization , style , symbolism , and figurative language are used in relation to that food . Try to branch outward from your close reading to make new discoveries , with the aim of arriving at new conclusions about your chosen food and literary text . In a essay , provide a sustained close reading of one food featured in an individual passage from a text you have read in full . Your analysis should answer the following questions What is the food you have chosen to study within this sage ?

732 MEAT MADE MANIFEST How is it used in this passage ?

What does the passage explicitly say ?

Is there meaning beneath or beyond the explicit message ?

What is ( are ) the implicit meaning ( How do the writer imagery , diction , and syntax tribute to that meaning ?

What specific examples in the passage support these observations ?

How could this food symbolize the entire work ?

Could this food serve as a little what taking place in the whole work ?

How ?

What themes running through the book are evoked explicitly and implicitly by this food ?

What questions does this food raise about the story being told ?

What conclusions can be drawn from your close reading of this food ?

Additional Resources Adams , Burger . 2018 . Object Lessons . New York Academic . A . 2013 . Global Appetites American Power and the Literature of Food . New York Cambridge University Press . 2019 . Red Meat Republic A History ofHow Beef Changed America . Princeton , Princeton University Press . STEPHANIE 733

Vester , 2015 . A Taste Food and American Identities . land , CA University of California Press . References , 2010 . Bodily Natures Science , Environment , and the Material Self . Indiana University Press . Goldberg . and Falcone . 1999 . Effects of diethylstilbestrol on reproductive function , Fertility and Sterility 72 ( 1985 . The Hispanic on the History of Rodeo , of Sport History 12 ( Langston , 2010 . Toxic Bodies Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES . New Haven Yale University Press . 1981 . DES The Complete Story . New York Martins Press . 1967 . The Medium is the Massage . CA Gingko Press . 734 MEAT MADE MANIFEST