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In the chapter “Behind the Counter” Schlosser creates an image of the ideal place which can be compared with fast food idyll. Schlosser underlines that the fast food problem in society, culture, and identity is presenting all Americans with profound dilemmas- that are badly in need of clarification and resolution of real life values and ideals Schlosser wonders whether it is politico-cultural choice for citizens or expansion of the fast food empire. Thesis I agree with Schlosser that Fast Food Empire hides many drawbacks and disadvantages unnoticed by the population but changing its core values and cultural traditions.
Schlosser sets the task of clarifying the dynamics of culture through a discussion of what he regards as fundamental presumptions at its core. First, there is the presumption, by which fast food commonly and easily comes to substitute for American life style. This discursive shift has resulted in a cultural politics that is patronizing to the population and fast food. Schlosser’s second presumption is what he associates with fast food proliferation and expansion, whereby Americaness has come to be associated with fast food bars. “Every few miles clusters of fast food joints seem to repeat themselves. You can drive for twenty minutes, pass another fast food cluster and feel like you’ve gotten nowhere” (Schlosser cited Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 43). In this description, there is acute irony and desperation portraying a region as fast food paradise.
Having diagnosed the sickness at the heart of the national culture, Schlosser then moves on to make some suggestions as to how these cultural-political dilemmas increase (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 44). Schlosser unveils true nature and business goals of McDonald’s corporation as a test area for “other types of restaurant technology” (Schlosser 66). The need for unskilled work, especially in late afternoon and evening shopping times, opens the way to after-school and weekend jobs for millions of Americans. No particular prior training or experience is necessary in these jobs. These mature concerns are offset by the amount of fast food and snack foods consumers bought–burgers, fries, corn chips, ice cream, cookies, soft drinks.
He puts his hopes, not in regional or national futures, but in a new urbanism, with cosmopolitan and multicultural possibilities. Schlosser argues that the logic of economic and cultural changes deprives people a chance to choose their life style and even thinking. Using such symbols as Academy Boulevard, Schlosser invites readers to reflect on the significance of culture and fast food values. There are those who now seek to mobilize the ideal of fast food, invoking ‘a core of ideas around which appeals to the “natural” heart of life can be based. Fast food, the symbol of cultural modernization becomes devolution, which contradict the old logic of national identity and uniqueness of American nation.
In sum, in this excerpt Schlosser gives an account of the significance of fast food in the construction of the national culture. The issue of fast food remains a central one in America: for some, it remains crucial to the maintenance of an enduring’ national home: and for others, it represents a fundamental obstacle to the creation of more accommodating and cosmopolitan cultural order.
Works Cited
Lunsford, A. A., Ruszkiewicz, J. The Presence of Others. Bedford Books, 1999.
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