We have posted previously about how ethnic difference is made available for consumption through products (see here, here, and here). This product, Nestea’s red tea, suggests that you can consume other people, not just their culture.
Text:
Tasty and foreign, like we bottled an exchange student. Liquid awesomeness.
Via Shakesville.
yay, cannibalism!
I saw this one in the wild, and it didn’t bother me. Perhaps in part because the archetypical exchange student is European–Italian, French, Spanish, perhaps German or Russian–so there’s not quite the same level of “consuming someone else’s culture”. (After all, as you noted in the second of those posts, “‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ is applied to an enormous range of cultures spanning the globe that have little in common except not being from Western Europe or the U.S.”)
Perhaps, too, because the archetypical exchange student is hot; that may be a corollary of the fact that we exoticize the other, but, well, dude! foreign exchange students! (See, e.g., Better Off Dead, where the hero gives up on the hot blonde in favor of the French exchange student across the street.)
…wow.
Red Tea (Rooibos) is typically from Africa. This is not referring to European exchange students.
Well, in the most straight-forward sense, it’s probably not “referring” to any particular culture at all…or, if it is, it’s not referring to African culture. It’s unlikely that either the authors or the readers of this ad have any idea that all red tea is from Africa. If, indeed, it is. I have no idea. So to suggest something sinister here is a stretch.
Which brings me to:
I’m one of those non-sociologists who doesn’t take sociology seriously. (Note: this is not a challenge, nor an insult. Just laying my cards on the table. I could be wrong!) One major reason is because stuff like this discussion of this ad just seems…well…frivolous…trivial. I was impressed that the author of the original post at least noted that there was merely a “suggestion” that people could be consumed. It’s pretty clearly not what the ad intends to suggest. I mean, is it just me, or does the ad intend to be sexually suggestive? The consumption in question is not literal consumption.
This kind of stuff…bordering on “cultural studies”…just doesn’t seem to me to be serious inquiry. Just seems to be an opportunity to engage in idle chatter about the most superficial aspects of the culture.
So waddaya say? Is there a case to be made here that I’m missing?
@Winston Smith: It seems to me that outside of the hard sciences, everything is cultural studies after a certain point. So why not look at what’s going on in our current culture, and attitudes and ideas are around us?
I almost choked the first time I saw this ad. I live near a university whose exchange students are primarily Asian and Middle Eastern. Definitely rubs me the wrong way.
@Winston Smith
I understood the ad as sexually suggestive — that an exchange student is foreigh, and therefore, in essence, “tasty” attractive. Which is kind of obnoxious to me because it puts this essentialist exoticification of people from “foreign” places — if you’re not from here, you must be hot! And while some people might think that kind of flattery is to their advantage, I personally don’t like generalizations like that. (see Lance’s mention of “the other.”)
All of that is from my vaguely feminist cultural studies perspective. I would agree — “this kind of [sociological] stuff” is a part of cultural studies. But I don’t understand why sociology or cultural studies can’t be considered (by you) serious inquiries. Our culture and all cultures are very complex systems of how we communicate and value things and each other. While many (most, even) aspects of culture are very difficult to define and describe in absolute terms the way you can define and describe things in the hard sciences, I don’t think that makes culture any less important to analyze and attempt to understand. Certain aspects of culture are seemingly superficial but point to larger trends and behaviors, that in turn can influence certain social problems/inbalances/injustices/issues. Are you passively or actively engaged in the (cultural) world around you?
This is my verbose version of NL’s response. Does this make sense to you now?
Thanks. I certainly do appreciate the interesting and civil responses to what could easily be considered a hostile question.
I won’t press the point, but…and, again, this may seem hostile, but isn’t intended to be…though it *is* unavoidably critical (in the ordinary sense, not in the “critical theory” sense)… But: from the outside, it seems like this type of inquiry allows one to say pretty much whatever one wants. Normally in inquiry one formulates hypotheses and then bounces them off of the facts. In, say, literary criticism, however (for example), one starts with an interpretive hypothesis and then shows that one can interpret all evidence in light of that hypothesis. And e.g. “cultural studies” seems a lot like that. It seems to be a test of one’s own cleverness and willingness to nip and tuck the hypothesis rather than a test of whether there is any real tendency in the world to be as the hypothesis says it is. And since–to take one example–most folks who engage in it are left on the political spectrum…voila!…leftier hypotheses are continually “confirmed.”
(Let me note that I’m a liberal and a philosopher, not a conservative or a scientist…in case any of that matters…)
Okay, then. I also appreciate your responses and questions — because they are certainly questions I’ve had myself. Maybe the following is all rationalizations, but this is how I understand things.
I will say that cultural studies, media studies itself is a lot closer to literary criticism than the way the hard sciences develop and test hypotheses, but sociology and psychology practice methodologies of the hard sciences — you have a question about something, you conduct research about the subject with certain parameters and groups and whatnot, and you see how the results pertain to your theory/question and give a disclaimer on what might have be your margin of error. All the theory, I assume, comes from “saying whatever you want” from drawing conclusions either from particular cases or studies.
So it is a lot of “say what you want” and see if you can find it in the real world — but it’s okay because (I like to believe that) cultural studies allows for more than one interpretation of the “facts” of our culture. Anybody can say whatever they want, and if they analyze and back it up thoroughly, and get it published, then it’s legit, even if someone else has written an equally analyzed and researched work in the opposite opinion. To cultural studies, there are no “facts” — just texts and interpretations and signs and signifieds. It’s all very postmodern and perhaps logic defying.
Postmodernism doesn’t really give you anything stable to hold on, which can be very frustrating if you want something definitive. So I understand finding all of it really iffy. I personally like looking at things from a pretentious, pomo kind of view, so cultural studies makes a lot of sense of me. I don’t see how philosophy is that much different or doesn’t fit in, or at least I see its theories or beliefs as influenced/tainted by culture, and the same thing with science. For as many facts as we can discover and measure, what they mean to us is ultimately influenced by how we interpret them. If you look at the changes in scientific beliefs over history (particularly in relationship to religion and/or race), you can see the parallels in cultural shifts over history.
you’re not an exchange student unless you’re in high school. in college its called study abroad. i can’t believe how worked up you guys are about something you don’t understand. if you didn’t do high school exchange with Rotary International, AFS, or a similar program you have no clue what this advertisement is about.
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