Oh Hey Grocer Boy, I Want Your Job!

The French really know how to romanticize everything, and the 2007 movie “The Grocer’s Son” is no exception. Set within the idyllic countryside of Provence, France, director Eric Guirado provides the viewer with a window into a lifestyle they could only dream of having. Basically, the main protagonist, Antoine Sforza (Nicolas Cazale), left the countryside to pursue a life in the city of Lyons. Furthermore, he refused to take over the family business as a travelling grocer and because of this is father despises him and he has a rather tense relationship with his brother Francois. But, he receives a call from his mother that his father has had a stroke and rushes to her side to console her. This is where he is asked to come help out with the family business while his father is recuperating and he hesitantly agrees to help his mother out because regardless of the familial strike between Antoine and his brother and father, him and his mother have maintain a good relationship. On a side note, he is friends with a young woman named Claire (Clotilde Hesme) who he is obviously in love with but is hesitant to commit to. Anyways, he brings this young lady with him and they both take over the family business of the travelling grocer. Staying in his mother gorgeous country cottage in the hillsides of Provence, they drive around delivering fresh French produce to the charming French elderly. The father mends from his ailments and returns where the strained familial relations between father and son are really emphasized to the viewer, also; how this family is orientated around the patriarch and how the mother is depicted as a woman that could not fend for herself without the aid of a man.

                Applying a theoretical framework to “The Grocer’s Son” I begin with a Marxist approach. This movie’s central focus is that of the working class and how Antoine’s life becomes consumed with maintaining the family business and constantly providing for the consumer, with the consumer being the elderly. However, there is not in this movie some strict distinction of social classes with the big aristocratic French man bossing around the French working class but this movie’s central focus is that of the family business and how the elderly of countryside depend on the groceries and produce being delivered by Antoine on a daily basis. Therefore, there is a product that is being consumed to produce capital in which the Sforza family lives on and the family revolves around this business.

                 Another framework that can be applied to this movie is the feminist theory which mainly revolves around the depiction of the mother in the movie. She is portrayed as being unable to handle the taking over the family business herself because she is a woman, so the father urges her to persuade Antoine to take over. Furthermore, for the majority of the movie she is shown either cooking or cleaning, playing in to the common stereotype of the position of a female within the familial household. When the father returns to the household, mended from his ailments, his treatment of her is somewhat shocking. He bosses her around and complains about his food either not being cooked properly or that it is inedible because it is cold. Thus, the mother is portrayed as the cook in the family because that is the suitable position for her, not working in the family business because she is apparently not capable of doing so. I mean, in one scene she is shown at the counter of the family store but other than that she resides in the kitchen, always cleaning vegetables or slaving over the stove. Unfortunately, she is depicted as though not being capable of having a position in the family business, which I find somewhat ludicrous because she is a perfectly healthy middle aged woman perfectly capable of working. But, again, this is just my opinion and her stereotypical “house-wife” depiction is probably what Guirado intended.

Thusly, proving to be not the best movie to watch during times of intense stress due to overwhelming scholastic responsibilities because for the most part, Antoine travels around the picturesque countryside of Provence in his family’s van delivering some of the most gorgeous fresh produce I have ever laid my eyes on, which, undeniably spiraled me into a fit of jealous and left me asking, why can’t this be my life? Regardless, the rather large misogynistic undertones of the movie are apparent upon viewing “The Grocer’s Son” and the viewer is left feeling somewhat sorry for dear Antoine because he is depicted as someone that never really lived up to the expectations of their father. But, for a sweet one and half hours I was projected into the sweet serene tranquility of the Provence countryside which left me wondering on how I could acquire his job. 

Weaving the Connective Threads of Radio....

It seems like the radio has been around since the dawn of time. I remember my grandmother blasting the oldies on her kitchen radio as she prepared Sunday brunch and I never really thought of it as anything more than a dusty old box with various knobs that blasted some strange music which I was never very fond of. Also, being a girl that relies quite heavily on her iPod for all her music listening needs, I never really thought twice about the radio. But what has been brought to my attention is that this seemingly dusty old box fashioned with various knobs is so much more than just a music player but a mechanism that could serve a community on a much greater level than just supplying the masses with listening entertainment. If you think of the radio in terms of it being an alternative space in which people can voice their opinion to all levels of society from a private space, the implications around radio start to be seen in a different context. Therefore, the following account will demonstrate that radio programming not only reaches a larger community because many deal with literacy issues as a large obstacle but also that it can be utilized as a community facilitator. To elaborate on that notion even further, through the medium of electromagnetic airwaves, radio can be used a connective links that binds the oppressed together through the powerful agent of voice.

            This notion of radio as a community facilitator was illustrated in a lecture given by Tal Nitsen regarding women’s radio programming in Guatemala. Given that Guatemala is a male oriented country, female radio programming provides a platform for women to express their own opinions and discuss current events with other women to women of the community. Thus, women were developing their own alternative spaces as communicators. In Guatemala,  news orientated discussions are something usually reserved for the male domain and now women were provided with a chance to voice their own opinions regarding some important current affairs, such a politics or world issues. Furthermore, it was women speaking to women of the community, therefore; linking them together in a collective and facilitating a collective identity. Most importantly, Guatemalan female radio programming created a public forum in which the female voice could now be heard.

            A second example of the connective power of radio program was demonstrated in Daniel Fisher’s article “Mediating Kinship: Country, Family and Radio in Northern Australia”. Fisher argues that indigenous radio programs such as TEABBA are using music request shows to link family members with those that are incarcerated. Thus, a family member could call in to the show and request a song for a loved one in jail and could also provide a shout out to that member to go along with it. Also, Fisher claims that country songs were quite popular requests because of the particularly appropriate lyrics of some of them. According to Fisher, due to the postcolonial government, an excessive amount of indigenous have been incarcerated, a staggering twenty-one percent.  Also, indigenous radio programs can also be used to reach geographically dispersed networks of kin because it can reach remote areas of Australia. Thus, in the land down under, radio is really used instrumentally to link kinships together, whether incarcerated or separated, through an accessible medium. While preserving traditional indigenous values of keeping people together, radio programming fosters the ability for communication to the unreachable and also collapses the distance between the two parties, whether it be through Nanna Evie’s country song request for her boys in prison or a woman’s favorite Peppimenarti Band song. Garnering the most attention is Fisher emphasizing issues around Aboriginal incarceration and the dispersal of kin. Fisher reveals the staggering disadvantage indigenous communities are in the wider domain of Australian society while shedding light on notions of discrimination and unequal opportunity, thus;  Fisher’s article provides reader with a rather negative reflection of Australian society.

            In both instances discussed above, the dark oppressive underbelly of society is revealed, whether it be in Guatemala or Australia and the utilization of radio programming as a communicative instrument to link people together. Thus, the radio acquires a new form of agency by providing those discriminated or oppressive with a means to contact and create an active community using the voice or music as a means of liberation.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle That Media!

The repurposing of media for new contexts of use is no recent convention. Usually consisting of the re-presentation of one medium into the form of another, the media is divorced from its original representation to illicit a new set of aesthetics and cultural principles. In an article written by David Novak titled “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood”, the somewhat contentious nature of remediation is brought to the attention of the reader. Novak chooses the nineties band from San Francisco, The Heavenly Ten Stems, to illustrate the rather unstable platform of remediation practices. The band in question chose to, I guess you could say, cover the Bollywood song Jaan Pehechaan Ho which was first made famous in the 1965 Raja Nawathe Movie Gumnaam. Now, the song was initially remediated in the indie movie Ghost World, but according to Novak this was not perceived as an issue. The real issue surfaced when the song was performed by the San Franciscan band because apparently it was more of a mockery than a tribute to the original sparking a rather large protest from the audience at the performance. So one seemingly large question must be answered to make sense of all this, what is acceptable remediation and what is unacceptable? A major underlying principle for all types of remediation is, I believe, that the end product must be a tribute to the original, the final product as a mechanism for cultural enrichment and that it does not detract for the original source.

            One example of acceptable remediation that immediately jumped out at me was the infamous Andy Warhol and his remediation of iconic American products into works of art. The best examples of this being his Campbell’s soup can art or the Coca Cola logos. He was turning these genuinely ordinary but well known consumerist icons into pieces of high art which in turn catalyzed a new artistic movement referred to as Pop Art. Thus, his remediation of American icons made a profound change and impact in the culture of the art world and Warhol’s art was seen at the center of this shift. Furthermore, Warhol and his art are seen to have influenced an entire era in the sixties, even including music. Thusly, his remediation was a mechanism of cultural enrichment because his art spawned an entire artistic movement that inspired other artists to follow in his footsteps, such as Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Claes Oldenburg. Furthermore, his art elevated the mundane aspect of the original into high art which affected millions. Additionally, his art was a direct reflection of culture and its consumerist indulgences.

            An unacceptable example of remediation is the ever-so lovely Adult Swim cartoon Robot Chicken. If you are intrigued by pop-culture references melded with homoerotica and spastic interludes of sex, this is the show for you. In a nutshell, the show uses the medium of Claymation to parody movies, television shows or people. One particularly offensive and shocking example is “Mario and Luigi in Vice City”. Drawing their inspiration from Grand Theft Auto, undeniably one to the most violence video games in history, the dynamic duo are seen engaging in several graphic violent scenes, driving cars erratically while under the influence, indulging in drugs as well as several hookers. Thus, in the creators attempt to provide entertainment to the masses, they have taken an iconic video game duo that many associate with their childhood and spawned them into violent drug using hooligans that appear to partake in the company of prostitutes. This example does not in any shape, way, or form enrich culture but rather serves as a reflection of everything that is bad with in society and depicting it in an almost desirable fashion to the viewer. Thusly, in this specific example of the repurposing of media, the remediation definitely detracts from the original in a negative way and is essentially making a mockery of it.

            Therefore, the following account has attempted to established what some of the underlying principles are in determining acceptable and unacceptable remediation practices. Essentially, if the repurposed product has a positive impact on culture and although the media is divorced from the original, it does not negatively detract from it. But, most importantly, that the repurposed product is not offensive or derogatory to any race or echelon of society or depicts unsavory lifestyle choices as something that is acceptable or desirable, which appears to be the goal in the Robot Chicken cartoon.