Geek and Supermarket Pastoral Culture

Oswalt defines the words geek, nerd, and otaku in almost the same way. He says that they mean you are not a conformist to the social norm or what is widely accepted by the society as a whole. He goes on to describe why people are so called “outcasts” and form their own cliques to have somewhat of a safe haven where they can all essentially be nerds together. He starts off defining these terms en route to get to the larger picture of the essay. As he states near the middle of the essay, everyone of this generation and generations to come are essentially “otaku,” we are all nerds in our own unique way even though we may not view it that way. He says that every show we routinely watch on TV no matter how popular or the music that we listen to over and over again puts us all into a category that back in the 80’s would have been classified as a nerd. Oswalt says that nerds are basically classified on a basis of activities and objects that make them happy and bring them joy. So just because I have seen Dave Matthews Band sixteen times in concert let alone ninety-three total bands live or the fact that I am obsessed with cars, does that make me a nerd? I strongly agree with his point that we are all nerd in some way shape or form. Just because people are into card games or video games doesn’t make them an outcast. These things are just something they like just as I like concerts and cars. I feel that “geekiness” has become somewhat normal in today’s society but no one actually realizes it. When we classify someone as a nerd we put them into a group based on what they like. Each and every one of us can be placed into a similar group based on our likes and interests. It is just a simple fact of life that this happens.

            Supermarket pastoral is a term given by Pollan that describes the market of organic foods today. Pollan describes the grocery store as a place where literacy is important in understanding where your food is coming from. He says it is much like a pastoral narrative, a type of narrative about animals that you would see in children’s books or movies. The labels on the food depict scenes of meadows and green pastures where the animals are free to roam to solidify the consumer’s expectations for the good. The reason these labels came about was due to the public’s growing concern of how “wholesome” the food was. Organic foods have been rapidly taking over the shelves in food markets and stores further expanding the availability of organic food to consumers. Organic agriculture is the world’s fastest growing food sector, competition in which producer’s use these scenes and images on the labels to compete for which good is of the highest quality so consumer’s buy their product. Today, the organic food industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United Sates. The culture of organic food started out small such as wheat pasta and things like that and expanded into a feeding frenzy of organic food. Organic foods of that past such as pasta have grown into a market that has a little of everything such as microwaveable organic TV dinners that Pollan mentioned. The growing concern of the public has made organic food take over the consumer market today. The organic food industry is only going to expand in the future with more “Supermarket Pastoral” and more and more organic foods being placed on the grocery store shelf.