Kenner, R (Producer,Director) and Scholsser, E. (Producer). (2008). Food, Inc.[DVD].
Food, Inc. is a documentary that focuses on the way food is mass produced in our country, for our consumption. Often the process is detrimental to our health, the workers health and the health of plants and animals. Antibiotics are given to chicken, cows, pork, and so on to prevent diseases they are exposed to from being packed together. Plants are treated with chemicals to mass produce which we the consumer ingest. Diseases like E. Coli 157:H7 have experienced huge mutation problems and not just in the cattle or other animals, but from the run off into water supplies for irrigation. This is proving to infect spinach, and apple juice as well. People have died from this disease. The documentary further goes on to state that federal inpections are lacking and the health of Americans is largely ignored by regulators.
The most rewarding part of doing this interview was now having a story to share with the family about what life was like during WWII. I know this is not a subject we ever discussed at Thanksgiving Dinner. So I am going to print out the story and share it. The other rewarding aspect was just spending time with Aunt Peg. I am always mindful that she is 84 and you never know how much time you have. I love her very much and always have a blast with her.
The most difficult aspect of this project was keeping Aunt Peg on task. She has so m so many stories and she did as was predicted in class for interviewees, she would tend to ramble. The best way around that was to really focus the questions on the second interview to get the story straight and in a sequential order.
During the first interview she was very consious of the recorder so I just let her go and made notes as I went to ask her more specific questions. The second interview went much smoother and quicker.
Another difficult aspect was deciding how to tell her story so that it was personal. I couldn't figure out the voice of the story. By "exchanging" letters the story comes across personal and touching.
I think the two biggest themes in my story are Patriotism and fear.
Fear:
"I was at a friend's house when President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. And I said it was frightening time because of Germany and Adolph Hitler was really a frightening person and I was scared to death because of him going into France and thinking of England and I was afraid he was going to come to this country, because he was such a scary person." Our country had great fear of Adolph Hitler. My Aunt and her friends really felt that there was a real possibilty of him reaching this country. They saw and heard of his atrocious behavior and they had every right to be nervous.
Patriotism:
"It was a really scary time and all the men went, all the boys. There was no "I don't want to go," or runnin to Canada. They went and all the women went to work for the war effort." "I had several soldiers to my mother's house for dinner.And they enjoyed it. You had to keep up their morale. I danced with them at the USO, I baked Cookies and sent them over, I wrapped bandages for the Red Cross and I sold War Bonds. Everybody was behind everybody else. Nobody wanted war but beins there was war we were happy to do our share."
Both of these quotes show how patriotic and supportive the people at home were of this war and the war effort. My Aunt sacrificed for the effort and all Americans had great respect for the President and wanted to do all they could to take care of this country. The people at home felt that the soldiers were protecting them so they had to willingly do all they could back in the States. It is interesting to note that that even though she quit school, went to work at Campbell's Soup, joined the USO and focused her life on making the lives of soldiers easier she never felt that she was sacraficing anything. The climate of the country at that time was such that everyone had a responsibility and they took it seriously and without bitterness. In fact thay did it out of love for their country and their soldiers.
RSS Feed