Resist The Feed: Part I
Last Monday I finished the book Feed by M.T. Anderson. For the past week I have spent hours and hours trying to pull my collected thoughts into some semblance of order. It hasn’t been an easy task and I know that I have only begun to scratch the surface of what I want to say.
I tend to interact with my literature pretty personally (what’s the point of reading if you don’t?). I internalize what is going on. Make connections. Everything I read seems to relate to every other thing I have ever read, seen or heard. The side effect of this kind of approach is that finding a starting point for commentary can feel at times like a sisyphean task. I try to start at the beginning, but each time I discover my beginning, I realize that some event preceded that one and we are rolling back to the bottom of the hill and starting our way back up.
Feed takes place in an all too believable future. Forget Big Brother governments that rule exclusively through fear and intimidation. Watch what happens when corporations control our lives, exploiting all our emotions to turn us into better consumers. Complacency abounds when the toughest decision you have to make is which shirt to buy.
Told through the eyes of an average, ordinary teenager named Titus, Feed doesn’t deal strictly in stereotypes and generalities. Anderson’s teenagers are people. He has respect for them. And that reason alone is what will make this book required reading for all my future English classes.
The title Feed, refers to the system installed in the vast majority of Americans. It is like the Internet in your head. Not only is it the place that you chat with friends, watch television or movies and find all the information you need (sure beats that pesky need to exercise your brain and remember facts or think), it is also tied in to all your vital functions, even your memories. But its primary function is to make being a consumer easier than ever. As it analyzes your every thought, every impulse, every action, it takes that information to feed you the appropriate remedy or enhancement. “Buy this!” flashing in your brain 24 hours a day and always sounding like the voice of reason and clarity.
In this society, what makes you a valuable member is your ability to consume. Sound familiar? The environmental, psychological and spiritual consequences of this extreme world are tough to take. I find myself walking along the sidewalk now and noticing the blades of grass shooting up through cracks in the cement creeping outward and I just want to bend down and kiss them. I want to shout, “Hooray for you! Keep growing! Don’t let them stop you!”
Not everything is perfect in this future (she said facetiously). The poor are still marginalized (imagine that! people without the ability or desire to consume are considered unimportant? who would have ever thought!?) and the opportunities are reserved for those who have the means to access them. The worst part about this, is that the absolute destruction of the environment makes it impossible to hike into the wilderness and just drop off the grid. There is no place else to go. Not to mention the toxic conditions which people would rather tolerate than change, as long as they get to continue to live in their nice houses, buy their stuff and keep getting entertained.
The book is centered around American existence, but hints abound at the hatred which is felt throughout the globe toward the Americans. The good news, as far as I can see, is that the Earth itself will get extremely pissed off with us long before we can complete this vision and she’ll find her own ways to take care of the situation.
This jumbled mess doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I want to say. I’m not sure what is going to happen with this, but I’m not by any means done writing about it. There’s just too much. But whatever you do, go get this book from your local library. Read it. Give it to your favorite teenager, your friends, family members. And please, talk about it together.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:19 pm
I’ve heard about this book before but have not read it. You suggested we give it to our favorite teenager. This makes me interested in readability. Will 9th graders get it? Be able to understand it? I’m always looking for interesting outside reading books. Could you take a stab at reading level? Sounds like a modern 1984 or Brave New World sort of thing.
Here’s just one more book on my ever-growing list!