Nikekey.com

Encamping The Mind In M.T. Anderson's "Feed"

Like the glaze-inducing opening of the ubiquitous "What I Did Over Spring Break" essay, M.T. Anderson opens his dystopian novel, Feed, with his undiscerning teen protagonist, saying "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck"(3).  The novel's generalities and bleakness are woven with references to Nazis, fatal civil disobedience, and societal brainwashing in future America. In Anderson's novel, high-schoolers vacation on the moon via flying cars, advertisements for the hippest cyberpunk slamdance club are piped directly into the brain, and everyone monitors each other's movements even when seemingly alone: all done by the feed.  The feed advances fascist rule in a new world order aimed at American youth; fabricated not by barbed-wired fences and cyanide showers, the feed instead is a consumer-driven concentration camp, enslaving humanity with wires and broadband in lieu of ball and chain.

Titus, Feed's teenaged narrator, uses "like" where there is no simile, resorts to swear words to avoid specifics, and finds anything boring if it is not fed by the feed, a cyberpunk internet-like cerebral implant that broadcasts corporate sponsored entertainment.  The cycle of consumption in Feed has powered the corporations to own even the schools.  Titus says, "School™ is not so bad now, not like back when my grandparents were kids, when the schools were run by the government, which sounds completely like, Nazi, to have the government running the schools" (109).

School has been trademarked by corporations and infiltrated by capitalistic entities, in Titus' view, that saved students from government rule, which is compared to Nazism.  Titus' use of this loaded term illustrates how he does not truly understand either the current state of the world or historical contexts for state control. The etymology of Nazism generally means right-wing authoritarianism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online.

Despite Titus claims that the feed supposedly helps students become "supersmart" (47), his assessment of past government-run schools is inaccurately portrayed as Nazism. (The O.E.D explains authoritarianism as authoritarianism as favorable "to the principle of authority as opposed to that of individual freedom.")

Titus' opinion of individual freedom is a product of corporate intervention and reengineered history:

Back then, it was big boring, and all the kids were meg null, because they didn't learn anything useful, it was all like, da da da da, this happened in fourteen ninety-two, da da da, da, when you mix like, chalk and water, it makes nitroglycerin, and that kind of shit? And nothing was useful. (109)

Meg and null are slang for mega and boring, respectively.  Insensibly lacking concision, Titus' redundancy of "big" and "boring" (along with the use of "like") are indicative of his (sub par) English education.  Beyond language, he reduces the historical significance in Christopher Columbus discovering America to "this," and he botches the science behind nitroglycerin with failing to recall that Alfred Nobel added chalk to nitroglycerin in order to stabilize it for use in dynamite.

The choices to cite these as Titus' examples for "boring" facts are also historical events leading to genocide.  In Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America, a legal brief by Colorado State Judge Ward Churchill, the author explains perceptions of Columbus (and his discovery) leading to a "New World" while de-populating entire native tribes:

It has been contended by those who would celebrate Columbus that accusations concerning his perpetration of genocide are distortive "revisions" of history. Whatever the process unleashed by his "discovery" of the "New World," it is said, the discoverer himself cannot be blamed. Whatever his defects and offenses, they are surpassed by the luster of his achievements; however "tragic" or "unfortunate" certain dimensions of his legacy may be, they are more than offset by the benefits even for the victims of the resulting blossoming of a "superior civilization" in the Americas. (Churchill, 1994)

The "offset benefits" cited by Churchill as having blossomed a "superior civilization" are prescient extrapolations that result in America's technology in Feed, the significance of which is now lost in Titus' education being filtered in order to maintain the power of the State.  Churchill connects Nazism to Columbus by adding:

Essentially the same arguments might be advanced with regard to Adolf Hitler: Hitler caused the Volkswagen to be created, after all, and the autobahn. His leadership of Germany led to jet propulsion, significant advances in rocket telemetry, laid the foundation for genetic engineering. Why not celebrate his bona fide accomplishments on behalf of humanity rather than "dwelling" so persistently on the genocidal by-products of his policies? (Churchill, 1994)

 

The connections between advancement and genocide are argued as viewing technology as an impact with positive benefits outweighing the loss of life.  Ironically, Titus sees the public school system as backward and antiquated along with grandparents and Nazis; however, it is the current school system that perpetuates a subtler trend of genocide for the sake of technological advancement such as upcars (jet propulsion), rocket telemetry (vacations on the moon), and genetic engineering (the feed controlling the limbic system).

The violent pinnacles of world history are also rooted in Titus' unconscious invocation of Alfred Nobel (for whom the Peace award is famously named). Nobel's discovery that chalk stabilizes dynamite for transport led to technological advances in colonization, and arguably World War I.  A French newspaper labeled Nobel the "merchant of death" (Golden, 2000).

Just as Churchill suggests advances came through Nazism, Titus sees corporations through a prophetic lens: "Now that School™ is run by the corporations, it's pretty brag [worthy], because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feed" (101).  Solidifying the self-sustaining cycle of perpetual consumption, the feed, supplied by corporations, teaches children how to shop, buy, and use.

Titus says:

It's good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money, because taking care of children, they care about America's future. It's an investment in tomorrow. (101)

 

Feed's society perpetuates the capitalist continuum with seeing it as an "investment" (101).  However, seeing the American future as a time when citizens will be perfect consumers is arguably parallel to current real life trends, with New York City charter schools funded by Wall Street and public school funding being slashed across the nation (Boston Globe).

Titus explains his "utopian" school:

When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for free, [...Now all we learn is] to find bargains and what's the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom. (110)

 

Titus' skewed retrospective take on the public school system is similar to the fodder for "teacher-in-the-hood" genre movie like Dangerous Minds and The Principal, but he takes it a step further by singling out English teachers, painting them as useless; his specific reference to corrupt English teachers is eerily echoed in the diminishing importance of grammar and language as depicted in Feed.

The mislabeling continues when Titus later instructs his girlfriend, Violet, to avoid the news because it is depressing. He says, "You got to believe in the people, it's a democracy, we can change things". This followed up on the same page:

She was like, It's not a democracy. […] A republic. It's a republic. […] If it was a democracy, everybody would have to decide about everything. […Voting through the feed wouldn't work because] only about seventy-three percent of Americans have feeds. (112)

The access to the feed blurs the picture of a democracy and underscores the lost understanding of basic civics and government methodology.  Far from being a problem only in fictional dystopia, today's America faces similar problems. A 2006 report by the Brennen Center for Justice at NYU School of Law found that people with lower incomes are less likely to vote; for example, in 2000, as many as 22 million individuals—11% of the nation—did not vote because they lacked proper identification due to the inability to purchase legal photo identification. In Feed, the disenfranchised and the poor are left without a voice. Even more frightening is that, as later revealed in the book, those who lack affluence and consumer conformity will suffer fatal ramifications. In other words, the corporate-controlled country requires citizens to assimilate or die.

In Feed's limbo of adolescence, the teenager is between his/her birth (when affluent babies receive the feed) and death.  This limbo is analogous to Nancy Lesko's explanation of a teen's expectant time, which plays off of writings by Stephen Kern, Allison James and Alan Prout:

Children and youth are both imprisoned in their time (age) and out of time (abstracted), and they are thereby denied power over decisions or resources. Teenagers cannot go backward to childhood nor forward to adulthood "before their time" without incurring derogatory labels, for example, "immature," […] The dominant concepts regarding youth's position in the western societies, "development" and "socialization," make it impossible for youth to exercise power over life events or to represent themselves, since they are not fully developed or socialized. (123)

 

 

Titus' distortion of historical fact is coupled with his grandparents through generalizations such as da  da  da  da in order to distance himself from being pegged as immature.  The school, via the feed, has promoted the future—America's future—as the focus and pathway to successful manhood.  For example, a commercial broadcast on the feed shows Titus' dream upcar zooming over a tribe riding camelback through the Arabian Desert.

Someone once said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich guy to get into heaven. […] Yeah, sure. Now we know that the "eye of the needle" is just another name for a gate in Jerusalem—and with the Swarp XE-11's mega-lepton lift and electrokinetic gyrostasis, you can flip ninety degrees to the ground in one-point-two seconds—so getting thought the gate just won't be a problem anymore. […slogan reads] You can take it with you. (157)

 

The "someone" was Jesus Christ in Mark 10:25: [Jesus said], "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."  The advertisement generically manipulates a religious quote in order to assert that "rich is good," and feeds the "dominant position" of western adults and sets the bar for the teenager.  Through technology, corporations can market to Titus on an individual basis by capturing his comparative shopping done on the feed. "Making your dreams into hard fact" is the slogan for FeedTech, the supplier for the feed (155).

Corporations controlling both the message and the access to that fuels the sustainability of ongoing profiteering.  This means that Feed's generations are slowly being stripped away of what makes them human psychologically—diversity, critical thinking, emotional responses—in order to maintain the physiological aspects of humanity to ensure ongoing consumption.  This virtual colonialism pervades society classically without needing physical boarders, instead relying on real estate of the mind, Lesko writes, "The system of colonialism kept certain knowledge invisible and trumpted other ideas constantly; that is, colonialism kept social structural inequities muted, while colonized people appeared as the rational source of a colonial order" (124).  Titus thinks America is a democracy when over a quarter of the country does not have access to the feed; however, the facts are muted in order to void them altogether as his generation (and the possible next) become adults.  In short, Titus does not use proper English, and does not use accurate details to support his worldview because he and his fellow middle-class classmates are taught that it does not matter.

Details in Titus' present are marginalized for the sake of furthering the colonialist agenda. Individuals throughout the book use m-chat, an instant messaging method through the feed, to communicate personal thoughts or feelings.  The panoptic civilization is crowded with people seemingly always nearby, and feelings are expressed, especially between Violet and Titus, though m-chat rather than vocalized out loud.  The rationale suggests that the teens think these temporal conversations are private and the feed only picks up on conversation spoken aloud; for example, the teens speak about Coca-Cola together in a group discussion in order to trick the feed into recording that they are really into Coke, hoping to win a contest for a year supply of the soda (129).  However, when Titus m-chats sex with Violet, details such as penis size cause the feed to advertise "20 Hot Sex Tips for Girls" (189).

In addition, someone on the feed intercepts and leaks a chat by the President, resulting in spin control the President calling a feed-resisting leader a " big shithead" (119).  By interrupting an individual processing of information that might evoke critical thinking, the advertising and news spin is propaganda distracting consumers from anything that may threaten consumption and the financial system that keeps the feed alive.

The "invisible knowledge," however, is not regulated to just institutions, as Titus' parents debate over m-chat, invisible to their son, whether to buy Titus an upcar.  Once they agree that he is old enough and should have a car, they allow him to choose one.  The offer comes just as Titus expresses the awkwardness he feels about courting Violet to his mother.  The parent's strategy is to pull Titus' focus away from his feelings, and later the hacking attack during spring break, works at first as a diversion from Titus reflecting on real human emotions, instead steering him toward focusing on adulthood; he is presented with advertisements from the feed immediately, and is offered the choice between a sporty or family-type vehicle. Only after Violet accuses Titus of getting the car as a reward for being in the hospital and alluding to the hacker's mysterious death, canceling out any need for a trial, does he pick the family-friendly vehicle in an effort to look less "spoiled" and more mature (117-123).  The disposal of evidence—potentially condemning testimony from the hacker—and the purchase of the car divert attention from the omnipotent power held by the corporations.

Society's fate horrifically descends into the catastrophic in Feed; gaping body lesions, first marketed as a fad that teens opt into with surgical incisions, become a norm as humans genetically become robots with organs without questioning it. Language is sponsored by corporations, resulting in one teenager ending every sentence with the word "Nike." People are frozen alive, stuck due to a feedback loop caused by nostalgia for the very moment they are in, for memory exists only as recorded archives without a sense of emotion accompanying them; worse yet, these people are abandoned and face destruction because they are not thinking about the future enough.  Humanity, that philosophy which makes us human, is on course to be annihilated.

Dystopian books similar to Feed, like 1984, We, and Brave New World often end darkly to inspire us to change. Lesko writes, "In extreme conditions, those dwelling in expectant time lose altogether the connection with temporalness and with a purposive sense of past, present, and future. (130)"  On her deathbed, Violet writes out her list of things she wish she could do before she dies; one of them being a fantasy referencing the Holocaust, "[I'll tell my grandkids] how their great-great-grandfather fled Germany just before the Second World War. He was a homosexual and he had to wear a pink triangle on his arm. He got to America and married a pretty Marxist candy striper to get citizenship […] My grandkids will ask me what a candy striper is (232)."  The emphasis on the candy striper when questions like what a "Marxist" is or why a homosexual had to wear a pink triangle is the sort of lost "temporalness" lost by a whitewashed education where history becomes irrelevant, or, in Feed's conclusion, deadly.

The reality of our times sheds light on how real dystopian fiction can be.  However, when Lesko wrote Act Your Age! in 2001, a year before Feed was published, she was hesitant to go as far as to directly link adolescence to the Holocaust even though they have similarities, "Confinement in the seemingly interminable present, the waiting for something to happen, the sense that others know your past and future while you remain in the dark—all of these characteristics of youths times do not add up to the Holocaust. (130)" Recently, the Texas board of education voted to make the social studies textbooks more conservative.  The Washington Post reporting on March 18, 2010, "The curriculum plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War."  The article explains that the impact of the Texas decision has ramifications across the United States because Texas is one of the largest purchasing entities of textbooks; therefore, the publisher will meet the demands while other states will not be able to afford their influence on the book's content. Let's hope that Titus' story "set against a backdrop of America in its final days" does not become a fulfilled prophecy (297).

 

 

Works Cited

 

Anderson, MT. Feed. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2004.

Churchill, Ward. "History Not Taught Is History Forgot: Columbus' Legacy of Genocide." Thistle 9.11 (1994). Print.

Citizens Without Proof. NYU School of Law. New York: New York University, 2006. Print.

Golden, F.: "The worst and the brightest", Time, 16 October 2000.

Lesko, Nancy. Act Your Age!. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2001.

Washington Post. 18 Mar. 2010. Web. .

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Chuck Griffith curated high-art short subject films for Best of Breed: Vol. 1 and served as a producer/director for commercial film and television before becoming a novelist. He holds a BA in English and Comparative Literature and an MA in English Education from Columbia University.

Inspirational Quotes