After hearing from a few classmates that Feed by M.T. Anderson was a bit of a drag, I began dreading the idea of going through another novel that I wouldn't enjoy (Kim), but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Feed has proved to be interesting and really enjoyable. We have a narrator, in the first person, which made it really easy to connect with the story.
Feed is about a few bored teenagers, both girls and guys, who take a trip to the moon for the weekend only to find that "The goddamn moon" has "rockiness, and the suckiness, and the craters all full of broken shit'" (Feed, pg.4). They visit a few places like Ricochet Lounge (Ricochet, defined as a hit that rebounds once or more times off a surface) where there is "no-grav". The interesting thing about this novel is we are not introduced to the narrator for a little while but I got the sense that he's a guy from his obsession with hooking up with girls. The novel does a good job of showing the reader that these are hormonally charged teenagers who have yet to get sense of what life is really about like when the narrator says "maybe Loga and I could hook up again, if we didn't find anyone else, like on the moon or whatev"(Feed, pg.12); it's in line with a true teenage boy's train of thought.
Written in 2002, Feed seems to be ahead of its time. It is a world where internet feeds are directly imported into one's brain, and the internet controls your life. It is almost as though M.T. Anderson is warning us about the effects of not only the internet but the advertisements that control what we drink, eat, drive...etc. It is incredible to see what M.T. Anderson predicts in a time where the internet was not as prominent as it is today and Facebook and Instagram seized to exist. The flying cars and the weird food choices like " some fancy IV's from room service but they gave us all headaches" (Feed, pg.9) confirms how ahead of OUR time this novel is.
The two things I noticed about this novel is the language and gender stereotypes. Although the novel is ahead of it's time, it is still aligned with the gender stereotypes we have today; guys with raging hormones watching football and girls being chatty and catty. The second thing I noticed was the language used; it feels like this novel was written for an audience much older than a 14 year old. I can't seem to imagine my (non-existing) 14-year old son or daughter reading such a sexually driven book with terms like the F-bomb. Feed to me feels like a diary of some sort; the super short chapters make it seem as though the narrator jotted things down as his days went on with titles that helped him remember what happened that day. Do you think this could be read like a diary?
This novel has proven to have many great points with a very interesting story line. I look forward to completing my reading and hopefully begin to understand the message Anderson was trying to relay to his reader.
I was somewhat put off by the gender stereotypes as well, particularly of girls.The girls go off to the bathroom to change their hairstyles multiple times a day to keep up with up-to-the-minute fashion while the boys do not. The girls are catty and jealous. They are the nurturers (at least as nurturing as anyone is in this novel). For example, Quendy reminds Titus that he should try to understand what is going on with Violet, that "she's the one who this is happening to."
ReplyDeleteI don't think the gendered differences are extreme enough to be intended as a statement of any kind. Anderson seems to go over the top with his messages: consumerism is bad, technology is dangerous, education is important. There is no analogous message about gender here. Instead, gender appears to be unaddressed in this novel, which suggests that there is nothing wrong with these stereotypes. That bothers me.