Highlights from Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
The Cosmic Burrito
According to food writer and Los Angeles Times culture critic Gustavo Arellano, Mexican food has been assimilated and celebrated in the United States for 125 years. Tacos and burritos are America’s comfort food.
The celebration of Mexican food in America has caused a worldwide appetite for Mexican food, from Dubai to Australia, which has its own Taco Bell, called Taco Bill’s, which specializes in fish tacos.
Arellano observes that for over 100 years, many Americans who are anti-Mexican in their prejudices are unaware of the contradiction between their racism and their undying love of Mexican food. They compartmentalize, loving the food yet inexplicably disliking the people who make it, turning Mexicans into negative stereotypes while having a relentless desire for Mexican food.
Tortillas are the preferred food of NASA astronauts, so there is now the “Cosmic Burrito” and variations of Mexican food pop up all over America, including the muchaco, a taco made with ground beef and pita bread at the Taco Bueno restaurant chain.
Hot Cocoa Comes from Mexico
Arellano observes that traditional desserts made with cocoa and vanilla to make chocolate and vanilla desserts, including hot cocoa, come from 1700s Mexico when the Virgin Mary statues in the cathedrals had offerings of various chocolate and vanilla desserts. This vanilla was cultivated to perfection and copied by the Europeans in Pico de Orizaba, a vanilla region in Veracruz, which is in eastern Mexico.
As early as the 1500s, Spanish conquerors fell in love with Mexican foods made with corn or maize, which were made into various forms of masa cornmeal.
The Spaniards become obsessed with tortillas and tamales, the latter being a convenience food perfect for traveling with.
The Spanish invader Cortes demanded Mexican food in his court, and according to Arellano, this is the first documented case of cultural appropriation.
Moreover, the Spaniards introduced the Mexicans to wheat flour, which brought flour tortillas to the Mexican diet.
This is our first known case of fusion.
Chile Con Carne (soon to become Chili)
Arrellano observes that the first chili made with hot peppers and meat was around 1870 in the San Antonio region, not Texas, but pre-Texas: Tejas.
Chile became so popular that by the 1880s, you could already find it advertised in Hawaii and Washington D.C.
The world doesn’t understand how good Mexican food is. They take it for granted. This is one of Arellano’s main points.
Now Chile Con Carne is just “Chili.”
Tamalero
Tamales started to spread throughout America in the 1890s and were sold by European, Indian, and Arab immigrants who were often called “Mexicans.” These immigrants who sold the tamales on the streets were called Tamaleros, AKA “The Hot Tamale Man.”
They became part of American popular culture and folklore.
World Domination of the Taco in the 1950s
As big as tamales and chili were for about 70 years, they would be replaced by the world-dominating taco starting in the 1950s.
Arellano contributes this growth to a place in Orange County called Irvine, the birth of Taco Bell, founded by Glen Bell.
We now have many tacos including:
The soft-shell taco
The taco dorado (hard shell)
The taquito (flautas)
Tacos have exploded all over the world, including Sweden, Japan, and South Africa.
Birthplace of the American Taco and the Gateway Drug Argument
While Glen Bell popularized the taco, the birthplace of the American taco comes from downtown Los Angeles on Olvera Street, a tiny taco stand called Cielito Lindo, circa 1931.
The second place is in San Bernardino, the Mitla Cafe, established in 1937. The restaurant served hard-shell tacos packed with beef and shredded cheese: taco dorado con carne molida.
Glen Bell noticed the popularity of Mexican food among the white consumer base in the San Bernardino area, and he copied Mitla Cafe when he started various taco ventures before settling on Taco Bell.
The owners of Mitla Cafe and Gustavo Arellano defend Taco Bell with its phony “Mexican food” because it’s the “gateway drug” to real Mexican food.
We can call this the Gateway Drug Argument for your essay.
Challenges to Authenticity
In his book, Taco USA, Arellano tackles some challenges to the idea of authenticity in Mexican food:
Since the 1980s, many white chefs have become Mexican food “experts,” writing cookbooks, opening Mexican restaurants, and having TV shows featuring Mexican food.
There was a type of food from New Mexico called “Southwestern Cuisine,” which could often be pretentious “gourmet” dishes with some loose connection to Mexican food. Other times, the food is very good, featuring local ingredients like hatch chilies. The enduring food from Southwestern Cuisine is the breakfast burrito. The craze started to die in the 1990s.
Tex-Mex, a fusion that since the 1930s features fajitas and chili has been criticized as being inauthentic, “the lowest common denominator of Mexican food.” However, the actual term Tex-Mex wasn’t coined until the 1960s.
He compares the burrito to an encounter with God. The burrito is 5 pounds and filled with grilled chicken, carne asada, machaca, beans, rice, guacamole, and sour cream.
The rival to Los Angeles for burritos is San Francisco, the Mission District, a place called “El Faro,” the Lighthouse. These are called Mission Style burritos.
Arellano says his favorite burrito is the chile relleno burrito at Lucy’s Drive-In on Pico Blvd and La Brea in Los Angeles.
His favorite tamales are at Pasquale’s Tamales, a trailer in Helena, Arkansa, owned by a third-generation Sicilian family.
His favorite lamb chicharrones are Angelina’s in Espanola, New Mexico.
He loves the Taco Acorazado (Battleship) at Alebrije’s Grill in Santa Ana, CA. He says the tortillas alone are a miracle.
Not All Cultural Appropriation Is Alike: To Agree Or Not to Agree with Gustavo Arellano
The college students in my critical thinking class and I live in Los Angeles where some of the best food in the world is in our very backyards. I don’t want my students or me to take this for granted. I want us to do a deep dive into the Los Angeles food world, particularly Mexican food, the most popular cuisine in the world. So for our final essay assignment, we read Gustavo Arellano’s article “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” and we write an essay that supports or refutes Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation.
Arellano defends cultural appropriation by explaining three things. One, that since the beginning of time, restaurant owners have copied their competition; two, social justice warriors aren’t helping anyone when they patronize Mexicans by painting them as helpless victims when in fact Mexicans steal in the food industry just like everyone else; and three, what some might call appropriation or stealing can be in fact the healthy human impulse for cross-cultural pollination, evidenced by the fact that many of Mexico’s most famous regional dishes incorporate the food and ingredients from Spain, France, and the Middle East.
Arellano’s argument forces us to question the very idea of authenticity. What is authenticity? In the context of Mexican food, authenticity is the traditions of regional Mexican cooking that bring labor-intensive cooking techniques, geographical richness, and time-tested rituals to produce some of the best food in the world. But authenticity is more than food. It is family and culture. I urge you to watch The Taco Chronicles on Netflix. When you see families in different parts of Mexico making carnitas, canasta, asada, pastor, barbacoa, guisado, suadero, cochinita, cabrito, birria, and pescado, you will find that the geography and family traditions make these dishes authentic. But just as importantly, these foods are so good that they are a miracle from God. Look at the love the community lavishes on the local taquero, the man selling tacos on the street corner. He is bringing love to the city, and he is appreciated for it. Look at the entire communities gathering together to make these authentic dishes and you will see that food is rooted in family and culture. What is most beautiful about this notion of authenticity is the expression of love for others by bringing them the food of the gods. There is a reason in Mexico why the taco is called madre.
When we watch The Taco Chronicles, the sense of community combined with the making of the best food in the world wins our hearts and our stomachs. Any notion of violating this authenticity rightfully angers us and we are disinclined to agree with Arellano’s support of cultural appropriation. However, if you read Arellano’s book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, you will get more context for Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. Arellano would never want us to violate the authentic regional traditions of Mexican cooking. Instead, he is arguing that the splendor of regional Mexican cooking spread to America by bringing food that is both desirable and affordable and that some, not all, of the magic of authentic Mexican cuisine became accessible to the American masses. Moreover, this Mexican food changed American culture for the better. Full-flavored Mexican food replaced the tasteless pablum of “American” food. Americans speak with their money and they spend so much money on Mexican food that they have made a statement that they want Mexican food in their culture.
Is Gustavo Arellano defending all forms of cultural appropriation? Clearly not. If you read his articles and watch the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, “Tacos,” you will see that Arellano has contempt for “soulless” Mexican food, “Mexican” food chains that bastardize good-tasting Mexican food, food chains that disconnect the food they sell from the workers and from the Mexican culture; you will also see that Arellano has a healthy contempt for white-washed tourist food--phony overpriced Mexican food that has no spice and has been altered to appeal to the most infantile tastebuds. These counterfeit “Mexican” restaurants aren’t serving Mexican food at all. Rather, they are shamelessly serving overpriced tasteless codswallop. They are an abomination of Mexican food and the very idea of cross-cultural pollination.
However, there are defensible iterations of cultural appropriation. Stealing recipes from Mexico and elsewhere and bringing affordable street food to America doesn’t hurt anyone and in fact brings the nectar of the gods to more people for affordable prices. Recipes are stolen all the time. Just don’t take aqua fresca and call it “spa water” on your Tiktok channel, as Gracie Norton did, which is a form of racial plagiarism.
Some will argue that if some white ladies from Portland go to Mexico and steal taco recipes from grandmothers in Mexico City, those grandmothers are entitled to a cut of the action. But in reality, millions of recipes are stolen every day in the restaurant industry and any kind of compensation through accurate and detailed accounting is an impossibility.
Another defense of Gustavo Arellano’s claim that cultural appropriation is a good thing can be found in Netflix’s Chef’s Table Pizza series. Specifically, there are two chefs, Chris Bianco and Ann Kim, who break the rules of tradition to show that there is a place for creativity and improvisation in making superior pizza that violates notions of tradition and authenticity. In fact, Italian pizza experts have visited Chris Bianco’s Pizzeria Bianco in Pheonix, Arizona, and have proclaimed that his pizza is superior to the traditional pizzas of Italy. In the case of Ann Kim, she puts kimchi on her pizza and serves Korean mung bean pancakes and her restaurant Pizzeria Lola is so famous that to meet demand, she opened three other restaurants: Hello Pizza, Young Joni, and Sook & Mimi. Incidentally, her most recent restaurant Sook & Mimi features handmade tortillas made in the tradition of Mexico.
When we see successful restauranters such as Chris Bianco and Ann Kim make delicious food that is based on both authenticity and creativity, we see that making authentic food, or not, is not an either/or proposition. It is possible to do both. Again, this notion of combining authenticity with cultural cross-pollination supports Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation.
Clearly, not all forms of cultural appropriation are alike. Some types are an abomination. Others are a celebration. The purpose of this assignment is to use our critical thinking skills to distinguish the good from the bad and to find nuance, shades of gray, and complexity.
Just as the best tacos have a complexity of flavors, the best essays have a complexity of ideas.
“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano
My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.
Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.
Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."
It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.
For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.
But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.
As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.
What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.
And no one rips off food like Mexicans.
The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?
Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.
Shameless? Absolutely.
And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.
To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.
They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.
Do you agree or disagree with Arellano's defense of cultural appropriation?
Summary of the Essay's Main Arguments
We are all rapacious creatures whose drive for success makes us to some degree cutthroat and ruthless. The more ruthlessly we steal a recipe the more we affirm the greatness of that recipe. Mediocre food isn't stolen. Only great food is. The theft of Mexican recipes is a tribute to its greatness.
"Stealing" is actually the natural human inclination for cross-cultural pollination. Such pollination enriches culture and in many cases actually changes culture for the better.
To treat Mexicans as helpless victims whose delicacies are being stolen is to patronize them and to "rob them of human agency" (free will). In fact, Mexicans have been "stealing," or rather cross-pollinating, for thousands of years. Their history is rife with taking foods from other cultures such as Spain, France, and the Middle East, and making these foods their own.
From the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, "Tacos" episode, we find that respectful inspiration from the original dish is an acceptable form of cultural appropriation.
Some Caveats, Stipulations, or Conditions We Can Use from Ugly Delicious, "Tacos":
Taking shortcuts is an abomination and degrades the original version of the food such as tortillas.
Offering stereotypes of Mexican food is an abomination and shows ignorance of the depth of ingredients and creativity from the treasures of Mexican cooking. Don't play "Jingle Bells" on the piano when you should be playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Making tourist food or white-washing food to make it bland for mass appeal will make you money but it is an abomination of authentic Mexican food.
Taking agua fresca and rebranding it as "spa water" is a form of racial plagiarism so egregious that I doubt Gustavo Arellano would defend such an act of shamelessness and arrogance.
What are the two opposing sides of this argument?
The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:
On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc.
On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation. Which side are you on?
Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section
From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section.
Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.
A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.
Types of dependent clauses:
Whenever I drive up windy mountains,
Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,
Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,
,which is currently enjoying a resurgence.
Phrases
Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,
Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce,
Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,
Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider,
To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age,
Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter,
Examples
I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends.
I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy.
I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested.
I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom.
Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph.
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Identify the Fragments Below
Identify the Fragments Below
I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.
Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.
Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.
I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.
Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.
“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.
She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”
“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”
“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”
“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”
“Why must you do that?”
“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”
“Capisce.”
She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom.
Comma Splice Review
Identify the Comma Splices Below:
It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?
MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.
To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.
One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.
Cultural Pollination:
Grandmother's food to father's business to son's business
Your job as a restaurant owner is to make food that has the Wow Factor. You will experiment, innovate, and rely on time-tested traditional recipes, some “authentic” and some that are modifications, but regardless of what you do, you must make food that has the Wow Factor, that captures people’s hearts, that hijacks people’s brains, and that makes people addicted to your food. That is your job.
Not All Stealing Is the Same
Not all stealing in the restaurant industry is the same. If John quits the very successful Restaurant Y and gets a new job at the less successful Restaurant Z that Y uses cumin and ghost chilies in their enchilada sauce, then the owner of Z is going to “steal” the recipe. This type of “stealing” happens all the time. But let us not equate this type of stealing with a white lady named Gracie Norton taking aqua fresca and promoting it as her own “spa water.”
That is racial plagiarism, and it morally repulsive and morally indefensible.
When Cultural Appropriation Results in Bland Food
Oftentimes a white restaurant owner takes ethnic cuisine and calculates that since his largely white customer base wants ethnic but doesn’t really want ethnic. These white customers want the excitement of saying, “Guys, we’re going to an ethnic restaurant,” but they don’t really want the true ethnic food experience. They want some watered-down crap that they call ethnic but in reality is the same tasteless pablum that defines their infantile tastebuds.
This type of cultural appropriation incurs my loathing and abject contempt, but I don’t protest. I merely speak with my dollars. You will never see me a hundred feet from a phony ethnic cuisine restaurant.
This is perhaps my biggest critique of Gustavo Arellano’s argument. Most of his argument I agree with, but object to his failure to address the white-washing of ethnic food and turning it into tasteless, insipid baby food.
Review of Gustavo Arellano’s Arguments Against the Cult of Authenticity
(Pro Tip: The following arguments would make an excellent body paragraph outline for Essay 4)
In spite of some phony white chefs who wrongly anoint themselves as ambassadors of Mexican food, mainstreaming Mexican food is on balance a good because it exposes more people to the greatness of Mexican food and encourages cultural respect and cultural celebration of Mexican contributions.
Much of the purity cult behind the notion of authenticity is from whites on the Left and Right who don’t understand Mexican food or the Mexican people.
Letting social justice warriors dictate what is authentic can lead to food totalitarianism and absurdly narrow, reductionist definitions of authenticity.
The lines are blurred between innovation, cross-cultural synergy, and cultural appropriation, which has occurred since the beginning of time and is an inevitable part of how food evolves into amazing dishes.
It’s absurd to reject Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex food when we consider that these fusions are about embracing the greatness of Mexican cuisine and that no food is good or bad per se; rather, how a chef executes the dish determines whether it’s good or not. It’s all about execution. A bad taco could put you in a bad mood for a week. An exceptional taco could “change your life” and inject your brain’s amygdala with euphoric endorphins.
Counterarguments that challenge Gustavo Arellano’s claim that we should reject the Cult of Authenticity
Plagiarism Argument: When we steal intellectual or creative property, there should be consequences. We call this type of stealing plagiarism. Students who commit plagiarism get into big trouble. Shouldn’t cooks who steal creatively and in effect commit culinary plagiarism be subject to some kind of penalties? Should not these chefs who engage in stealing or cultural appropriation at the very least be required to ascribe credit to their sources? Should not these chefs who commit acts of culinary plagiarism at least be required to give a portion of their profits to the areas they stole from?
Moral Argument: Cultural appropriation, the kind where privileged people go to a small town in the United States, Mexico or Latin America and then steal recipes and cooking methods, offends our common sense of morality, fairness, honesty, and justice. When Gustavo Arellano says, “Everybody steals,” and that’s just the “Darwinian” way in the hyper-competitive restaurant industry, could we not accuse Arellano of using a “two rights make a wrong fallacy”? This fallacy is commonly referred to as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the majority fallacy. In other words, just because the majority engage in immoral behavior doesn't make that behavior right.
Quality Control or “Wannabes” Argument: Sure, Gustavo Arellano points out all these great examples of cultural appropriation, but those examples don’t diminish the exponential growth of phony Mexican restaurants that serve the crassest, disgusting, abominable “Mexican food” imaginable. Violating the Cult of Authenticity comes with a steep price: A bunch of wannabes steal some recipes and think they know how to make Mexican food when in fact what they are serving is an insult to Mexican food and to Mexican culture.
Grandmother argument: A student told me he had some very mediocre Molcajete at an expensive Mexican restaurant. He told me, “When I visit my grandmother in Guatemala, she makes me Molcajete that blows all the other ones away. I can’t get excited paying premium dollar for a bunch of sad food that goes under the name of ‘Mexican food.’” What this student is saying essentially is that the tradition, experience, and love his grandmother puts in her homemade Molcajete cannot be compared to the vastly inferior substitutes. Grandmother’s cooking, in other words, is an argument for authenticity.
Two Weaknesses in Gustavo Arellano's Argument
One. Arellano doesn't address food plagiarism. For example, it is indefensible to take the original food, give it a new name, and claim it as yours as in the notorious case of Gracie Norton who promotes "her spa water" when in fact the water is aqua fresca.
Two. Arellano doesn't address the white-washing effect: taking delicious meals and watering them down into soulless bland plates that insult the original dish.
What are the two opposing sides of this argument?
The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:
On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc.
On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation. Which side are you on?
Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section
From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section.
Using Counterargument-Rebuttal Makes Your Arguments More Persuasive:
For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
For Review:
For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of the Essay
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano
My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.
Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.
Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."
It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.
For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.
But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.
As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.
What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.
And no one rips off food like Mexicans.
The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?
Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.
Shameless? Absolutely.
And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.
To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.
They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.
Essay is 200 points and due as an upload on December 16.
The Assignment:
In a 1,200-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano’s claim in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere that in the realm of food, especially Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution from stealing, borrowing, synthesizing, and even culturally appropriating from one ethnic culture to another and that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality.
Sample Outline:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” Or summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”
Paragraph 2: Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.
Paragraphs 3-6 would be your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraphs 7 and 8 would be your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 9 would be a powerful restatement of your thesis, your conclusion.
The Purpose:
Most of us are influenced and touched by Mexican food on a deep, personal level. Many of us have been eating Mexican food since we were babies. It is part of who we are. Moving forward, Mexican food is a dominant food in American and international cuisine.
One of the controversies about Mexican food is when people of privilege go to economically modest places in Los Angeles, Mexico, or elsewhere and engage in cultural tourism when these privileged people delight in “street food” and some appropriate the food (steal the recipe) so they can make a profit at their own restaurant. Many people find this offensive.
The purpose of this essay is critically examine when a culture is stealing from another culture’s food source, there is an arrogance too often attached to this stealing, but at the same time we want to examine the power of cultural exchange as a way of opening doors for diverse people, the power of constantly evolving food, and the power of food that is constantly being stolen. For example, Gustavo Arellano makes the point that German pub food is not being stolen; Mexican food is. This speaks to the power and relevance of Mexican cuisine. There are only a handful of German restaurants in Los Angeles. In contrast, there are thousands of Mexican restaurants in southern California. We must explore the causes of a cultural force that continues to evolve and gain power.
LA Taco interview with Gustavo Arellano in “The Fetish of Authenticity” in which he discusses the notion of authenticity and vitality in Mexican cuisine.
See YouTube video: “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”
Season 1, Episode 2 Tacos (fantastic episode about the cultural synthesis behind the evolution of the taco)
Season 1, Episode 1 Pizza
Season 1, Episode 6 Fried Chicken
Another way of looking at the essay debate:
Is the greatness of Mexican food rooted in its tradition or innovation?
A closer look at Gustavo Arellano's argument:
Arellano makes the observation that the food business, including the ever-popular Mexican cuisine, requires constant innovation because it is “rapacious” and “Darwinian.” As he writes:
What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.
Arellano says the greatness of Mexican food is largely based on stealing. As he writes:
The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?
Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.
Gustavo Arellano further argues that cultural appropriation is “smart business.” As he writes:
And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.
***
Gustavo Arellano contends that the success of Mexican food as one of the dominant cuisines in America and throughout the world is its refusal to be some sort of stagnant “authentic relic” but rather a constantly changing cultural phenomenon. Is his claim sacrilegious? Is he encouraging cultural appropriation, that is white privilege moving in and stealing Mexican cuisine for its own ends? Are his points defensible? Explain.
Review of Arellano's Arguments
Darwinian argument (cultural appropriation is survival)
Origin story argument (cultural appropriation is part of the rich Mexican food history dating back over a thousand years)
Popularity argument (thievery is a form of flattery and affirms the success of the dish)
Business argument (cultural appropriation is essential for a business to grow and flourish)
Adaptation argument (Mexican food is popular precisely because the history of Mexican food is the history of adaptation, synthesis, and cultural appropriation)
Diversity argument (Mexican food is not a monolith; it is diverse, and its diversity depends on cultural appropriation)
What are the two opposing sides of this argument?
The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:
On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc.
On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation. Which side are you on?
Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section
From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section.
Using Counterargument-Rebuttal Makes Your Arguments More Persuasive:
For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
Review of Gustavo Arellano’s Arguments Against the Cult of Authenticity
(Pro Tip: The following arguments would make an excellent body paragraph outline for Essay 4)
In spite of some phony white chefs who wrongly anoint themselves as ambassadors of Mexican food, mainstreaming Mexican food is on balance a good because it exposes more people to the greatness of Mexican food and encourages cultural respect and cultural celebration of Mexican contributions.
Much of the purity cult behind the notion of authenticity is from whites on the Left and Right who don’t understand Mexican food or the Mexican people.
Letting social justice warriors dictate what is authentic can lead to food totalitarianism and absurdly narrow, reductionist definitions of authenticity.
The lines are blurred between innovation, cross-cultural synergy, and cultural appropriation, which has occurred since the beginning of time and is an inevitable part of how food evolves into amazing dishes.
It’s absurd to reject Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex food when we consider that these fusions are about embracing the greatness of Mexican cuisine and that no food is good or bad per se; rather, how a chef executes the dish determines whether it’s good or not. It’s all about execution. A bad taco could put you in a bad mood for a week. An exceptional taco could “change your life” and inject your brain’s amygdala with euphoric endorphins.
Counterarguments that challenge Gustavo Arellano’s claim that we should reject the Cult of Authenticity
Plagiarism Argument: When we steal intellectual or creative property, there should be consequences. We call this type of stealing plagiarism. Students who commit plagiarism get into big trouble. Shouldn’t cooks who steal creatively and in effect commit culinary plagiarism be subject to some kind of penalties? Should not these chefs who engage in stealing or cultural appropriation at the very least be required to ascribe credit to their sources? Should not these chefs who commit acts of culinary plagiarism at least be required to give a portion of their profits to the areas they stole from?
Moral Argument: Cultural appropriation, the kind where privileged people go to a small town in the United States, Mexico or Latin America and then steal recipes and cooking methods, offends our common sense of morality, fairness, honesty, and justice. When Gustavo Arellano says, “Everybody steals,” and that’s just the “Darwinian” way in the hyper-competitive restaurant industry, could we not accuse Arellano of using a “two rights make a wrong fallacy”? This fallacy is commonly referred to as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the majority fallacy. In other words, just because the majority engage in immoral behavior doesn't make that behavior right.
Quality Control or “Wannabes” Argument: Sure, Gustavo Arellano points out all these great examples of cultural appropriation, but those examples don’t diminish the exponential growth of phony Mexican restaurants that serve the crassest, disgusting, abominable “Mexican food” imaginable. Violating the Cult of Authenticity comes with a steep price: A bunch of wannabes steal some recipes and think they know how to make Mexican food when in fact what they are serving is an insult to Mexican food and to Mexican culture.
Grandmother argument: A student told me he had some very mediocre Molcajete at an expensive Mexican restaurant. He told me, “When I visit my grandmother in Guatemala, she makes me Molcajete that blows all the other ones away. I can’t get excited paying premium dollar for a bunch of sad food that goes under the name of ‘Mexican food.’” What this student is saying essentially is that the tradition, experience, and love his grandmother puts in her homemade Molcajete cannot be compared to the vastly inferior substitutes. Grandmother’s cooking, in other words, is an argument for authenticity.
Use MLA Format for Your Essay
Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.
I recommend one of two approaches for your introductory paragraph.
Method #1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.”
Method #2 Summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”
Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.
Sample Thesis Structure
While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________.____________, _____________, __________________, and ___________________.
For Review:
For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of the Essay
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Writing Your Conclusion
Your conclusion is about creating emotional power and finding a way to reiterate your essay’s purpose in order to maximize the strength of your persuasion.
Since you want emotional power in your conclusion, you want to avoid cliches or overused (hackneyed) conclusion structures.
Sorry for this lousy essay, but just in case you didn’t understand what I was saying,
Effective Conclusion Strategies:
Use the “full circle” technique. If you begin with a story or image in your introduction, return to that story or image in your conclusion.
End on a rhetorical question.
End with a gut-punching quotation.
End with an indelible image.
End with a dire warning.
End with a universal truth that applies to your specific argument.
End with an emotionally-powerful restatement of your thesis.
Works Cited
After your conclusion, you will cite a minimum of 4 sources on a separate page for Works Cited using current MLA format as explained in this these videos:
Make sure your essay has a strong title. Avoid a generic title like “Cultural Appropriation” or “Essay 4.” Try to have a catchy title that is relevant to your focus.
What’s the Difference Between Respecting and Stealing Mexican Cuisine?
Is Cultural Appropriation Even a Thing?
Stop Calling Tex-Mex Real Mexican Food
Due as an upload for 25 points on December 3.
The Assignment: Write 2 Paragraphs:
Write 2 paragraphs, an Introductory Paragraph and an Argumentative Thesis Paragraph.
Instructions for Introductory Paragraph
I recommend one of two approaches for your introductory paragraph.
Method #1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.”
Method #2 Summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”
Instructions for Argumentative Thesis Paragraph
Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.
While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________, ______________, ________________, and _______________________.
Writing an argumentative thesis or claim (review).
When I started teaching 35 years ago, everyone called the central argument a thesis, but in the last 10 years the term claim is gaining more and more popularity.
In this case, your claim is answering this question: Are weight-loss quests futile or not?
Due for 25 points as an upload on December 10.
Assignment Description
For your Cultural Authenticity essay, present a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph in which you present an opposing view to your argument and give this opposing view, a counterargument, and a rebuttal.
The counterargument-rebuttal paragraph (which can be more than one) usually comes before your conclusion paragraph.
Why is the counterargument-rebuttal necessary for an argumentative essay? Because for an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section to show your argument has been “tested” by the “fire of opposing views.”
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Writing a Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph:
For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Instructions for This Assignment
To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures that set up the counterargument and the rebuttal.
Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of Essay
Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider _________________________.
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Using the Above Templates Is Not Plagiarism
I strongly suggest you use these templates. Using them is not a form of plagiarism. You are taking structures that are commonly used by professional writers and filling in the blanks for your own purposes.
Partial Example of a Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph:
My opponents will disagree with my argument that social media is intrinsically addicting because they will point out that anyone can find extreme cases of dysfunctional people getting addicted to anything. However, these critics are in egregious error, for they fail to see that _____________________________________.
Three. Be sure to provide compelling and accurate counterarguments.
Do not use weak or misrepresented arguments to make your rebuttal easier. The stronger the counterargument, the stronger your rebuttal, and the strength of your rebuttal determines how persuasive your argumentative essay is.
Four. Be sure to have sufficient detail for your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. Aim for 150-200 words.
List of Requirements for This Assignment
Your counterargument rebuttal has a suitable sentence structure that conforms to one of the templates I’ve provided.
Your counterargument-rebuttal addresses a legitimate concern that your opponents reasonably have.
Your rebuttal diminishes or outright refutes your opponent’s counterargument.
Your paragraph has sufficient detail evidenced by a length of about 150-200.
Your paragraph should be uploaded as an attachment to Canvas.
Should We Reject the Cult of Authenticity?
The Assignment:
In a 1,200-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano’s claim in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere that in the realm of food, especially Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution from stealing, borrowing, synthesizing, and even culturally appropriating from one ethnic culture to another and that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality.
Sample thesis structure might look like this:
While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________, _______________, ___________________, and _________________________.
Sample Outline:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” Or summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”
Paragraph 2: Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.
Paragraphs 3-6 would be your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraphs 7 and 8 would be your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 9 would be a powerful restatement of your thesis, your conclusion.
The Method and Time Required
Of course, everyone is different, but estimating the time based on the assigned videos, supplementary material, note taking, first draft of a 1,200 word essay of about 9 paragraphs, making a Works Cited page, and then rewriting your draft for correct grammar, spelling, and format, I would say that over the course of 4 weeks you could very well spend 16 hours, or 4 hours a week, to get this essay to a polished state that is ready to upload.
If you include doing the above readings, this essay will take approximately 16 hours to write.
Use MLA Format for Your Essay
Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.
Works Cited
After your conclusion, you will cite a minimum of 4 sources on a separate page for Works Cited using current MLA format as explained in this these videos:
Your conclusion is about creating emotional power and finding a way to reiterate your essay’s purpose in order to maximize the strength of your persuasion.
Since you want emotional power in your conclusion, you want to avoid cliches or overused (hackneyed) conclusion structures.
Sorry for this lousy essay, but just in case you didn’t understand what I was saying,
Effective Conclusion Strategies:
Use the “full circle” technique. If you begin with a story or image in your introduction, return to that story or image in your conclusion.
End on a rhetorical question.
End with a gut-punching quotation.
End with an indelible image.
End with a dire warning.
End with a universal truth that applies to your specific argument.
End with an emotionally-powerful restatement of your thesis.
Title for Your Essay
Make sure your essay has a strong title. Avoid a generic title like “Cultural Appropriation” or “Essay 4.” Try to have a catchy title that is relevant to your focus.
What’s the Difference Between Respecting and Stealing Mexican Cuisine?
Is Cultural Appropriation Even a Thing?
Stop Calling Tex-Mex Real Mexican Food
“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano
My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.
Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.
Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."
It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.
For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.
But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.
As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.
What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.
And no one rips off food like Mexicans.
The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?
Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.
Shameless? Absolutely.
And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.
To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.
They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.
Essay Comparison Choice #6: The Chimera of Conspiracies:
People lose contact with reality as they go down rabbit holes of conspiracies. Their brains get hijacked by conspiracies and they don't live in the same reality as the rest of us.
We will examine the forces of “the epistemic crisis,” the breakdown of faith in institutions, the death of expertise, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and we will narrow our focus on conspiracies to anti-vaxxing and QAnon.
Sample Outline for Choice #6
For paragraph 1, your introduction, define the idea of a conspiracy as a very tempting chimera to certain types of people.
For paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that explains the causes of a conspiracy chimera. You might want to focus on a specific conspiracy like the one that supports the belief of anti-vaxxers or QAnon. Otherwise, you may find your essay is so broad that you can’t chisel a 1,200-word essay.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Overview of Causes of Conspiracies:
Narcissistic non-achievers rely on conspiracies to feel superior to others, to feel engaged with like-minded people to overcome their isolation, and to give themselves the illusion of certainty and control.
People are radicalized on social media because social media relies on extreme political beliefs and conspiracies to generate engagement. Therefore the algorithms accentuate extreme beliefs and silence moderate, sane, nuanced views.
Conspiracy-driven outrage becomes a psychological and physical addiction.
People invest their time and identity into their conspiracy beliefs to the point that to lose their conspiracy beliefs would be to lose their identity, self-esteem, and sense of community. In other words, they have too much skin in the game, and even if you were to present them with the facts to show them to be wrong, they would lash out at you, double down, and cling to their false beliefs.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect prevents people from seeing the stupidity of their conspiracy beliefs. In fact, they believe they are rather brilliant in their beliefs.
Fallacies That Misinform Anti-Vaxxers
Additives to vaccines are said to be toxic when in fact the amount of toxins is less than what you consume in water every day.
They say, "I lead a natural lifestyle, so I am building my immunity" when in fact only the vaccine will increase your immunity in a significant way.
Vaccines lead to allergies with no evidence.
Big government is exaggerating the danger of disease.
Vaccines lead to autism.
As a free person, I should have a choice since my choice affects me and me alone.
Big Pharma is making billions from this corrupt business.
Failures of Media to Promote Truth in Vaccines
Bothsideism, providing both sides to create what appears to be a balanced view when in fact, a conspiracy gets a lopsided advantage.
The media peddles fake controversies because sensationalism gets high ratings. We can call this entertainment news.
Anecdotes carry as much weight as legit studies to an audience that gives as much credence to anecdotes as they do to real data.
Fringe news and fringe conspiracy believers go on high-profile shows like Oprah and other media stars.
***
Since the subject is so broad, we will focus on ant-vaxxers.
Proxy Conspiracism: The conspiracy belief is a substitute or a proxy for some deep psychological need like control, power, and revenge against others. (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Tribal Conspiracism: The conspiracy is linked to a chain of other like-minded conspiracies that as a whole define the religious, political, or tribal beliefs of the individual (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Constructive Conspiracism: The conspiracy that is believed “just in case” it’s true because it’s better to be safe. There have been so many true conspiracies, we might just as well be skeptical of everything (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Profit Conspiracism: You don’t believe in the conspiracy, but you cynically fabricate one to make money. Alex Jones is a top-level Profit Conspiracist.
Radicalized Conspiracism: You live in a fever swamp of social media, cable news, cherry-picked evidence, and confirmation bias. Worse, many succumb to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which states that there are many people who think they’re smart when in fact they are the opposite and they lack the self-awareness to see how others perceive them.
Outrage Conspiracism: According to social scientist Jonathan Haidt, around 2012, social media algorithms exploited our reptile brains by feeding our appetite for anger and outrage. These emotions are strengthened by extreme misinformation, which makes money for social media companies, destroys our brains, and destroys democracy. “Going viral” is “proof” that the conspiracy is true.
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher
Conspiracies Make Money for Facebook
Facebook delivers conspiracy-driven news to over two billion users every day. These conspiracies generate money for Facebook. Facebook wants to deny charges of hijacking billions of brains with conspiracies, but the evidence shows that they are guilty.
Facebook doesn’t create conspiracies; they provide a platform for bad actors, racist organizations, troll farms, “grassroots movements,” “hyperpartisan outlets,” and foreign agents who know how to use Facebook to manipulate its users.
An outsourced tech contractor working in Silicon Valley named “Jacob” saw the connection between misinformation and Facebook and Instagram early in the game.
Jacob was monitoring and flagging misinformation with his team. That was his job. Around 2017, he noticed the posts growing more extreme and violent.
Jacob realized that FB’s safety measures were grossly inadequate to stem the torrent of often racist misinformation.
With weak countermeasures, FB was allowing millions of its users to become radicalized and brain-hijacked by conspiracies.
Jacob reported his findings “up the chain of command” and waited for a response. One never came.
As Jacob saw mass violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, he realized he would have to be more aggressive than sending reports to an unresponsive bureaucracy. He “siphoned internal rule books and training documents” from his office computers. He cleaned these documents of their “fingerprints” so they couldn’t be traced to him, and then he leaked them to The Guardian, Vice News, and the author Max Fisher.
When FB discovered Max Fisher had the documents, they invited him to headquarters. Fisher found the anti-propaganda team to be very kind, conscientious, and hard at work fighting misinformation, but in spite of their efforts, the problem was getting worse and worse.
The failing of these higher-ups wasn’t their effort toward bad actors; it was their failure to acknowledge something intrinsically dangerous with the very platform itself: Facebook.
Its very model for success is based on extremist algorithms, which generate more clicks. More clicks mean more revenue for Facebook.
Facebook is built to amplify extremists’ misinformation. Extremists will use FB for that purpose and their devastation will overrun any good things that come from Facebook and Instagram.
One example is the growth of a QAnon story: liberals kidnapping children and selling them as slaves. Their slavery hub was a pizza restaurant in Maryland. A major study shows that nearly 1 in 5 Americans believes in QAnon. Such a crisis would not be possible without Facebook.
Thanks, Facebook, for sucking 20% of America into a fever swamp of lies and conspiracies. American democracy is hanging by a thread.
In spite of this catastrophe, the well-paid FB minions “believe in the mission of Facebook.” Of course, they do. It’s in their self-interest, just not ours.
Algorithms and Divisiveness
One FB researcher leaked this to the Wall Street Journal in 2018: “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.”
In other words, causing societies to fracture and wage war against each other in a non-nuanced, non-critical thinking battle of belligerent misinformation is the winning business model for Facebook.
As an example, we can as a country have a nuanced and deep discussion about Jim Crow and racism, but such a discussion becomes impossible when a racist group weaponizes any discussion of race by turning it into “CRT” a buzzword for indoctrination. Critical Race Theory or CRT becomes a buzzword for shutting down any discussion of race. Shouting “CRT” becomes a way of showing your allegiance to your tribe.
Of course, not all discussions of racism and Jim Crow can be labeled as “CRT,” but it doesn’t matter when the political discourse is based on divisiveness, hate, bombast, division, and over-simplification.
The world of social media is a world where human minds by the very nature of the platform become more stupid. This is well observed in Jonathan Haidt’s 2022 Atlantic essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.”
People who work in the inner chambers of social media have been sounding the alarm for several years, but the top people don’t listen because they don’t want anyone questioning their Money Machine or the ways their Machine generates cash revenue.
Lipstick on a Pig
The top executives will say “we’re doing everything possible to fight misinformation,” but this is lipstick on a pig.
Low Vaccine Rates
Renee DiResta, a tech analyst, discovered that many schools have only a 30% vaccination compliance rate.
While 85% of parents wanted vaccine mandates at schools, a small number of parents feeding off Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook were passionate and well-organized. They could assert their influence at the schools.
Radicalized people can punch up so their influence is beyond their numbers.
Renee DiResta noticed that if she typed “vaccine,” she didn’t get information for both sides of the debate, just negative misinformation. This is because the algorithm makes more money on negative misinformation than on science.
DiResta noticed that anti-vaxxer misinformation was linked to other conspiracies like Chemtrails and Flat Earth. Conspiracies are the jackpot of social media.
Hijacking the human brain with misinformation is the business model of FB.
DiResta discovered that FB “wasn’t indulging anti-vaccine extremists. It was creating them.”
Fake Consensus Becomes a Persuader
Max Fisher observes that when Facebook invented the news feed in 2006, it created something we can call Fake Consensus, the illusion that the majority of people have accepted something to be true on their news feed. Even if we are skeptical of this news feed, Fischer observes, we “internalize” it and eventually believe it to be true.
What is the number-one type of news feed that generates engagement? Outrage.
Think about that. Outrage, that toxic emotion that overtakes us, is the secret sauce of social media.
2007 Is a Turning Point in World History
Outrage spiked FB’s growth so that it was worth 15 billion in 2007. This is a turning point in world history.
FB created a “social-validation feedback loop” and gave you a shot of dopamine to get over 3 billion people hooked on the drug.
Brain Hijack
Max Fisher writes: “Social apps hijack a compulsion--a need to connect--that can be even more powerful than hunger or greed.”
FB taught us to connect through shared outrage, and outrage is created through misinformation. Hence, we have the recipe for the Fever Swamp where people lose their minds.
Society Is Breaking Apart in Fragmented Realities
The Epistemic Crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge
From the ancient Greeks, we had a tradition of mentor and student in which the mentor was the authority on knowledge and both engaged in a humble quest for higher knowledge, battle-testing their ideas by putting them against their opponents’ objections.
Such rigor is in little evidence today. As a result, we live in an epistemic crisis: We can’t even agree on what reality is anymore.
Already, for example, the attack on Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, has been politicized.
A group of people who say the 2020 election was stolen blame Nancy Pelosi so she was targeted and her husband was attacked instead. This is the most logical and clear explanation.
But conspiracy trolls have already weaponized misinformation to call the event a “media conspiracy” to hide the truth: The real event is that Paul Pelosi was having an illicit affair with the attacker and the violence was the result of a relationship gone bad.
Just as getting vaccines and wearing masks is politicized, so is the way society interprets the murder attempt of Paul Pelosi.
Since 2009 when social media scaled, we started living in separate information and news bubbles, causing us to mistrust each other. Many of these information bubbles are conspiracy-soaked.
Social fragmentation is antithetical to cooperation and weakens democracies.
We’ve had a breakdown of trust in our major institutions. This has cleared the way for crazy beliefs in conspiracies.
We’ve developed a misguided trust in unreliable sources and ourselves as “experts” who can push the real experts away and embrace conspiracy theories.
The Viral Effect gives false credence to conspiracies so that the popularity of an idea becomes its power, not its truth. This results in the growth of conspiracies.
Misinformation spreads on social media faster than legacy media can slow it down with vetted facts so that conspiracies flood the mass consciousness.
Misinformation creates chaos, but the very same misinformation provides conspiracy theories, which give their believers a false sense of understanding and control.
History teaches us that conspiracies are the tool of the autocrat.
A public confused and fatigued by a flood of misinformation gives up on the notion of truth, credibility, accountability, and critical thinking. They shrug their shoulders in despair and say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is the cost of gas.”
***
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
What kind of person gets their brain hijacked by a conspiracy theory? I’m afraid the answer is not a pretty one. Typically, a person who has failed to love and connect with others in a mature, meaningful way and who has deeply-rooted prejudices becomes the perfect personality for the True Conspiracy Believer. Not wanting to confront her personal failings, he scapegoats some Enemy Entity--Anthony Fauci, the WHO, the libs, the Woke, the Jews, the terrorists, the liberal media, the Immigrant Caravan, or some other Enemy Combatant. Secondly, this person is overwhelmed by life’s uncertainty and has a childish desire for a simple narrative to make sense out of the chaos. Third, this person is so deep into the social media rabbit hole that he is disconnected from real people, real news, and reality itself. This is a dangerous cocktail that turns this person into a radicalized conspiracy believer.
Sample #2
Why are people on both the Left and the Right anti-vaxxers? It seems there are plenty of conspiracies out there for people of any political persuasion. For the Right, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility for “big government,” the liberal plot to join China to create a world order, and a weaponizing of Covid to allow the Democrats to destroy the Republicans. On the Left, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility toward Big Pharma, a preference for alternative medicine to mainstream science, and the belief that “personal choice” is superior to being a “sheeple,” and anecdotal evidence of children getting vaxxed and immediately becoming autistic.
Sample #3
Anti-vaxxer beliefs are built on a wobbly foundation of logical fallacies.
Sample #4
Eric Hoffer's perennial classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, published in 1951, is a cogent explanation of conspiracy believers today. The conspiracy believer is marked by a sense of personal failure, a cowardice that prevents honest self-inspection to account for the personal failure, a lust for power and easy opportunities for self-advancement, fear of future change, and faith in an "infallible leader" who possesses some theory to make sense of their world.
Sample Thesis Statements for Chimera of Conspiracies
Sample #1
In an age of the Covid Pandemic, we find that a significant population has been brain-hijacked by the anti-vax chimera because of a distrust in institutions, political polarization, the rise of “expert” influencers over true experts, and narcissistic personality types that crave conspiracies.
Sample #2
The appeal of anti-vax conspiracies is a case study of the breakdown of ethos, pathos, and logos.
Sample #3
Anti-vax conspiracists live in a self-feeding fever swamp defined by weaponized misinformation, political polarization, and logical fallacies that defy reason and the powers of persuasion.
Sample #4
A conspiracy chimera such as anti-vax propaganda hijacks the brain in such a way that the person stubbornly resists even the clearest presentation of ethos, pathos, and logos to support the efficacy of vaccines.
Sample Outline:
Paragraph 1: Define a chimera in the context of conspiracies.
Paragraph 2: Present your thesis or claim.
Paragraphs 3-7: Your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Your final page, Works Cited, in MLA format with 4 sources.
The Chimera of White Chic As It Pertains to the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Two chimeras are to be examined in the Netflix documentary White Heat: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch.
Chimera #1
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was possessed by a fantasy that we will call the White Chic Chimera: It is a desire to live in an aesthetic of anorexic and chiseled whiteness, which represents old money from the North East, being part of an exclusive cool club, having the power to aggrandize one’s privilege and sexuality while relegating “The Others” to second-class citizen status and feeling entitled to rely on racist memes and tropes to reinforce the old-guard racial and class hierarchy.
Using an aggressive ad campaign, Jeffries and his minions scaled the White Chic Chimera to make Abercrombie and Fitch the fastest-growing clothing retail store in the world. It dominated the industry for several years before its foul odor became apparent to the masses who appropriately abandoned and shunned the brand.
Chimera #2
This domination made Mike Jeffries drink his own racist Kool-Aid: Full of toxic narcissism and spectacular egotism, he believed that what he was doing--promoting a racist hierarchy to slake his greedy appetites--was smart capitalism, that he was invincible, and that his White Chic aesthetic was something to be proud of. A recalcitrant sinner of racist marketing, Jeffries was doomed to crash.
Jeffries’ pride in his white aesthetic was his second chimera. His pride or hubris in his racial aesthetic made him like the tragic figure Icarus who flew too quickly and too close to the sun making his fall inevitable.
Humiliation, disgrace, and ignominy were the appropriate end for a peddler of racist mythology and exclusion. The chimeras that fed Mike Jeffries’ appetites for money and glory were the very chimeras that consumed him.
Sample Thesis Statements That Address Only White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Sample #1
A clothing brand was built not on the clothing itself but what it represented: a chimera consisting of badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in Edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and fatuous behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
Sample #2
Abercrombie’s chimera of cool was a facade that concealed a toxic brand. The toxicity was manifest in many ways including a badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in Edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and foolish behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
Sample #3
Shameless narcissist and peddler of racist memes and marketing tropes, Mike Jeffries is a cautionary tale of a man who hijacked his own brain with dreams of white superiority, retail dominance, endless legal schemes, and a bull-headed refusal to embrace the diverse consumer base that he depended on.
Sample Thesis That Compares All 3 Documentaries
38 at the Garden, Homecoming King, and White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch give us a look at how society’s racial stereotypes, either through a passive default setting or aggressive marketing, create a particular type of brain hijack in which the targets of racism are instilled with a chimera that exists both from within and without: the negative stereotype that results from racist memes and tropes, racist political policies, scapegoating, and white notions of status and exclusivity.
Thesis Sample #2
38 at the Garden is a bitter-sweet pill that provides the hope of a disruptive force like Jeremy Lin on one hand and the way hope can become short-lived when society memory-holes talent and individual courage to resort to their racist default setting on the other.
Thesis Sample #3
While we should lament the return of racism illustrated in 38 at the Garden, we find that Jeremy Lin made a permanent mark on thoughtful observers of sports by shaking them out of their internalized racism, making the NBA more open to individual talent over profiling, and creating a historical record of a singular talent whose courage broke the mold and helped people reimagine what they could be.
Thesis Sample #4
38 at the Garden is a powerful antidote to racial stereotyping by using pathos, experience, and personal testimony to show the mental straightjacket of racism and by providing a powerful emotional experience, the documentary is far superior than a polemic that attempts to give intellectual arguments against racism because such arguments are met with the hostility of the Backfire Effect.
Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.
A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.
Types of dependent clauses:
Whenever I drive up windy mountains,
Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,
Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,
,which is currently enjoying a resurgence.
Phrases
Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,
Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce,
Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,
Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider,
To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age,
Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter,
Examples
I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends.
I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy.
I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested.
I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom.
Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph.
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Identify the Fragments Below
Identify the Fragments Below
I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.
Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.
Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.
I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.
Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.
“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.
She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”
“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”
“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”
“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”
“Why must you do that?”
“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”
“Capisce.”
She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom.
Comma Splice Review
Identify the Comma Splices Below:
It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?
MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.
To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.
One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.
Essay Comparison Choice #6: The Chimera of Conspiracies:
People lose contact with reality as they go down rabbit holes of conspiracies. We will examine the forces of “the epistemic crisis,” the breakdown of faith in institutions, the death of expertise, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and we will narrow our focus on conspiracies to anti-vaxxing and QAnon.
Sample Outline for Choice #6
For paragraph 1, your introduction, define the idea of a conspiracy as a very tempting chimera to certain types of people.
For paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that explains the causes of a conspiracy chimera. You might want to focus on a specific conspiracy like the one that supports the belief of anti-vaxxers or QAnon. Otherwise, you may find your essay is so broad that you can’t chisel a 1,200-word essay.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Since the subject is so broad, we will focus on ant-vaxxers.
One. According to Jonathan Haidt, the "structural stupidity" of living inside the bubble of social media.
Two. Making conclusions and assumptions based on logical fallacies.
Three. Having a deep moral cowardice that prevents us from being responsible adults and instead embracing conspiracies that indulge our inner child.
Types of Conspiracies
Proxy Conspiracism: The conspiracy belief is a substitute or a proxy for some deep psychological need like control, power, and revenge against others. (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Tribal Conspiracism: The conspiracy is linked to a chain of other like-minded conspiracies that as a whole define the religious, political, or tribal beliefs of the individual (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Constructive Conspiracism: The conspiracy that is believed “just in case” it’s true because it’s better to be safe. There have been so many true conspiracies, we might just as well be skeptical of everything (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).
Profit Conspiracism: You don’t believe in the conspiracy, but you cynically fabricate one to make money. Alex Jones is a top-level Profit Conspiracist.
Radicalized Conspiracism: You live in a fever swamp of social media, cable news, cherry-picked evidence, and confirmation bias. Worse, many succumb to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which states that there are many people who think they’re smart when in fact they are the opposite and they lack the self-awareness to see how others perceive them.
Outrage Conspiracism: According to social scientist Jonathan Haidt, around 2012, social media algorithms exploited our reptile brains by feeding our appetite for anger and outrage. These emotions are strengthened by extreme misinformation, which makes money for social media companies, destroys our brains, and destroys democracy. “Going viral” is “proof” that the conspiracy is true.
The Epistemic Crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge
From the ancient Greeks, we had a tradition of mentor and student in which the mentor was the authority on knowledge and both engaged in a humble quest for higher knowledge, battle-testing their ideas by putting them against their opponents’ objections.
Such rigor is in little evidence today. As a result, we live in an epistemic crisis: We can’t even agree what reality is anymore.
Already, for example, the attack on Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, has been politicized.
A group of people who say the 2020 election was stolen blame Nancy Pelosi so she was targeted and her husband was attacked instead. This is the most logical and clear explanation.
But conspiracy trolls have already weaponized misinformation to call the event a “media conspiracy” to hide the truth: The real event is that Paul Pelosi was having an illicit affair with the attacker and the violence was the result of a relationship gone bad.
Just as getting vaccines and wearing masks is politicized, so is the way society interprets the murder attempt of Paul Pelosi.
We are trapped in a Groundhog Day of Fragmented Realities
We are trapped in a Groundhog Day, a term for being trapped in a crucible. According to John Haidt, author of the essay “Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” the trap is the fragmentation of human experience into “different realities” that don’t mesh with the other. Depending on which information silo you live in, your reality differs from other people’s, and these differences represent your cognitive biases, preferences, and moral development.
Haidt observes that this fragmentation leads to anxiety, alienation, and hostility toward one another. As he writes: “We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
We are therefore trapped in a state of disharmony, alienation, and hostility among each other. We live in chaos. This is our crucible.
We are not in a Cooperation Mode of History
In more sunny periods of history, Haidt observes, we live in cooperation with one another, but to do so we have to address conflicts from a shared reality. Thanks to social media, the shared reality has been shattered and we don’t live in cooperation. Rather, we live in animosity toward each other, largely in a cultural and political war, but even within the same tribes, a spirit of irrationality causes them to splinter so that Red and Blue tribes have insane subsets that erode and metastasize the entire party.
The glue that holds society together has come undone from social media
Haidt writes that society is held together by three things:
Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009.
From Friendship to Marketing and Looking for the Viral Effect
Over time, people on Facebook and other platforms moved away from deepening friendships and instead looked to promote themselves and their brands.
As Haidt writes: “Once social-media platforms had trained users to spend more time performing and less time connecting, the stage was set for the major transformation, which began in 2009: the intensification of viral dynamics.”
2012 is when things started to go crazy:
Haidt writes that viral sharing started to motivate social media users to become obsessed with going viral and this is when the craziness began. As he writes:
Before 2009, Facebook had given users a simple timeline––a never-ending stream of content generated by their friends and connections, with the newest posts at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom. This was often overwhelming in its volume, but it was an accurate reflection of what others were posting. That began to change in 2009, when Facebook offered users a way to publicly “like” posts with the click of a button. That same year, Twitter introduced something even more powerful: the “Retweet” button, which allowed users to publicly endorse a post while also sharing it with all of their followers. Facebook soon copied that innovation with its own “Share” button, which became available to smartphone users in 2012. “Like” and “Share” buttons quickly became standard features of most other platforms.
What tended to go viral? Anger and outrage and making social media “a nasty place”
Going viral was best achieved through anger and outrage. Social media algorithms want our attention because that is their business model, so their algorithms targeted anger. As a result, anger on social media began to snowball.
By 2013, your posts could either leave you loved or hated, so you started to behave performatively to be loved, even if being loved meant venting hatred toward others.
As Haidt writes:
By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would “go viral” and make you “internet famous” for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.
The Race to the Bottom
Social media posts were now based on dishonesty, oversimplification, and catering to the mob mentality, or in other words, The Race to the Bottom.
As Haidt writes:
This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the “Retweet” button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”
A whole country drunk and addicted to outrage and its collective judgment debased is the unraveling of a free democracy
Haidt observes that for a sustainable free democracy, we need a voting populace that is reasonably sane, educated, and not living in a Fever Swamp of heated passions. As he writes:
The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.
James Madison’s “Nightmare”
James Madison feared that if society was divided by political factions that hated each other’s guts, there would be no cooperation; instead, political tribes would treat politics like a zero-sum game with winners and losers.
Mutual animosity would kill cooperation and in its place democracy could be threatened by civil war, either a cold nonviolent civil war or an outright civil war with violence.
Loss of Trust in Institutions
Social media and its rampant conspiracy theories erode trust in institutions
Conspiracy theories go viral on social media so they are rewarded by the algorithms.
A society beholden to frivolous distractions and two-bit conspiracy theories is not a serious society capable of upholding a free democracy.
Cooperation dies and in its place is “owning” your enemies
We care less about democracy than we do about “owning” our enemies and destroying them. As Haidt writes: “But when citizens lose trust in elected leaders, health authorities, the courts, the police, universities, and the integrity of elections, then every decision becomes contested; every election becomes a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side.”
Social media has put different political tribes into different information silos and have “broken the mortar of trust.”
Haidt observes that the exponential growth of social media has fragmented us and resulted in a tribalistic society incapable of democracy. This breaking down of American society into hostile factions occurred between 2011 and 2015. During this time there was “The Great Awokening” on the Left and MAGA on the Right and the two groups have been ratcheting up their mutual hatred since. As he observes:
Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.
Social media and its billions of injurious darts have brought injustice and political dysfunction in three ways.
First, trolls get all the attention, not average, responsible citizens with reasonable voices. The more grotesque the more attention. This ruthless aggression scales.
Secondly, political extremism enjoys more voice than moderation even if moderation is 80% of the country. The most white, rich groups on the Right and Left dominate their Extremes.
Thirdly, social media judges and cancels people before they’re given a fair defense. In the words of Haidt: “Finally, by giving everyone a dart gun, social media deputizes everyone to administer justice with no due process.”
Information Silos lead to Structural Stupidity
In social media, we are isolated in our information silos that cater to our cognitive biases so never addressing a counterargument, we become more and more stupid and ignorant.
Not even agreeing on what constitutes reality or a health crisis to be specific, we live in what Jonathan Rauch calls an “epistemic crisis.”
A divided country cannot maintain democracy
Haidt reminds us that we are not more stupid; the problem is structural: the “enhanced virality of social media.” In other words, social media is a weapon and this weapon makes for stupid conversation, aggressive political discourse, and a country that is getting more and more divided to the point that it cannot uphold democracy.
Disinformation is the tool of autocrats
Disinformation, a tool of autocrats, is going to get worse, not better. We currently do not have any countermeasures in place to repel weaponized disinformation and bad political actors are seizing upon the opportunity to win their political battles by using the same type of disinformation used by Russia’s Putin and Germany’s Nazis. In the words of Haidt:
In a 2018 interview, Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump, said that the way to deal with the media is “to flood the zone with shit.” He was describing the “firehose of falsehood” tactic pioneered by Russian disinformation programs to keep Americans confused, disoriented, and angry. But back then, in 2018, there was an upper limit to the amount of shit available, because all of it had to be created by a person (other than some low-quality stuff produced by bots).
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
When you confuse a public and tire them with constant lies and disinformation, you break them into despair, they shrug their shoulders with apathy, and say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” You’ve defeated them.
Misinformation, extremism, fear of being Twitter-shamed: all these things combined have made us scared, apathetic, conformist, and oblivious to more reasonable voices that might save our democracy.
Haidt proposes 3 reforms to save our democracy
Haidt proposes that we “harden democratic institutions,” reform social media, and “prepare the next generation.”
***
Review of Jonathan Haidt
Since 2009 when social media scaled, we started living in separate information and news bubbles, causing us to mistrust each other. Many of these information bubbles are conspiracy-soaked.
Social fragmentation is antithetical to cooperation and weakens democracies.
We’ve had a breakdown of trust in our major institutions. This has cleared the way for crazy beliefs in conspiracies.
We’ve developed a misguided trust in unreliable sources and ourselves as “experts” who can push the real experts away and embrace conspiracy theories.
The Viral Effect gives false credence to conspiracies so that the popularity of an idea becomes its power, not its truth. This results in the growth of conspiracies.
Misinformation spreads on social media faster than legacy media can slow it down with vetted facts so that conspiracies flood the mass consciousness.
Misinformation creates chaos, but the very same misinformation provides conspiracy theories, which give their believers a false sense of understanding and control.
History teaches us that conspiracies are the tool of the autocrat.
A public confused and fatigued by a flood of misinformation gives up on the notion of truth, credibility, accountability, and critical thinking. They shrug their shoulders in despair and say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is the cost of gas.”
***
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
What kind of person gets their brain hijacked by a conspiracy theory? I’m afraid the answer is not a pretty one. Typically, a person who has failed to love and connect with others in a mature, meaningful way and who has deeply-rooted prejudices becomes the perfect personality for the True Conspiracy Believer. Not wanting to confront her personal failings, he scapegoats some Enemy Entity--Anthony Fauci, the WHO, the libs, the Woke, the Jews, the terrorists, the liberal media, the Immigrant Caravan, or some other Enemy Combatant. Secondly, this person is overwhelmed by life’s uncertainty and has a childish desire for a simple narrative to make sense out of the chaos. Third, this person is so deep into the social media rabbit hole that he is disconnected from real people, real news, and reality itself. This is a dangerous cocktail that turns this person into a radicalized conspiracy believer.
Sample #2
Why are people on both the Left and the Right anti-vaxxers? It seems there are plenty of conspiracies out there for people of any political persuasion. For the Right, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility for “big government,” the liberal plot to join China to create a world order, and a weaponizing of Covid to allow the Democrats to destroy the Republicans. On the Left, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility toward Big Pharma, a preference for alternative medicine to mainstream science, and the belief that “personal choice” is superior to being a “sheeple,” and anecdotal evidence of children getting vaxxed and immediately becoming autistic.
Sample #3
Anti-vaxxer beliefs are built on a wobbly foundation of logical fallacies.
Sample #4
Eric Hoffer's perennial classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, published in 1951, is a cogent explanation of conspiracy believers today. The conspiracy believer is marked by a sense of personal failure, a cowardice that prevents honest self-inspection to account for the personal failure, a lust for power and easy opportunities for self-advancement, fear of future change, and faith in an "infallible leader" who possesses some theory to make sense of their world.
White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
In this 88-minute Alison Klayman documentary, we see that CEO Mike Jeffries and his lieutenants impose a sort of white aesthetic on the employees and cultivate an “All-American Classic” or WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) old money look combined with chiseled abs to make “the rich white look” part of an exclusive club that all consumers should aspire to.
The “preppy all-American look” is code for white. And we’re not talking just any white, but a particular kind of white: old money upper-class white.
This was a personal fantasy of Mike Jeffries, a fantasy that he fought tooth and nail to defend.
Hubris or arrogance was the fuel behind this marketing fantasy, and for about 7 years the fantasy worked and made Abercrombie a dominant retail clothing brand.
Race Code Language: “All-American Classic” or The Rich White Club
Bifurcated World
The White Rich Club mentality informed company practices. They put idealized white people in the front of the store and people of color in the back. Work hours, promotions, and visibility were all race-based with “All-American Classic,” that is, white, being the company ideal, not just for the employees but as the actual marketing tool: consumers who buy Abercrombie and Fitch are gaining acceptance into an exclusive all-white country club.
Consumers of all races were buying the product. Consumers of all races aspired to work at the stores.
Aggrandizing one race and belittling the others was the formula and the company had no problem with this. Just make the chimera powerful, get rich, and throw morals to the wind.
Of course, admittance into some kind of White Club is complete BS, but that’s the point. It’s a chimera. Abercrombie is selling cool, "the It Factor," belonging, and self-esteem.
Class Elitism and Hauteur Conflict with Diversity
Abercrombie and Fitch not only exalted a very specific kind of upper-class whiteness and a slender muscular aesthetic, but they wanted to intersect race and class into an exclusive kind of club or what we could call snobbery.
Abercrombie combined racial and class snobbery.
A fancy word for snobbery is hauteur.
To exhibit hauteur is to display an obnoxious sense of superiority over others. Another word is supercilious.
The employers were encouraged to take on an icy stand-0ffish persona that made the customers feel they had to be sycophantic in order to be "allowed" to shop at the store. It's amazing that such a bizarre formula worked for so long.
Pre-Internet Success
Based on “whiteness” and old-money wealth, the Abercrombie and Fitch aesthetic developed an ideal that worked for a short time in the brick-and-mortar shopping mall world of the late 90s and early 2000s, but during the rise of the Internet when young consumers became more interested in diversity and social justice, hauteur and racial exclusivity became repulsive and toxic.
Being Drunk on Your Own Success Is a Chimera
Mike Jeffries was too full of himself and too drunk on his rapid success to see the conflict between his racially exclusive fashion brand and the world changing around him.
What was cool became toxic. The backlash was intense and Abercrombie with Mike Jeffries at the helm would fall swiftly.
Mike Jeffries is another uncouth businessperson who flew too close to the sun. His fall was inevitable.
Zeitgeist and an Outdated Chimera and the Downfall
American youth were transitioning in the late 90s and early 2000s, getting away from conformity and having some adult figure like Mike Jeffries tell them what was cool to more inclusion and more individuality.
Jeffries was so intoxicated by his own Kool-Aid, he didn’t even see what was happening to youth culture.
Here is someone whose bread and butter is on knowing who his target audience is and he has no curiosity or inclination to listen to his target audience--their wants and their values--he’s only interested in his own personal fantasy, so being disconnected from his audience, he was doomed to fail.
Fashion Goes Fascist
Writing about Abercrombie’s snobbery and fall from grace, Owen Gleiberman opines in his essay “Abercrombie and Fitch Review: How Youth Fashion Turned Fascist”:
The brand was unabashed in its insider/outsider snobbery, but the problem with it — and there was a major problem — wasn’t the clothes. It was the fact that not just the company’s advertising aesthetic but its hiring practices were nakedly discriminatory. Abercrombie & Fitch was selling neo-colonial jock chic infused with a barely disguised dollop of white supremacy. Like the models, the sales people who worked on the retail outlet floors all had to conform to an “all-American” ideal — which meant, among other things, an exclusionary whiteness. At an Abercrombie boutique, the text was: We’re white. The subtext was: No one else wanted.
***
Gleiberman continues to analyze Abercrombie’s fall as part of the crumbling of mall culture and the rise of social media, which would have no tolerance for Mike Jeffries’ racist employment practices and marketing:
Klayman shows us records of the store’s guide to The Look: what was acceptable for its sales people to wear and, more important, not to wear (dreadlocks, gold chains for men). The company employed very few people of color, and those it did have were mostly confined to the back room, or to late shifts where their job was to clean up. These practices were so overtly discriminatory that in 2003, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Abercrombie. The company settled the suit for $40 million, admitting no guilt but entering into a consent decree in which they agreed to change their recruiting, hiring, and marketing practices. Todd Corley, who was hired to oversee diversity initiatives, is interviewed in the film; he made a few inroads but in other ways was the symbol the company needed to try to change without changing too much.
***
The Chimeras of Invincibility and Rectitude
Regardless of a 40,000-million settlement and grievances from employees, Mike Jeffries remained recalcitrant or steadfast in his racist policies because his brain had been hijacked by a sense of invincibility (all-powerful) and rectitude ("I'm right and no one can tell me otherwise"). This is a dangerous position. History shows that such people are not sustainable.
Body Shaming, Abuse, Harassment, Assault
As Abercrombie promotes this chimera of idealized white youth, Victoria's Secret does something similar with its “Angels,” anorexic supermodels, an industry also rife with shaming, abuse, harassment, assault, and general misogyny.
This is chronicled in the 3-part docuseries Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons on Hulu.
Review the Downward Spiral of Abercrombie
Mike Jeffries is drinking his own Kool-Aid, getting high on his own supply.
Mike Jeffries is drunk from the rapid success of his company.
Mike Jeffries enjoys dominance in a shopping mall retail universe while being blind to the oncoming Internet juggernaut.
Mike Jeffries is imposing racial exclusion on a generation that wants the opposite.
Mike Jeffries is creating a chimera of the slender white body, “White Chic,” to a diverse consumer base, which becomes more and more toxic over time.
The toxic themes of racial exclusion bleed into company hiring policies and even racist graphic T-shirts, revealing the company’s racism and hubris.
The toxic work environment leads to harassment, abuse, bullying, and body shaming.
The company becomes so obnoxious, racist, and toxic that to see it fall is to enjoy a giant slice of schadenfreude.
Guide to Chimera as Racial Stereotypes
Thesis Sample #1 for 38 at the Garden (A thesis that answers a meaningful question)
Why did so many Asian comedians and writers weep with joy as they were discussing the impact of Jeremy Lin in 38 at the Garden? It seems in those moments they realized their brains had been hijacked by a mental straitjacket of “appropriate roles” dedicated by white society; it seems that in real-time we saw them recall painful moments of microaggressions and even greater offenses as they navigated America with their badge of success yet weighed down by negative stereotypes; it seems they intuitively sensed that a pop icon such as Jeremy Lin had the wrecking ball-like power to demolish preconceived ideas and clear the ground for more opportunities and acceptance for Asian Americans. In other words, the larger-than-life force of Jeremy Lin was a powerful counterreaction to the chimera of the toxic stereotype, and for a moment these writers felt hope and longing for freedom.
Thesis Sample #2 for 38 at the Garden
Why are racial stereotypes so difficult to purge from people's brains? Because of The Backfire Effect, the instinct to fight back when proven wrong. If giving people proof of their wrong-headedness is doomed to backfire, should we give up fighting for truth and justice in this world? No. What we see in 38 at the Garden and Adrian Chen's essay "Unfollow," about Megan Phelps-Roper's liberation from a racist religious cult, is that people change, not from intellectual arguments, but from powerful real-life experiences. People don't read books with titles like Racism Is Bad and change. They change from feeling the evil of racism, being disgusted with that evil, and experiencing diverse people as they are, in all their fullness and complexity, not as media stereotypes portray them.
Thesis Sample #3 for 38 at the Garden
The documentary 38 at the Garden is a heartbreaking look at two chimeras in conflict: The chimera of the Underdog who shatters racial stereotypes and gives hope to a generation vs. the chimera of Tribalism, which is the primitive reflexive instinct to rely on hate, hostility, and racial prejudice to define The Other, and live in a world of moral and intellectual darkness.
Sample Outline:
Paragraph 1, summarize 38 at the Garden.
Paragraph 2, a thesis that addresses the positive chimera or aspirational chimera of the underdog and the negative chimera of tribalism.
Part One: Underdog Generates Universal Love
Ignored
Self-doubt
Sleeping on a couch
Treated like he doesn’t belong
Strong will, courage, and self-belief shatter racial stereotypes
People of all backgrounds cheer him on and live vicariously through Jeremy Lin’s triumphs.
Asian Americans can reimagine themselves with the hope of living beyond prescribed limitations and humiliations.
Part Two: Tribalism Raises Its Ugly Head
Ten years after Linsanity, a pandemic reveals scapegoating and a spike in Asian-American violence (339%)
A sports figure who makes a statement on the big stage finds that we live in a society that is quick to revert back to xenophobia, tribalism, and racism.
We are left with bitter-sweet memories of Linsanity, a hero figure who brought different people together.
Sample Thesis #1 for Homecoming King Essay:
With brilliant hilarity and craft, Hasan Minhaj presents a two-part chimera journey consisting of the negative self-image that emotionally cripples him and his absurd “corrective measures' ' to rise above his negative self-image that proves worse than the original disease.
Sample Thesis #2
Hasan Minhaj owes his comic success to his ability to mock the madness that consumes him as he explores various brain hijacks or chimeras that have been the cause of his “growing pains.” Two such chimeras are his self-loathing resulting from racial prejudice and the egregious and asinine methods he deploys to transcend his delusional shortcomings.
Suggested Outline for Homecoming King Chimera Analysis Essay
Paragraph 1: 200-word introduction defines chimera and provides a personal example.
What is a chimera?
It is a brain hijack that sinks into your brain like an eagle’s talons.
It becomes an obsession.
It becomes at the very least the unconscious way you define yourself.
It warps your reality so that you behave in bizarre, extreme, and irrational ways.
Paragraph 2, your thesis: You argue that Hasan’s journey is a 2-part chimera. The first is his negative self-image and the second is his irrational conception of self-validation, belonging, and success.
Paragraphs 3-5: Address his negative self-image. What is it?
He hates his skin color, wishes he could bathe or rub it off and he tells his teacher he wishes he were white.
He feels emasculated by his Asian stereotype role of a nerd who can study with a white girl but cannot be her romantic interest. Anything beyond friendship and he’s “not a good fit,” so he must shrink back to his nerd role.
He must constantly assure white America he’s not a terrorist and that he loves America even as Americans are racist toward him.
He is pained with an existential wound, less from violent racists and more from smiling bigots who insult him with their smiling racism every day.
Paragraphs 6-8: Address his irrational forms of self-validation.
The Great White Princess will make him whole and help him achieve validation, success, belonging, and the American Dream.
Success, Pizza Hut commercials, a job as a comedian, and fame will give him the leverage to taunt Bethany Reed, put her in her place, and make him feel big about himself.
He cultivates resentment over and over until it becomes a feast he loves to indulge in. He does not know how to imagine himself living without resentment.
Final Section: His Return to Sanity: Paragraph 9
Conclusion:
Looking at Bethany Reed through the eyes of love, understanding, and forgiveness, he no longer sees her as The Great White Princess but as an imperfect person whose controlling mother pushed her daughter on the wrong path. His two-layered chimera journey is now complete and he is all the wiser for it.
The Chimera of White Chic As It Pertains to the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Two chimeras are to be examined in the Netflix documentary White Heat: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch.
Chimera #1
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was possessed by a fantasy that we will call the White Chic Chimera: It is a desire to live in an aesthetic of anorexic and chiseled whiteness, which represents old money from the North East, being part of an exclusive cool club, having the power to aggrandize one’s privilege and sexuality while relegating “The Others” to second-class citizen status and feeling entitled to rely on racist memes and tropes to reinforce the old-guard racial and class hierarchy.
Using an aggressive ad campaign, Jeffries and his minions scaled the White Chic Chimera to make Abercrombie and Fitch the fastest-growing clothing retail store in the world. It dominated the industry for several years before its foul odor became apparent to the masses who appropriately abandoned and shunned the brand.
Chimera #2
This domination made Mike Jeffries drink his own racist Kool-Aid: Full of toxic narcissism and spectacular egotism, he believed that what he was doing--promoting a racist hierarchy to slake his greedy appetites--was smart capitalism, that he was invincible, and that his White Chic aesthetic was something to be proud of. A recalcitrant sinner of racist marketing, Jeffries was doomed to crash.
Jeffries’ pride in his white aesthetic was his second chimera. His pride or hubris in his racial aesthetic made him like the tragic figure Icarus who flew too quickly and too close to the sun making his fall inevitable.
Humiliation, disgrace, and ignominy were the appropriate end for a peddler of racist mythology and exclusion. The chimeras that fed Mike Jeffries’ appetites for money and glory were the very chimeras that consumed him.
Sample Thesis Statements That Address Only White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Sample #1
A clothing brand was built not on the clothing itself but what it represented: a chimera consisting of badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in Edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and fatuous behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
Sample #2
Abercrombie’s chimera of cool was a facade that concealed a toxic brand. The toxicity was manifest in many ways including a badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in Edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and foolish behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
Sample #3
Shameless narcissist and peddler of racist memes and marketing tropes, Mike Jeffries is a cautionary tale of a man who hijacked his own brain with dreams of white superiority, retail dominance, endless legal schemes, and a bull-headed refusal to embrace the diverse consumer base that he depended on.
Sample Thesis That Compares All 3 Documentaries
38 at the Garden, Homecoming King, and White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch give us a look at how society’s racial stereotypes, either through a passive default setting or aggressive marketing, create a particular type of brain hijack in which the targets of racism are instilled with a chimera that exists both from within and without: the negative stereotype that results from racist memes and tropes, racist political policies, scapegoating, and white notions of status and exclusivity.
Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.
A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.
Types of dependent clauses:
Whenever I drive up windy mountains,
Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,
Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,
,which is currently enjoying a resurgence.
Phrases
Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,
Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce,
Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,
Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider,
To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age,
Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter,
Examples
I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends.
I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy.
I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested.
I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom.
Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph.
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Identify the Fragments Below
Identify the Fragments Below
I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.
Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.
Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.
I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.
Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.
“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.
She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”
“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”
“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”
“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”
“Why must you do that?”
“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”
“Capisce.”
She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom.
Comma Splice Review
Identify the Comma Splices Below:
It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?
MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.
To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.
One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.
The documentary 38 at the Garden is a heartbreaking look at two chimeras in conflict: The chimera of the Underdog who shatters racial stereotypes and gives hope to a generation vs. the chimera of Tribalism, which is the primitive reflexive instinct to rely on hate, hostility, and racial prejudice to define The Other, and live in a world of moral and intellectual darkness.
Part One: Underdog Generates Universal Love
Ignored
Self-doubt
Sleeping on a couch
Treated like he doesn’t belong
Strong will, courage, and self-belief shatter racial stereotypes
People of all backgrounds cheer him on and live vicariously through Jeremy Lin’s triumphs.
Asian Americans can reimagine themselves with the hope of living beyond prescribed limitations and humiliations.
Part Two: Tribalism Raises Its Ugly Head
Ten years after Linsanity, a pandemic reveals scapegoating and a spike in Asian-American violence (339%)
A sports figure who makes a statement on the big stage finds that we live in a society that is quick to revert back to xenophobia, tribalism, and racism.
We are left with bitter-sweet memories of Linsanity, a hero figure who brought different people together.
Suggested Outline for Homecoming King Chimera Analysis Essay
Sample Thesis for Homecoming King Essay:
With brilliant hilarity and craft, Hasan Minhaj presents a two-part chimera journey consisting of the negative self-image that emotionally cripples him and his absurd “corrective measures” to rise above his negative self-image that prove worse than the original disease.
Paragraph 1: 200-word introduction defines chimera and provides a personal example.
What is a chimera?
It is a brain hijack that sinks into your brain like an eagle’s talons.
It becomes an obsession.
It becomes at the very least the unconscious way you define yourself.
It warps your reality so that you behave in bizarre, extreme, and irrational ways.
Paragraph 2, your thesis: You argue that Hasan’s journey is a 2-part chimera. The first is his negative self-image and the second is his irrational conception of self-validation, belonging, and success.
Paragraphs 3-5: Address his negative self-image. What is it?
He hates his skin color, wishes he could bathe or rub it off and he tells his teacher he wishes he were white.
He feels emasculated by his Asian stereotype role of a nerd who can study with a white girl but cannot be her romantic interest. Anything beyond friendship and he’s “not a good fit,” so he must shrink back to his nerd role.
He must constantly assure white America he’s not a terrorist and that he loves America even as Americans are racist toward him.
He is pained with an existential wound, less from violent racists and more from smiling bigots who insult him with their smiling racism every day.
Paragraphs 6-8: Address his irrational forms of self-validation.
The Great White Princess will make him whole and help him achieve validation, success, belonging, and the American Dream.
Success, Pizza Hut commercials, a job as a comedian, and fame will give him the leverage to taunt Bethany Reed, put her in her place, and make him feel big about himself.
He cultivates resentment over and over until it becomes a feast he loves to indulge in. He does not know how to imagine himself living without resentment.
Final Section: His Return to Sanity: Paragraph 9
Looking at Bethany Reed through the eyes of love, understanding, and forgiveness, he no longer sees her as The Great White Princess but as an imperfect person whose controlling mother pushed her daughter on the wrong path. His two-layered chimera journey is now complete and he is all the wiser for it.
The Chimera of White Chic As It Pertains to the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Two chimeras are to be examined in the Netflix documentary White Heat: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch.
Chimera #1
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was possessed by a fantasy that we will call the White Chic Chimera: It is a desire to live in an aesthetic of anorexic and chiseled whiteness, which represents old money from the North East, being part of an exclusive cool club, having the power to aggrandize one’s privilege and sexuality while relegating “The Others” to second-class citizen status and feeling entitled to rely on racist memes and tropes to reinforce the old-guard racial and class hierarchy.
Using an aggressive ad campaign, Jeffries and his minions scaled the White Chic Chimera to make Abercrombie and Fitch the fastest-growing clothing retail store in the world. It dominated the industry for several years.
Chimera #2
This domination made Mike Jeffries drink his own racist Kool-Aid: He believed that what he was doing--promoting a racist hierarchy to slake his greedy appetites--was smart capitalism, that he was invincible, and that his White Chic aesthetic was something to be proud of.
Jeffries’ pride in his white aesthetic was his second chimera. His pride or hubris in his racial aesthetic made him like the tragic figure Icarus who flew too quickly and too close to the sun making his fall inevitable.
Humiliation, disgrace, and ignominy were the appropriate end for a peddler of racist mythology and exclusion. The chimeras that fed Mike Jeffries’ appetites for money and glory were the very chimeras that consumed him.
Thesis Sample #1 That Compares All 3 Documentaries
38 at the Garden, Homecoming King, and White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch give us a look at how society’s racial stereotypes, either through a passive default setting or aggressive marketing, create a particular type of brain hijack in which the targets of racism are instilled with a chimera that exists both from within and without: the negative stereotype that results from racist memes and tropes, racist political policies, scapegoating, and white notions of status and exclusivity.
Sample Thesis Statements That Addresses Only White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
Sample #1
A clothing brand was built not on the clothing itself but what it represented: a chimera consisting of badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and fatuous behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
Sample #2
Abercrombie’s chimera of cool was a facade that concealed a toxic brand. The toxicity was manifest in many ways including a badge of exclusivity, a cult of youth existing in Edenic nature, FOMO coolness that became so invincible as to invite the most reckless and fatuous behavior, and a white aesthetic that shamelessly otherizes and marginalizes other races.
***
Sample Thesis That Addresses 3 Documentaries
38 at the Garden, Homecoming King, and White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch give us a look at how society’s racial stereotypes, either through a passive default setting or aggressive marketing, create a particular type of brain hijack in which the targets of racism are instilled with a chimera that exists both from within and without; the negative stereotype that results from racist memes and tropes, racist political policies, scapegoating, and white notions of status and exclusivity.
The Chimera of White Chic As It Pertains to the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
There are two chimeras to be examined in the Netflix documentary White Heat: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch.
Chimera #1
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was possessed by a fantasy that we will call the White Chic Chimera: It is a desire to live in an aesthetic of anorexic and chiseled whiteness, which represents old money from the North East, being part of an exclusive cool club, having power to aggrandize one’s privilege and sexuality while relegating “The Others” to second-class citizen status, and feeling entitled to rely on racist memes and tropes to reinforce the old-guard racial and class hierarchy.
Using an aggressive ad campaign, Jeffries and his minions scaled the White Chic Chimera to make Abercrombie and Fitch the fastest-growing clothing retail store in the world. It dominated the industry for several years.
Chimera #2
This domination made Mike Jeffries drink his own racist Kool-Aid: He believed that what he was doing--promoting a racist hierarchy to slake his greedy appetites--was smart capitalism, that he was invincible, and that his White Chic aesthetic was something to be proud of.
Jeffries’ pride in his white aesthetic was his second chimera. His pride or hubris in his racial aesthetic made him like the tragic figure Icarus who flew too quickly and too close to the sun making his fall inevitable.
Humiliation, disgrace, and ignominy were the appropriate end for a peddler of racist mythology and exclusion. The chimeras that fed Mike Jeffries’ appetites for money and glory were the very chimeras that consumed him.
Comparison Three:
In White Hot and Good Hair, the documentaries address how cultural and racial ideals brainwash people into conforming to the “perfect look.” The white aesthetic becomes an obsession that reveals much about the racial mythology, hierarchy, and beauty standards that inform American culture.
Sample Outline for Choice #3:
Paragraph 1: Explain how the white aesthetic informs both documentaries.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that explains the causes and effects of the white aesthetic in both documentaries.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
In this 88-minute Alison Klayman documentary, we see that CEO Mike Jeffries and his lieutenants impose a sort of white aesthetic on the employees and cultivate an “All-American Classic” or WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) old money look combined with chiseled abs to make “the rich white look” part of an exclusive club that all consumers should aspire to.
The “preppy all-American look” is code for white. And we’re not talking just any white, but a particular kind of white: old money upper-class white.
“All-American Classic” or The Rich White Club
The White Rich Club mentality informed company practices. They put idealized white people in the front of the store and people of color in the back. Work hours, promotions, and visibility were all race-based with “All-American Classic,” that is, white, being the company ideal, not just for the employees but as the actual marketing tool: consumers who buy Abercrombie and Fitch are gaining acceptance into an exclusive all-white country club.
Of course, admittance into some kind of White Club is complete BS, but that’s the point. It’s a chimera.
Colorism
Advertising leverages chimeras, and in this case, the chimera is based on aesthetics, race, and colorism.
What is colorism? Colorism is discrimination within the same racial group based on skin color, looks, and aesthetics.
For example, Tyler Perry said his dad abused him in part because he was dark-skinned.
In the white world of Abercrombie and Fitch, slender, muscular whites with the old-money chiseled look are in a higher-tier category than whites whose physiques are more corpulent and “blue-collar.”
Class Hauteur Conflicts with Diversity
Abercrombie and Fitch not only exalted a very specific kind of upper-class whiteness and a slender muscular aesthetic, but they wanted to intersect race and class into an exclusive kind of club or what we could call snobbery.
A fancy word for snobbery is hauteur.
To exhibit hauteur is to display an obnoxious sense of superiority over others. Based on “whiteness” and old-money wealth, the Abercrombie and Fitch aesthetic developed an ideal that worked for a short time in the brick-and-mortar shopping mall world of the late 90s and early 2000s, but during the rise of the Internet when young consumers became more interested in diversity and social justice, hauteur and racial exclusivity became repulsive and toxic.
Mike Jeffries was too full of himself and too drunk on his rapid success to see the conflict between his racially exclusive fashion brand and the world changing around him.
Abercrombie prided itself on racial exclusion. That was the whole point of its marketing chimera. It’s discussed in a YouTube video titled “The Incredibly Satisfying Death of Abercombie.”
What was cool became toxic. The backlash was intense and Abercrombie with Mike Jeffries at the helm would fall swiftly.
Mike Jeffries is another uncouth business person who flew too close to the sun. His fall was inevitable.
Zeitgeist and an Outdated Chimera
American youth were transitioning in the late 90s and early 2000s, getting away from conformity and having some adult figure like Mike Jeffries tell them what was cool to more inclusion and more individuality.
Jeffries was so intoxicated by his own Kool-Aid, he didn’t even see what was happening to youth culture.
Here is someone whose bread and butter is on knowing who his target audience is and he has no curiosity or inclination to listen to his target audience--their wants and their values--he’s only interested in his own personal fantasy, so being disconnected from his audience, he was doomed to fail.
Writing about Abercrombie’s snobbery and fall from grace, Owen Gleiberman opines in his essay “Abercrombie and Fitch Review: How Youth Fashion Turned Fascist”:
The brand was unabashed in its insider/outsider snobbery, but the problem with it — and there was a major problem — wasn’t the clothes. It was the fact that not just the company’s advertising aesthetic but its hiring practices were nakedly discriminatory. Abercrombie & Fitch was selling neo-colonial jock chic infused with a barely disguised dollop of white supremacy. Like the models, the sales people who worked on the retail outlet floors all had to conform to an “all-American” ideal — which meant, among other things, an exclusionary whiteness. At an Abercrombie boutique, the text was: We’re white. The subtext was: No one else wanted.
***
Gleiberman continues to analyze Abercrombie’s fall as part of the crumbling of mall culture and the rise of social media, which would have no tolerance for Mike Jeffries’ racist employment practices and marketing:
Klayman shows us records of the store’s guide to The Look: what was acceptable for its sales people to wear and, more important, not to wear (dreadlocks, gold chains for men). The company employed very few people of color, and those it did have were mostly confined to the back room, or to late shifts where their job was to clean up. These practices were so overtly discriminatory that in 2003, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Abercrombie. The company settled the suit for $40 million, admitting no guilt but entering into a consent decree in which they agreed to change their recruiting, hiring, and marketing practices. Todd Corley, who was hired to oversee diversity initiatives, is interviewed in the film; he made a few inroads but in other ways was the symbol the company needed to try to change without changing too much.
***
Body Shaming, Abuse, Harassment, Assault
As Abercrombie promotes this chimera of idealized white youth, Victoria's Secret does something similar with its “Angels,” anorexic supermodels, an industry also rife with shaming, abuse, harassment, and assault.
This is chronicled in the 3-part docuseries Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons on Hulu.
Review the Downward Spiral of Abercrombie
Mike Jeffries is drinking his own Kool-Aid, getting high on his own supply.
Mike Jeffries is drunk from the rapid success of his company.
Mike Jeffries enjoys dominance in a shopping mall retail universe while being blind to the oncoming Internet juggernaut.
Mike Jeffries is imposing racial exclusion on a generation that wants the opposite.
Mike Jeffries is creating a chimera of the slender white body, “White Chic,” to a diverse consumere base, which becomes more and more toxic over time.
The toxic themes of racial exclusion bleed into company hiring policies and even racist graphice T-shirts, revealing the company’s racism and hubris.
The toxic work environment leads to harassment, abuse, bullying, and body shaming.
The company becomes so obnoxious, racist, and toxic that to see it fall is to enjoy a giant slice of schadenfreude.
The Chimera in Good Hair
“Chris Rock explores the private mysteries of beauty salons” by Roger Ebert
"Good Hair" is a documentary about black women and their hair. Chris Rock, the host and narrator, is a likable man, quick, truly curious, with the gift of encouraging people to speak openly about a subject they usually keep private. He conveys a lot of information, but also some unfortunate opinions and misleading facts. That doesn't mean the movie isn't warm, funny and entertaining.
The film got its start for Rock when his little daughter asked him, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" He wonders how she got that idea. He discovers that some children even younger than his daughter are already having their hair straightened -- and that for children that is a bad idea. He talks to a great many black women about their hair, beginning with the matriarch Maya Angelou and including such celebrities as Nia Long, Eve, Tracie Thoms, Salli Richardson, Salt-n-Pepa and Raven-Symone.
He discovers that for some black women, attaining "good hair" means either straightening or using extensions. Straightening involves the application of products containing sodium hydroxide, which a dermatologist and a chemist describe as potentially dangerous to the scalp and even to inhale in quantity (your lungs might get straightened). Leave it on too long, and your scalp or face can be burned -- something that has happened to some of the woman featured in the film.
I imagine a good many black women would tell Chris Rock that having "good hair" simply means having hair that is healthy, strong and abundant. Why must it also be straight? Yes, many black women enjoy their straight hair, whether natural or by way of extensions. They look great. But often they go back and forth among hairstyles; that is the way of women, unlike us male clods who settle on a hair style in grade school and stick with it like Rod Blagojevich.
Extensions involve braiding long swatches of hair to existing hair. Think Beyonce. Where does this hair come from? India, mostly, where some women cut off their hair before marriage or for religious purposes and can sell it for amounts that mean a lot in a poor nation.
What about the hazards of straightening? Rock shows a hair-raising demonstration of an aluminum Coke can literally being eaten up in a bath of sodium hydroxide. It may help to recall that another name for sodium hydroxide is "lye." God forbid a woman should put that on her head! What Rock doesn't mention is that few women do. If he had peeked in Wikipedia, he would have learned: "Because of the high incidence and intensity of chemical burns, chemical relaxer manufacturers have now switched to other alkaline chemicals." Modern relaxers can also burn if left on too long, but they won't eat up your Coke cans.
The popularity of Afros in the late 1960s and '70s asserted that natural hair was beautiful just the way it grew (and was styled, cut and shaped, of course; Angela Davis didn't look that good without effort). Classic Davis-style Afros have grown rare, but another "natural" style, braiding, is seen all the time nowadays. Many black women and some men use braids and dreads as a fashion statement.
The use of the word "natural hair" is, in any event, misleading. Take a stroll down the hair products aisle of a drugstore or look at the stock price of Supercuts. Few people of any race wear completely natural hair. If they did, we would be a nation of Unibombers.
Black hair is a $9 billion industry. Rock plunges in. He visits Dudley Products in Atlanta, a black-owned hair-products empire, and is fascinated by the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, an annual convention in Atlanta. Here a vast convention hall is jammed with the booths of hair-care companies, and there's an annual competition to name the hairdresser of the year. The contest is fascinating, not least because it seems to have little to do with actually taking care of someone's hair. Would you want your hair done by a stylist hanging upside down from a trapeze? Or joining you inside a giant aquarium? Showmanship is everything; one of the four finalists is a young white man who is treasured by his clients.
What Rock does is help create a film, directed by Jeff Stilson, with much good feeling and instinctive sympathy for our desire to look as good as we can. He asks direct questions, but doesn't cross-examine; he reacts with well-timed one-liners, and he has a hilarious, spontaneous conversation with some black men in a barbershop that gets into areas that are rarely spoken about. The movie has a good feeling, but why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock does? Smile.
***
“Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong” by Alynda Wheat
Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, opened Friday to mixed, but frequently positive, reviews. I’m going to take the painful stance of suggesting that’s because there aren’t a lot of black women in the film reviewing community. Good Hair is often funny, fascinating, and raises a few key ideas. What it doesn’t do is offer a cogent, relevant analysis of why black women relax their hair or wear hair extensions — which was supposed to have been the point.
Some background: Rock says he did the film because his daughter came to him one day, upset, that she didn’t have “good hair.” This apparently prompted the comedian to begin an odyssey that took him from the hair salons of New York City to a hair show in Atlanta, from Indian hair-shaving ceremonies, to the Beverly Hills salons that buy the Indian hair. But in all that conversation what you never hear are opposing viewpoints. Nearly everyone in Chris Rock’s movie seems to agree on a few critical ideas (that can happen when you limit your sample). Frankly, as a black woman, I sat through Good Hair with one dominant thought: Who are these people? Their opinions rarely represented my own, or those of anyone I know. I am but one voice in this vast, complicated community, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say something. Here, a few of the ways Good Hair gets it entirely wrong.
Black women do not want to be white.
Sure, you can find some poor soul who pops up on Oprah with deep-seated issues, but for the most part, black women are perfectly happy being black women. A brief history: The idea of “good hair” is one that, historically, has been fraught with racial stigma. For various reasons, black people who looked whiter, like their slave masters (read: frequently, their fathers) had advantages over those who looked more like their African ancestors. The preference didn’t die after slavery, however, in one sense surviving as the debate over “good hair.” “Good hair” was that which was easy to comb, long, and silky.
Like many cultural idiosyncrasies, the notion of “good hair” never died completely, but there isn’t anyone in the black community today who doesn’t see the term as dated, self-loathing, and patently foolish. There isn’t a black woman I know who sits down in a stylist’s chair to get a relaxer because she, as Rock posits, wants to look white. Not one. I have a relaxer. I have one for the same reason that I don’t wear makeup, don’t have a gym membership, and can usually be found in jeans and a Gap tee—I’m lazy. I like getting out of the house in a reasonable amount of time, and don’t cope well with a lot of hassle over what I consider superficial things. So why bother fighting my naturally nappy hair on a daily basis when every 8-10 weeks I can pay someone else to do it? Which brings me to my second point…
$1000 at the salon? Get real.
The actresses and singers in Good Hair freely admit to spending a fortune on their hair, which was expected. Wildly unusual was the handful of working-class women willing to pony up a cool grand to get a weave. Again, who are these women? The cost of relaxer varies widely, from, say, $50-$200, depending on what zip code you’re in, and weaves go up significantly from there. But no one in the working class (in their right mind) spends rent on their hair. Anyone who does has way bigger issues than what’s growing out of her head.
We don’t all have weaves or relaxers.
As I mentioned, I have a relaxer, but I have several friends and family members who don’t. And for every 10 black women I know, maybe two have weaves. It’s a common hair-maintenance style, but it certainly doesn’t extend to everyone. So before you assume you know what’s going on with a black woman’s hair, understand that we’re as diverse and varied with our style options as everyone else.
All this is none of your business.
Unless you’re really good friends with someone, it’s rude to ask what’s in their hair, whether relaxer or weave. We’re not anthropological subjects, and we don’t like being treated as curiosities.
White women do it, too.
Approximately 94 minutes of Good Hair is spent exploring ideas of why black women relax their hair (so damaging!) or wear weaves (so delusional!). There’s exactly one minute spent on the fact that white women do it too. White women frequently chemically treat their hair to make it straighter or curlier, and dye it so regularly they don’t even know their natural color. Does this make them culturally insecure? Hardly. Those “extensions” that lots of white women in Hollywood (and elsewhere) sport? They’re the same as weaves. Some may be clipped on or glued in, but as anyone who’s ever watched the make-over episodes of America’s Next Top Model knows, white women wear hair enhancements too. Which brings me to another point…
Women of nearly every culture want long, thick, luxurious hair.
For every black woman who’s ever wanted to look like Beyoncé, there’s a white woman who desperately wanted hair like Farrah. Long, fabulous tresses seems to be an ideal in many, many cultures, and black women shouldn’t be criticized, ostracized, or psychoanalyzed for wanting the same thing.
The whole idea of “good hair” is pretty moot these days.
If “good hair” is that which is silky and manageable, what’s the difference if you’re born with it or your hair dresser gets you there? In its natural state, my hair is kinky and difficult to comb. With a relaxer it’s long and holds curls pretty nicely. So do I have “good hair,” or not? Here’s the fabulous, freeing, culturally uncomplicated answer: I don’t care.
Look, I’m not saying that Good Hair has no purpose. The film introduces a conversation that’s so important, it reached the White House. (Check out the viciously racist commentary on Malia Obama’s twists, or the New Yorker cover with Michelle Obama in an afro and tell me black women’s hair isn’t a political issue.) But there’s rampant misinformation and theories that just don’t hold up. And no one ever seems to really address the cultural roots of Rock’s daughter’s question.
Neither the director nor any of the writers on Good Hair are women. It’s no surprise that a group of fellas got together and came up with a film that, while well-intentioned, just doesn’t get it. But tell me what you think, PopWatchers? Will you see the movie? Have some stories of your own you want to share?
UPDATE: I love the debate here, and please keep it coming! I just want to point out (since a lot of people are addressing it) that I have absolutely no problem with natural hairstyles. I don’t think of the word “nappy” as pejorative (as some people apparently do), and I don’t associate any negativity with natural hair or natural hairstyles. (There is, in fact, an actress in the movie whose natural hair I’d love to have.) I simply said that MY natural hair is difficult to manage. I don’t begin to suppose that everyone’s is. My whole point is that people should be free to do whatever they want with their hair, without feeling like it has some grander cultural or political point. Cut it, curl it, dye it blue. As my mother always tells me, “Do you.”
***
“Look but Don’t Tough: It’s All About the Hair” by Jeannette Catsoulis
When one of Chris Rock’s young daughters asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?,” the comedian decided to investigate the complex, often troubled relationship between African-American women and their crowning glory. He had no idea what he was in for.
Embarking on a journey that would take him from beauty shops in the United States to a Hindu temple in India, from a hair show in Georgia to a product-manufacturing plant in North Carolina, Mr. Rock unearthed a world of physical, financial and psychological hurt. But though “Good Hair” embraces the pain, digging gingerly into wounds both political and personal, the film feels more like a celebration than a lament. Spirited, probing and frequently hilarious, it coasts on the fearless charm of its front man and the eye-opening candor of its interviewees, most of them women including the actress Nia Long and the hip-hop stars Salt-n-Pepa and all of them ready to dish.
In fact, one of the happy consequences of “Good Hair” should be a radical increase in white-woman empathy for their black sisters. Whether in thrall to “creamy crack,” a scary, aluminum-dissolving chemical otherwise known as relaxer (what it’s really relaxing, observes Mr. Rock astutely, is white people), or the staggeringly expensive and time-consuming weave (often available on layaway plan), the women in the film bare heads and hearts with humor and without complaint.
For the Rev. Al Sharpton, though, that’s part of the problem. “We wear our economic oppression on our heads,” he says, wryly bemoaning the migration of the multibillion-dollar, black hair-products business from African-American to predominantly Asian manufacturers. Oppression takes on a darker hue, however, when the film travels to India to unearth the unwitting and unremunerated suppliers of all that weave- and wig-ready hair: poor, devout women who offer it to their priests in a religious ceremony known as tonsure.
Competently directed by Jeff Stilson, “Good Hair” employs humor as a medium for insightful and often uncomfortable observations on race and conformity. The film’s only misstep is its fixation on the competitors in a flamboyant Atlanta hair show. Far more entertaining are the barbershop conversations in which ordinary men jovially gripe about their honeys’ hairdos; they’re a brotherhood joined in financial commitment and thanks to hands-off-the-head decrees at home emotional frustration.
On a recent “Oprah Winfrey Show,” Mr. Rock ran his fingers excitedly through his host’s luxuriant, natural tresses, unloosed in honor of the visit. “I’ve never done that to a black woman!” he marveled, while Ms. Winfrey, who used to threaten to shave her head when she reached her 50th birthday, giggled delightedly: at that moment, she was just happy not to have followed through with her threat.
***
Sample Thesis Statements
They must be the following:
Demonstrable: The information in the thesis generates body paragraphs or “reasons” for supporting your thesis, which will be the bulk of your essay.
Defensible: You can defend your thesis with logic, reasoning, evidence, facts, statistics, and credible sources, and as a result, achieve logos, pathos, and ethos.
Debatable: Your argument has two sides; therefore, you are not presenting a claim that is so obvious and self-evident as to be fatuous.
Sample #1
Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, promoted a chimera based on “whiteness,” a pernicious myth based on a fantasy body aesthetic or the anorexic “chiseled look”; an upper-east-coast WASP lifestyle, exclusiveness or snobbery, and a retroactive society based on a racial hierarchy.
Sample #2
Former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries doomed his company to failure by unwittingly clashing his pernicious white mythology with a young generation that was repelled by social exclusivity based on race, economic class, and body shaming.
Sample #3
For former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, the chimera of whiteness was all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic.
Sample #4
The documentaries White Hot and Good Hair successfully illustrate that the chimera of whiteness is all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic.
Sample #4
Whereas White Hot is about the cruelty of the whiteness chimera and all of its contingent pathologies, the documentary Good Hair is less about the chimera of whiteness and more about how hair in black culture is a place of communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and big business.
Sample #5
In Alynda Wheat’s insightful essay “Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong,” she persuasively argues that black women are not chasing the chimera of whiteness; rather, they are embracing various hairstyles to celebrate black culture, communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and black business.
Essay #3 Chimera Groupings
Choose one of the following "Chimera Groupings" and write a 1,200-word comparison essay in which you analyze the causes and effects of the chimeras revealed in the stories, movies, or documentaries:
Comparison One: The brain hijack of negative racial stereotypes: In the HBO documentary 38 in the Garden and the New York Times YouTube video “When Linsanity Happened,” we see that negative stereotypes go deeply into people’s unconscious, both the culprits and the victims, and that Jeremy Lin broke these stereotypes, causing people to question their own racism and giving Asians collective hope to reimagine themselves free of those stereotypes.
Sample Outline for Choice #1
Paragraph 1: Define the chimera you will be focusing on.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis: Explain the causes of the chimera and its effects. For example, as it pertains to the documentary 38 at the Garden and the theme of racial stereotypes, a sample thesis might read:
Jeremy Lin’s ascent in the NBA forced society to examine the straightjacket of Asian stereotypes, shattered those stereotypes, and gave Asian Americans the hope of reimagining a life of dignity without the rigid definitions society had imposed upon them.
Body Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Two: In “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King, Dexter and Hasan go on a futile quest for the Great White Princess as a way of achieving status and belonging. The Great White Princess is a racial myth or chimera that Dexter and Hasan pursue in the hopes of achieving status, belonging, and self-worth.
Sample Outline for Choice #2
Paragraph 1, Compare “The Great White Princess” in “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King.
Paragraph 2, your thesis: Explain why Dexter Green succumbs to The Great White Princess Chimera and why Hasan Minhaj eventually escapes his in a claim that will provide a contrast/comparison chimera.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Three: In White Hot and Good Hair, the documentaries address how cultural and racial ideals brainwash people into conforming to the “perfect look.” The white aesthetic becomes an obsession that reveals much about the racial mythology, hierarchy, and beauty standards that inform American culture.
Sample Outline for Choice #3:
Paragraph 1: Explain how the white aesthetic informs both documentaries.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that explains the causes and effects of the white aesthetic in both documentaries.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Four: In Fake Famous and The King’s Jester, the enticement of fame and “celebrification” impede people from living a real, authentic life. This loss of authenticity includes the loss of boundaries.
Sample Outline for Choice #4
In paragraph 1, your introduction, compare the way fame takes over the principal people in Fake Famous and The King’s Jester.
In paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that compares the way the fame chimera leads to the principal people’s moral dissolution.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Five: In Uncut Gems and Private Life, a black opal and the promise of a baby serve as a chimera for happiness, fulfillment, self-control, and status even as the characters’ lives unravel into more and more self-loathing and chaos.
Sample Outline for Choice #5
For paragraph 1, explain how the characters in both movies are seeking qualities they don’t have in their chosen chimeras.
For paragraph 2, develop a thesis that explains how as the characters pursue their chimeras with greater and greater intensity, they go through a process of moral dissolution that accelerates with greater and greater intensity.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Six: The Chimera of Conspiracies: People lose contact with reality as they go down rabbit holes of conspiracies. We will examine the forces of “the epistemic crisis,” the breakdown of faith in institutions, the death of expertise, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and we will narrow our focus on conspiracies to anti-vaxxing. For sources, we will look at the YouTube Channel Wisecrack, which has some pertinent videos on this subject: “Why America Loves Fake News,” “Anti-Vaxxers: What Went Wrong?” “Anti-Vaxxers: How the Media Created a Monster,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Vaccines” (June 25, 2017), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Covid Vaccines” (May 2, 2021).
Sample Outline for Choice #6
For paragraph 1, your introduction, define the idea of a conspiracy as a very tempting chimera to certain types of people.
For paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that explains the causes of a conspiracy chimera.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Seven. The Chimera of Magical Childhood Innocence: We will look at 3 Wisecrack videos: “How Disney Ruined Culture,” “Disney Adults: Is Disney a Religion?” “Disney Adults Part 2: Disney’s Capitalist Religion.”
Sample Outline for Choice #7:
Paragraph 1, your introduction, define the Disney Chimera.
Paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that analyzes the causes of the appeal of the Disney Chimera and how this mythology affects its followers and society at large.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Study Questions for "Winter Dreams" in the Context of the Chimera
How does the story introduce social class anxieties into Dexter’s personality and how do these anxieties fuel Dexter's chimera?
America is supposed to be a democracy, a country where "everyone is equal," but this is empty rhetorical cant (hypocritical and sanctimonious talk). In truth, Americans have always been obsessed with social class.
Upon America's founding, America has used slave labor to get the hard work done. In Nancy Isenberg's book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America, she writes about America's class hierarchy using "lower classes" to do dirty work. Americans abhor the thought of being in the underclass and are obsessed with class status.
Today, we can see the social class status at play at restaurants that require valet parking. The shiny silver Mercedes is parked right in front of the restaurant while the 20-year-old rusted clunker is parked several blocks away behind a decrepit liquor store.
This class division causes shame and anxiety for many, and Dexter Green is no exception.
Dexter Green's Class Anxiety
Dexter Green grows up haunted by the idea that he is perceived as lower class, a mere caddie or grocery store clerk.
We see in the story that Dexter’s dad is “second best,” the owner of a second-best grocery store, evidencing working-class roots.
Dexter works as a caddie, a servant to the upper classes, and he finds this humiliating.
He reads the bleak weather as an omen of his doom while living in the underclass, working as a servile caddy for professional players and tastemakers, people who matter.
He feels irrelevant and irrelevance stirs resentment and depression in his veins. Americans want to feel like they are on center stage.
Dexter sees life as extremes, those who have and those who have not; the dreary Northern spring and the gorgeous fall.
Dexter is desperate for something that will lift him above everyone, and give him a sense of being at the top of the American Dream. He must either be at the top or be a complete failure. There is no in-between.
All or Nothing Universe of Perpetual Adolescent
Dexter creates this false binary universe: We call this the All or Nothing Fallacy. Judy Jones has become a symbol of "making it in America," being the object of everyone's envy. In this sense, Judy Jones is the embodiment of "winter dreams," the phony, superficial class status or "Chanel No. 5" moment that feeds the souls of so many American souls who sacrifice their whole lives to prop up this tinsel image.
Dexter's Chimera is Judy Jones, his "Winter Dream":
The dominant drive of Dexter is to acquire his "winter dreams" by being rich and having Judy Jones, the ultimate trophy. Seeing people envy him is the drug that diminishes his class anxiety.
He is a man with a chip on his shoulder who needs class supremacy over others, or so he believes, to be happy.
We read that after the depression of spring, October brings him hope and November brings him “ecstatic triumph.”
We see Dexter’s vaulting ambition to get away from the lowly caddy job. He’s “too old” for it, he thinks, at 14.
What compelled Dexter to hurry away from his caddy job?
An 11-year-old girl, Miss Jones, described as “beautifully ugly” and “who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men.”
Indeed, beauty can unhinge men and dislocate men from reality, as we shall see in the story.
But not just beauty—beauty combined with the aura of upper class money: This is the noxious cocktail that will undermine Dexter Green.
Projection, Not Love
We must emphasize Dexter is not in love with Judy Jones the person, but he image of his own projection. Too often "falling in love" is a person projecting his inner needs and fantasies so as to worship an abstraction or idea but to be blind to the person he presumes he's in love with. In truth, Dexter's objectifying Judy Jones makes her more of a thing than a person.
Dexter Unhinged by Beauty as a Symbol of Old Money and Privilege
The girl addressed Dexter as “boy,” a sign of his lowly servitude, and this has an emasculating effect on him.
His sense of emasculation is further reinforced when the caddy-master shows up and says to Dexter, “What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady’s clubs.”
He quits from compulsion: “The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet.”
His perturbation is the great anxiety that makes him compulsive and unhinges him. He’s high-strung and compulsive.
We read a warning of his compulsive nature: “As so frequently would be the case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated by his winter dreams.”
Glitter, Not Substance, Feeds Dexter's Winter Dreams:
We read a famous passage from the story: "But do not get the impression, because his winter dreams happened to be concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything shoddy in the boy. He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people -- he wanted the glittering things themselves.”
What does this passage mean?
Dexter believes he can, through hard work, embody “glitter,” that is to say the apotheosis of success. America is not a country; it’s a dream. America is “Winter Dreams,” the idea that we find personal fulfillment, meaning, and higher purpose through the attainment of “glitter.” It is this very sick idolatry that will undermine Dexter Green.
We also read that while he become successful in business, he suffered certain “denials,” and that the story is about one of those denials, and that would be the denial of acquiring Judy Jones, who for Dexter is the highest example (apotheosis) of “glitter,” of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”
For Dexter Green, the chimera is about the aura of wealth and power.
As we read about Dexter’s rise in the laundry industry and the rich patrons who frequent his establishments, we learn what about old and new money?
Old money has a certain aura, a certain “heritage,” and a snobbery attached to it. On the other hand, new money, the rags to riches story such as Dexter’s, has humble beginnings and class insecurity attached to it even as the person of new wealth amasses riches because in part he will always feel a bit like a fish out of water and he will always have memories of his poor beginnings. Moreover, he may not know all the codes and linguistic tics that the old rich use in their arsenal of being smugly rich. He may have some of his old caddy behaviors, which he thinks about when he returns to play golf at his old course—not as a caddy but as a man who’s “made it.”
We can surmise perhaps that Dexter is not just desperate to be rich but is desperate to have an identity of being rich, of not being looked down upon by those with old money, and his delusion is that winning the affections of old-money Judy Jones with all her intoxicating beauty is his ticket to happiness.
Old Money Vs. Nouveau Riche
Old Money has cachet and is considered superior to nouveau riche, also called arrivestes, parvenus, and vulgarian small potatoes.
But much of his quest is in his own imagination. Therefore, his quest is an illusion or a chimera, and it is this chimera that will unhinge him.
Judy Jones' aura is built on her sense of entitlement:
One of the brilliant things in this story is the way Fitzgerald quickly exposes Judy Jones’ personality at the golf course where she hits a golf ball into Mr. T.A. Hedrick’s abdomen. What do we learn about her in such a brief passage?
Judy Jones is self-centered, entitled, and used to not being accountable for anything. In other words, she is somewhat of a cipher and wastrel. She makes messes and expects others to clean them up. She can hurt others, but feel no empathy for her actions. In other words, she’s an empty-headed, repellant narcissist.
Judy Jones the chimera is just a narcissistic cipher:
And here lies the story’s tragedy: Dexter Green has hinged is whole notion of happiness on going on a Love Quest for Judy Jones, a Narcissistic Cipher. His “winter dreams” are futile, delusional, and empty. They will bring him nothing but a handful of ashes and dust.
Another important observation from this scene is that Dexter watches the old-money golf players gawk and admire Judy Jones’ beauty, doing so with a certain misogyny and lasciviousness.
Their remarks make her all the more a compelling “trophy.” Dexter is diseased by the need to create an image through the amassing of trophies, what in Latin is called the libido ostentando. Dexter’s lust for ostentatiousness will blind him from the fundamental emptiness that defines his existence.
The chimera is a drug that intoxicates its victim, becomes an addiction, and leads to madness:
After seeing the adult beauty Judy Jones at the golf course, Dexter goes on a night swim and hears piano that he associates with the correct life path he has taken: “The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what was happening to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attuned to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again.”
The chimera is a trickster:
How does the above passage speak to The Trickster as part of Dexter’s Quest to find his Winter Dreams?
“Winter Dreams” is essentially a chimera story: A man quests for his chimera and is crushed by the emptiness of his dream. Therefore, a chimera can be called a Trickster. A Trickster is a character or an idea that carries us through the four levels of emotion: earthly, angelic, mystical, and demonic.
The Trickster must give us hope and promise of finding a land of milk and honey only to throw us down from the heavens and into the inferno of our own making.
Beneath Judy Jones' False Exterior Lies a False Interior:
Even though Judy Jones is a flirt and a shallow coquette, she inadvertently asks Dexter an existential question during their first dinner: “Who are you, anyhow?” How does her question touch on one of the story’s major themes?
As an American, Dexter believes he can reinvent himself anyway he wants. He is a chameleon, and he is free to dream himself into the kind of person he wants to be. The idea that we can become our dream is uniquely American.
The irony is that in many ways he doesn’t know who he is since his energies have created a façade to others and to himself.
In fact, his answer to Judy’s question is unwittingly true. He says, “I’m nobody. . . . My career is largely a matter of futures.”
In fact, he only lives in the future, not the present, and this is part of his unhinged character: to be disconnected and disengaged from the present as he looks to the future when he will finally be worthy of achieving the American Dream. But he will never be worthy. His hope is a chimera that pushes him to constantly look ahead into the future and never in the present moment.
When he assures Judy he is not poor and she kisses him, her kisses arouse a “surfeit that would demand more surfeit.” In other words, his desires will always outrun his capacity to fulfill them, and Judy Jones is the embodiment of his excess desires or concupiscence.
What we have, then, is a mutually self-destructive symbiosis or interdependence. What’s scary is that that unhealthy symbiosis is the very foundation of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”
The chimera is an addiction that consumes its victim:
Much of the story chronicles Dexter’s addiction to Judy Jones like a junkie hooked on drugs. Explain.
We read, “Dexter surrendered himself to the most direct and unprincipled personality with which he had ever come into contact.”
The unhinged man is so needy and compulsive that he surrenders his self-interest to an unethical, morally bankrupt force in the name of his carnal and monetary idolatry.
He has no moral combat to save him from pursuing someone as unprincipled as Judy Jones.
We can further explore Dexter’s unhinging with Judy Jones by looking at her as a drug. She is less human to Dexter and more of a substance of his addiction. And in turn Judy Jones is addicted to the power she has over men by her power to intoxicate them. She in turn is addicted to seeing men addicted to her.
We see that Dexter is no needy for Judy Jones that he sacrifices his dignity and self-respect to pursue her. For example, he knows she loves other men in her shallow capricious way and that she sometimes “loves” in the same pathetic, superficial manner, and she even tells him so, but rather than be upset he accepts her imperfect, disloyal love. We read, for example, that after telling him that she was in love with another man earlier the same day as they lie in bed, he finds her words “beautiful and romantic.”
When she lies to him and says she did not kiss a man earlier the same day, Dexter knows she’s lying, but he’s okay with that because he is “glad that she has taken the time to lie to him.”
The chimera is an immoral creature:
Because Judy Jones is aware that he has no standards of behavior that she must adhere to, she knows she can get away with anything. Deep down, she can’t love him because he lacks self-respect, but she herself lacks self-respect because if she had it, she would not be in a relationship with someone she doesn’t respect. Both of them are degraded in the relationship, a fact that neither wants to see. Both are unhinged in this manner.
As you read the story, you will see that the narrative has many parallels with drug addiction as it pertains to Dexter Green’s relationship with Judy Jones.
The chimera will send you to your own personal hell:
Over and over again, we see that Judy Jones, the consummate Trickster, sends Dexter into hell through neglect and infidelity, but then gives him just enough honey so he’ll come back to her. She does this to many men, not just Dexter. We read, “Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer.”
She is clearly a sick person and the men who become addicted to her are just as sickly. They live in a demimonde of no-respect and emptiness.
Like a drug addict, Dexter becomes unhinged and cannot be civil to others when she unexpectedly disappears at a social event. He panics and is overcome with anxiety that causes him to lose his polite facade.
We read that Judy Jones is not a self-possessed person in her compulsion to torture men: “Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in anything that she did.”
Even the “strong and the brilliant, “play her game and not their own.” She always has the upper hand.
Her beauty is her power, but as we shall see, using beauty for power and identity is a sure failure because beauty is transitory.
But while her beauty is in its prime, she is Dexter’s drug, as we read: “The helpless ecstasy of losing himself with in her was opiate rather than tonic.”
When you think about the above line, many of us love the drama of a tormented obsession, and we therefore choose to stay entrapped in our torment because to lose that drama would force us to face the abyss or the existential vacuum that defines our empty existence.
In many ways, the story teaches us that we are our own worst enemy. Sadly, many of us “unhinge” ourselves from reality for lack of anything better to do.
Another way of looking at Dexter’s “Winter Dreams” is that he was feeding off the sick energy of desperation that Judy Jones created between her and her bevy of lovers.
Dexter knows he’s an addict, at least on an unconscious level. This makes him a divided soul: Part of him wants to escape his addiction to Judy Jones. He even gets engaged to another woman as a hopeful “cure” for his disease. Imagine getting engaged to someone you don’t love as a “cure” for a love addiction. That is a cogent sign of being unhinged.
His Judy Jones substitute is Irene Scheerer. Unlike Judy Jones who is described as a refined beauty, we read little of Irene’s physical charms except that she is “a little stout.”
We have to wonder if the world is full of Judy Jones archetypes that enchant men, leave them, and damage the men so that they can never love other women because these damaged men are forever fixated on their own personal “Judy Jones.” Perhaps we can call this the Angelina Jolie Factor: One look into her eyes and you’re permanently damaged, unhinged, and ready to abandon reality as you know it.
Even as he tries to love Irene, he keeps thinking about the manner in which Judy Jones beckons, torments, and insults him, and he is desperate to convince himself that he cannot pursue Judy Jones any longer. But as an unhinged man, as a man possessed by the IDEA of what Judy Jones represents—complete power, ecstasy, and abandonment—he finds his drug addiction incurable, and as such he hates himself and he hates Judy Jones—the very woman he cannot free himself from.
At night, he argues with himself about Judy Jones, going over a laundry list as to why she’d be a horrible wife. But that is the cortex in his brain. The limbic part of his brain, where emotion and reptilian desire reside, continue to rage a protest for acquiring Judy Jones.
He sees Judy Jones at a dance and he realizes that he had long ago been “hardened against jealousy.” He still wants her. He’s twenty-five, he has devoted 14 years to obsessing over Judy Jones, and he is about to marry Irene Scheerer.
About to get married to Irene, he still obsesses over Judy Jones, wondering if she still cares about him, and Irene is nothing but a backdrop to his life, “no more than a curtain spread behind him.” She will be part of a marital façade, but his demonic possession will still rage on.
The chimera tends to prey upon narcissists:
Dexter Green is empty; he has no self. He only has an idea of what the successful self looks like to others, what Kristin Dombek in her essay "Emptiness" calls "selfiness." In many ways, Dexter is a narcissist.
Dexter imitates an image of success at the expense of others whom he uses in the service of his grand performance.
Empty, loveless, and without any real connection to other human beings, Dexter focuses on all he knows: creating a "hologram of the superpowered self" or what elsewhere Dombek calls the "simulacrum of the superpowered self."
In other words, Dexter doesn't work on building a real life for himself. Rather, he becomes a curator of his fake life, which becomes a "reality" to himself and others. In doing this, he fulfills Pascal's insight that most people hate their real life but prefer to create an imaginary life for themselves and for others.
For Dexter Green, people are not people. They are tools to help him hone and chisel his successful image.
As a narcissist, Dexter disregards content, substance, morality, and integrity. He only worships one thing: the "hologram" of the Super Self. That is his "winter dream." He is smart enough to know that the "winter dream" is a destructive illusion, but he does not care, but he has invested too much of his life in this "winter dream" and this dream is all he knows.
Nothing embodies this "winter dream," this "hologram" of superior success, more than Judy Jones. The tragedy and farce of the story is that Judy Jones is a mediocrity, a cipher, a hoax, a complete illusion.
Dexter Green "gets played" by the very illusion that he worships above all else.
Comparing & Contrasting “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King
Notice how “Winter Dreams” is such a dark story with no character transformation. Dexter’s demise and his steady disintegration is evident in all attempts to write a thesis statement about him.
Look at these examples:
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1:
Dexter Green's obsession with Judy Jones as the winter dream of social status becomes his cocaine, which diminishes him into a junkie evidenced by _________________, __________________, _______________, and ____________________.
Sample #2
"Winter Dreams" is a cautionary tale about a shallow narcissist whose relationship to Judy Jones is analogous to that of a junkie and heroin.
Sample #3
"Winter Dreams" is a Faustian Bargain tale about a man who sells his soul to the devil for unexamined ambition, a bargain that dehumanizes him like a junkie hooked on crack.
Sample #4
"Winter Dreams" is a fable about how class status anxiety can overtake us and compromise our humanity through blind ambition, using other people as trophies, and trading real life for a false representation of life.
But not all are doomed.
But not all who fall prey to the chimera are narcissists doomed to a life of personal hell and decline.
In contrast to the narcissist Dexter Green, Hasan Minhaj is a man of substance who, like Dexter, falls prey to the chimera of “The White Princess.” But unlike Dexter, Hasan shows in his Netflix comedy special Homecoming King that he is able to work his way out of his chimera.
If you decided to compare and contrast Dexter and Hasan for your essay, you might want to address the following:
Hasan struggles with American freedom and his father's strict authoritarian control.
Hasan and Dexter share the freedom to dream and enjoy "the audacity of equality." They both believe they can become what they want, but we see no moral compass inside Dexter. In contrast, Hasan learns forgiveness, a value imparted to him by his father.
Hasan must find belonging in a country that smears him with racial stereotypes. Hasan loves the American Dream even though racists, especially right after 9/11, want to stigmatize him as a "terrorist." In contrast, Dexter's whiteness makes it easier for him to join "the club." But even the white Dexter never feels validated. In what appears to be insanity, Dexter attaches white privilege to his white princess Judy Jones. He never sees his insanity. In contrast, Hasan realizes how insane it was to attach white privilege with his own white princess Bethany Reed. Hasan's realization helps him let go of his chimera and restore his sanity.
Hasan finds connection and belonging with his fellow Americans through popular culture. So does Dexter. But this popular culture that gives us things in common to share also has a status system, and for Dexter "winter dreams" refers to the "tinsel" that elevates people's status in the eyes of others. Dexter never goes beyond this tinsel. In contrast, Hasan digs deeper into his heart for meaning and core values that he has received from his family. Dexter seems to lack such core values.
Both Dexter and Hasan have a chip on their shoulder in that they feel they've never "made it" or found the status they desire. At one point, Hasan seeks revenge on someone who he feels betrayed him and must learn a valuable lesson.
Dexter and Hasan both have a white privilege chimera: Dexter is obsessed with Judy Jones; Hasan is obsessed with Bethany Reed. "You Are My White Princess" would be a good essay title.
Dexter's story is horrible and full of despair with no redemption. In contrast, Hasan's story is hopeful and full of redemption.
Sources
For your sources, you can use "Winter Dreams," the Netflix special "Homecoming King," the New Yorker article, and the AV/TV Club article.
Sample Thesis Statements for the Above
Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj are examples of the hopes and anguish of pursuing the American Dream of success, privilege, and personal reinvention and how those dreams get channeled in a chimera of a "lost love."
Dexter Green, who operates on white privilege, and Hasan Minhaj, who navigates through racial stigma, both desire ultimate validation in a white world, and they both express their desire for this ultimate veneration in their adulation of a "white princess" who embodies all of America's apex privileges.
Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj show us that the desire for validation in America's power hierarchy is so strong that this desire for validation often leads to insanity and self-destruction. The difference between Dexter and Hasan is that Dexter's through-line is from being a lost soul to being a complete lost soul evidenced by his squandered existence. In the case of Hasan, however, his journey into darkness is interrupted by wisdom, forgiveness, and redemption.
