In advertisements such as the “Innocent Orange Juice” commercial the orchards where the fruit is grown is so aesthetically pleasing. This effect can also be seen in other commercials for main stream brands. The orchards are depicted as extensive, sunny havens where all the workers are happily going about their picking. The individuals harvesting the fruit are usually always older men with mustaches wearing denim. This particular advertisement chose to focus on the the natural aspects of the juice. Near the end of the commercial it says, “Nature does the hard work we just squeeze her best bits”. I found it interesting that they chose to focus on this. I do not know to what extent farmers use nontoxic methods but it would be very ironic if those “natural” oranges were covered in pesticide.
These commercials do such a good job of creating a false reality for viewers. As a child growing up in Southern California I lived near a street named Orange Grove. It was named this because a hundred years before the area had been full of orange groves. When I would try to imagine these groves I would imagine something close to these commercials. I always envisioned this picturesque scene where the sun was always warm and the oranges went on for miles.
Upon starting Under the Feet of Jesus I was wondering what direction the book was going to take. Not having completed it yet I am still wondering how the story will end. It is a story about love, individuality, family, integrity, but most of all it is a story that points at the reality of these “picturesque” landscapes. Estrella and her family labor day after day under the blistering California sun. The family does not make enough money to be well fed or to get ahead in life. Although, it is bad enough that they have to work the land for so little money they are also being poisoned; some slowly and others who are not so lucky. In the novel the characters frequently reference where the biplane is, however, Alejo is not able to escape it. He is immediately greatly affected by the pesticides and remains sick the whole book. I have yet to see if he lives. Other workers are slowly being affected. Estrella and others say they smell like kelp or the ocean, the smell of the pesticide, and often Estrella’s eyes burn.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is also a novel that has this affect. In the novel the Jode family drives to California because they heard of endless fruit to be picked under miles and miles of sunshine. However, when they arrive in California it is not at all what they had expected. In California they can hardly find work, the family struggles to eat, and they are oppressed for being Okies. I am a fan of Steinbeck and this novel just draws some interesting parallels to Under the Feet of Jesus.
It is important to read such novels as these mentioned above because they may introduce a new reality to the reader. Advertisements and modern media can greatly influence how an individual sees a landscape, such as the orange groves. It is novels like this that ground us in the reality of the landscape and the people who labor on it.
Thanks for posting this commercial. It’s another great example of how certain landscapes, and particularly heavily aestheticized landscapes, become images of capital commodities. Also, I’m glad you brought up Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath! As I mentioned in class, Viramontes wrote her novel in the tradition of social realist literature, of which Steinbeck’s novel is an important example [though she also wrote in the tradition of Chicano/a literature]. In fact, many literary critics have read Viramontes’ novel as an explicit reworking of Steinbeck’s. For example, the various barn scenes in Under the Feet of Jesus, and particularly the final scene at the end of the book, seem to echo (albeit echo with a difference) the scene at the end of Grapes of Wrath. That final scene of Grape of Wrath takes place in a barn and describes a moment of intimate community formation, when Rose of Sharon offers her breast to an old man who is dying of hunger. Under the Feet of Jesus ends with Estrella believing herself powerful enough to “summon home all those who strayed,” as if she were going to re-create a community similar to the one at the end of Grapes of Wrath.