In the most recent lecture for Environmental Literature, we took a look at a commercial for Sun Maid Raisins and how the company sells the product and how the environments in the commercial are depicted.

We went over this commercial as a class about how parts of the environment are depicted in the advertisement. There were phrases about how Hollywood is presented as an Edenic place where everyone is fit and healthy (likely not to be the case in reality). Beyond the Hollywood Hills, there is a pastoral landscape and in that area are grape vineyards where raisins are “naturally” made with sun and grapes without labor (hence the use of pastoral). However, the advertising does not take into account what goes on behind the scenes and there was even a parody of the Sun Maid Raisins packaging titled “Sun Mad Raisins”.The picture shows, essentially, the opposite of what the original packaging suggests. We discussed how the raisins are not made with just sun and grapes; there are a lot of other factors that go into the production of their raisins such as the labor of the workers, the processing in the factory and, as was also mentioned in class, the pesticides that were used on the grapes, which is also discussed in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus.

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Charles Darwin has become a very influential literary and scientific figure with his environmental text On the Origin of Species. I have a great love for playing video games as well as learning more about how video games have changed since I was a child. From my observations, I have found that Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species also applies to the evolution of video games. The process of natural selection and the struggle for existence from Darwin can be applied to the evolution of video games.

Today, there is a huge “Console War” between three major video game companies: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. These companies have been battling each other for the past decade in their efforts of staying alive and profiting in the home video game market. They have developed new games in order for their games’ elements to be passed on to the next generation of games. This is compared to Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence where species must survive in order to pass on their traits to the next generation. These game companies are competing for their dominance of the home console market and their ability to develop new consoles and games for consumers to play. They are constantly battling in order to survive and pass on traits of their games to the next generation of gaming. Game companies’ success in the market allows for Darwin’s theory of natural selection to take effect.

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          Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature is a very interesting environmental text. He uses writing techniques such as metaphor to describe the relationship between the human mind and Nature. From my understanding, he creates this idea of biocentrism. From Buell’s Glossary of Selected Terms, biocentrism is defined as “the view that all organisms, including humans, are part of a larger biotic web or network or community whose interests must constrain or direct or govern the human interest” (Buell, p.1). For me, this is the main point that Emerson was trying to make in his essay. Emerson’s idea of this connection between humanity and Nature, or the “Me” and the “Not Me”,  is discussed throughout the text and he creates a significant amount of mental imagery to explain how these two things are connected.

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