But I'm hoping to introduce you to ecocriticism more as a way of seeing the world around us than as a specialized set of practices beholden to expert scholars. Price is illustrative of this approach. She calls herself a "Thoreau of the mall," and argues that TV can tell us as much about nature as putting on a pair of hiking boots. She has a "deep uneasiness with entrenched American definitions of nature" (xvi), and the book mixes genres of personal narrative/nature writing and ecocriticism. As such, its audience is wider than most ecocritical scholarship.
What do you think of the style/genre/audience of this text? Digestible distillation of complex concepts, or dumbed down drivel?
If "Americans' most everyday encounters with the natural world take place through mass-produced culture" (xviii), we must take these encounters seriously.
What are some of the insights in Price's writing do you find particularly interesting?
People want some kind of "nature" or a part of "nature" in their lives, somewhere close. Especially for people who live in urban and suburban area, it is hard to experience nature like we do here in Alaska, so they want some sort of nature at home, office, gardern, or somewhere close to them. For example, central park in New York City does not look like a "nature" at all for people who live in rural area, but it is a great place to feel nature and some wilderness for New Yorkers, and I personally felt so when I visited New York City. It was just very small park surrounded by tall buildings, but I felt really comfortable just walking inside the park.
ReplyDeleteOwning Pink Flamingo makes them feel they have a part of nature in their house, and that fancy color and the appearance of flamingo make them feel special and make them feel they own wild animals which cannot seen very often in their lives. Compare to having real birds or pets, just buying ornaments is much cheaper and you feel the ownership of the animal, I assume people even lower class of people purchase pink flamingo ornaments and it becomes really popular in this country.
I have never seen or met anyone who has pink flamingo ornament in their garden in Japan or even in Alaska, so it was hard to understand what pink flamingo means to people, but I assume this is simple reason. People want some sort of "nature" in close to their lives, and the "nature" can be plastic bird ornament, gardern, or small park like central park in NYC. It depends on each person what they call "nature,"