Close Reading: Microwaves

For this assignment, I have chosen to do a close reading of a very important tool to our everyday life: the microwave. Microwaves may seem to be very mundane and unimportant to our culture, but the effects they have on our daily routines is immense. Microwaves are proof of our societies desires to make everything fast-paced and instantaneous, and in turn, artificial. They have changed the way that people prepare food, and even the types of food people eat. Now a days, people often opt out of growing/buying raw materials to make food because it is much easier to buy pre-arranged dishes and toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Microwaves cook food very quickly and are efficient in heating up frozen dinners, making the cooking process of a couple hours shrink down to mere minutes. There are also many settings on modern microwaves that require the touch of a single button to prepare things such as popcorn, meats, vegetables, left overs, frozen entrees... They coincide with an age where fast food restaurants are frequently visited instead of sit-down restaurants. Microwaves use a sort of complex system of waves of energy to cook the food as opposed to applying heat from flames or hot coils; this seems to be an artificial or man-made approach to an everyday task, which shows our devotion to creating appliances/systems to make things easier and faster, but does the use of such appliances somehow adversly affect the way we live and interact with others (such as families, as they traditionally worked together to prepare meals for hours each evening)?

In modern day America, as well as many other countries that have adopted the microwave as a main cooking appliance, microwaves have replaced ovens and stove tops in many instances, and are even found in places where food-making was never before considered necessary. For instance, microwaves can now be found in break rooms at nearly all offices, in public places like libraries and coffee shops, in dorm rooms, in hotel rooms, even in people's private bedrooms for convenience. These locations of microwaves not only demonstrate the convenience of this appliance, but also that it allows people to make food on-the-go and while out-and-about doing other tasks such as working, studying, socializing... Microwaves are evidence that our culture has lost value for processes that were once considered necessarily time consuming, by demeaning those processes as wastes of time. However, now that people are able to grab prepackaged meals to take to work, school, wherever... there is even less time spent with the family for making and eating food, and fewer people are even tought how to cook 'real' meals- creating generations of people who rely on the use of microwaves and prepackaged food. Also, the use of microwaves demonstrates the informal nature that eating has taken on (as it is now 'normal' for people to rarely eat at home, but instead out in public or anywhere along our daily routes of work/school/life), as well as the necessity of immediate sources of food to be available so that the time taken for cooking and eating doesn't take away from work, school, and other now-'important' tasks. Back in the times before microwaves, mothers often spent long periods of time with their children (especially daughters) teaching the ways of homemade cooking, but now that time is sacrificed for other tasks like homework, spending time with friends, watching tv, or playing video games, which restricts one's interactions with the family. Of course, microwaves have not single-handedly caused these changes in daily routines, but they have definitely accelerated our ability to make many aspects of life fast-paced and impersonal.

One concept that we have reviewed in class that relates to our common use of microwaves, in leau of ovens/stove tops for home-cooked meals, is encompassed Debord's article, "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle." In this reading, we learned about how society has become a 'spectacle' in which there are specific rules and roles expected from each individual, and much of life has become made up 'pre-packaged' or societally formulated ideas and processes which put pressures on people within the society to meet its standards. There is much that can be said about Debord's article and its truth about modern society, but in relation to the microwave, we can discuss how said appliance allows people to adhere to the spetacle and its demands of production, innovation, and competition. As I have previously discussed, microwaves take away from time spent at home and with one's family, freeing up time for the individual to devote to other processes, especially work. Therefore, the incorportation of microwaves into daily life is important to the way that the spectacle runs, and the ideals of society. To conclude, a passage from Debord's article, I feel, well explains the functions of the spectacle which can be linked to my argument about the significance of the microwave:

"The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality. It was easy to predict in theory what has been quickly and universally demonstrated by practical experience of economic reason's relentless accomplishments: that the globalisation of the false was also the falsification of the globe. Beyond a legacy of old books and old buildings, still of some significance but destined to continual reduction and, more-over, increasingly highlighted and classified to suit the spectacle's requirements, there remains nothing, in culture or in nature, which has not been transformed, and polluted, according to the means and interests of modern industry." ("Comments on the Society of the Spectacle", section V).

To sum up shortly the connection this passage has with the modern use of microwaves, Debord would say that the microwave is an object that provides evidence that our society forces us to keep up production and devote our time to industry. The process of cooking, and family time spent preparing meals, is one of the many parts of daily life that has been 'transformed' or 'polluted' to meet the needs of modern industry, by supporting the requirements of the spectacle (which is reduced time spent for personal matters, and more time spent at work, school, and doing outside activities that pertain to one or the other).