LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Booked Solid: My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki |
a review by Rebecca James |
My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki Paperback, 1998 Client: Beef Export and Trade Syndicate (BEEF-EX) Goal: Increase Japanese red meat consumption Assignment: My American Wife! "Meat is the Message. Each weekly half-hour episode of My American Wife! must culminate in the celebration of the featured meat. It's the meat (not the Mrs.) who's the star of the show! Of course, the "Wife of the Week" is important too. She must be attractive, appetizing and all-American. She is the Meat Made Manifest: ample, robust, yet never tough or hard to digest. Through her, Japanese housewives will feel the hearty sense of warmth, of comfort, of hearth and homethe traditional family values symbolized by red meat in rural America." Jane Takagi-Little is, in her words, a "cultural pimp," transforming dysfunctional small town America into a slick half-hour commercial meant to manipulate the heartstrings and taste buds of lonely Japanese housewives. An artist at heart, our heroine is hired to produce short, wholesome documentaries of "typical" American wives with their favorite meat recipes (think Beef Fudge and Coca Cola Rump Roast). Jane's wives exude fertility; they have names like Bunny and Suzie to match their coifed hair and shiny pink Lee Press-on nails. Nave and optimistic at first, Jane quickly discovers that the whole setup is simply a marketing crock with few redeeming elements. On the receiving end is Akiko Ueno, wife of Japanese BEEF-EX head honcho Joichi "John" Ueno. Akiko must watch and rate the show every Saturday morning and prepare the day's recipe for her domineering spouse. Joichi came up with the idea behind My American Wife! for his company after trying, unsuccessfully, to "fatten up" his wife for slaughter, I mean child-bearing. Akiko stopped menstruating several months ago after four years of stress-induced bulimic and anorexic behavior. Believe it or not, the author, Ruth Ozeki, began the novel with few political motives. She manages to incorporate a good deal of wry humor within the critique of the meat industry, probably because the subject evolved with the plot line. In an interview with the author, included at the end of the paperback version, Ozeki explains how her research for Jane's new job began to influence the content of the story several hundred pages into the book. While working in film herself, Ozeki realized the impact of commercial sponsorship. She shot a program for Philip Morris, tobacco guru, while trying to quit smoking. The irony she observed then did not escape her current character. "When I chose the meat industry as the sponsor in the novel, it only made sense to investigate how meat could impact the physical body of my character. You are what you eat, right?" Along the way, Ozeki and Jane uncover many hidden secrets that the meat industry would rather keep from prospective Japanese consumers and Jane must decide to protect the industry or share the information. Strongly influenced by her concerns about her own fertility, Jane finds she cannot hide the impact of hormones and chemicals used in the meat industry (legally and otherwise) from the public. As she begins to introduce more and more unorthodox families in her documentaries, BEEF-EX begins to squirm. Then Jane meets Dyann and Lara, a biracial lesbian couple with two children. "If I was serious about wanting to use My American Wife! as a platform to further global understanding, then why not do a show about alternative lifestyles, something that was not often tolerated in Japan. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but one small hitch had come up: the women were vegetarians." Ozeki finds the obvious humor in this but reaches for more by stirring Jane's guiltridden conscienceshe "forgot" to mention who the program's sponsor is. Across the globe, Akiko watches the story unfold, and begins to feel its profound effects on her own decisions. Via the strength she gleans from Jane's bold documentaries, Akiko is able to begin her own road back to physical and mental health. Suddenly, she's making decisions for another small person as well. Finally, the plot hits a climactic note with a deadly twist: the wife of the week has some pretty amazing secrets of her own, and she's dying to share them. Jane finds she has more than she can handle. BEEF-EX catches wind of Jane's plan to expose the whole scam and decides to wield its corporate power. With dangerous and penetrating insight, Ozeki brings a "sizzling" end to My Year of Meats. Rebecca James is the assistant manager at Browseabout Books on Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth Beach. She is also a vegetarian. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 2, Mar. 10, 2000. |