Week 4 Reading Response- Pictures

In Everything is an Argument, with Readings, by Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters a photo essay shows American products being advertised in other countries. This photo essay, titled: “Making a Visual Argument: Exporting America” shows how different aspects of American culture have been exported around the world. When I look at these pictures I see junk. Beer, cigarettes, McDonald's, and sodas, are sold. Self-indulgence, like the picture entitled Mother and Children at Disney Sea, the Disney Theme Park in Japan, 2001, is another aspect. I see Disneyland as a waste of money. The picture, entitled Advertising Budweiser as Capitalism Comes to China (no date) associating beer with sex by a skimpily clad Budweiser girl being ogled by Chinese men. Why would Met Life advertise insurance in Taiwan? We should be exporting items that meet basic needs instead of junk food. The people of our nation are generally not healthy and beer, cigarettes, soda, and McDonald’s encourages other countries to be the same. We should be selling clean water and basic food staples, not extras. I wonder if other countries think that all we do is drink sodas, beers, smoke cigarettes and eat at McDonald's. I know from my trip to Taiwan that there were seven-eleven stores everywhere which sold junk food. I also wonder if some other countries want these things so that they can be like Americans, or if it's forced on them? The countries that it's forced on are probably the ones that don't like us, go figure. As you can probably tell I am very disappointed with the garbage we export.