Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:06:00.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Consumption, Health, and Disposability in SpongeBob SquarePants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2015

Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Lorna Piatti-Farnell*
Affiliation:
School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
*
Address for correspondence: Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology, Governor Fitzroy Place, Auckland 1010, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent years, food scholarship has extended its preoccupation with consumption to interrogating the relationship between eating, culture and waste, and their effects on the environment. Simultaneously, food-related concerns have also become a recurrent part of popular culture, where examples from children's television provide fertile ground for discussion. This article analyses the multiple representations of food, consumption, and waste in Stephen Hillenburg's animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. Focusing on the specific food-related pedagogical philosophies that seem recurrent in the series, and following in Henry Giroux's footsteps by seeing a link between popular culture and educational structures, my discussion unravels the show's engagement with the over-consumption of fast food, the acculturation of the burger as the American meal par excellence, and environmental issues of ‘over-production’. I aim to show how, ultimately, SpongeBob SquarePants offers an evaluation of the connection between consumption, health, and disposability in contemporary Western societies.

Keywords

foodpopular culturepedagogydisposabilityculturehealth
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 31 , Special Issue 1: Putting Food on the Table , July 2015 , pp. 132 - 145
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist, 8, 494–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1993). Consumption, duration, and history. Streams of cultural capital: Transnational cultural studies (pp. 23–46). Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, D., & Valentine, G. (1997). Consuming geographies: We are where we eat. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Buckingham, S., & Turner, I. (Eds.) (2008). Waste. In Understanding environmental issues (pp. 150–174). London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, P. (Ed.). (1997). Food, health and identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dimitriadis, G. (2001). Performing identity/performing culture: Hip hop as text, pedagogy, and lived practice. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dolby, N. (2001). Book review essay of Sound identities: Youth, music, and the cultural politics of education (edited by McCarthy, C., Hudak, G., Miklaucic, S., & Saukko, P.). Harvard Educational Review, 71, 742–751.Google Scholar
Duncan-Andrade, J. (2004). Your best friend or your worst enemy: Youth popular culture, pedagogy and curriculum in urban classrooms. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 26, 313–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncum, P. (2009). Toward a playful pedagogy: Popular culture and the pleasures of transgression. Studies in Art Education, 50, 232–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fieldhouse, P. (1995). Food and nutrition: Customs and culture. London: Chapman & Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkelstein, J. (1989). Dining out: A sociology of modern manners. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (Sheridan, A., Trans., 2nd ed.). New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foy, J.J. (Ed.). (2011). Who teaches philosophy under the sea? In SpongeBob SquarePants and philosophy: Soaking up secrets under the sea! (pp. xiii–xv). Chicago: Open Court Publishing.Google Scholar
Giroux, H.A. (1994). Doing cultural studies: Youth and the challenge of pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64, 278–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giroux, H.A. (1999). The mouse that roared: Disney and the end of innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman.Google Scholar
Giroux, H.A. (2001). Private satisfactions and public disorders: Fight Club, patriarchy, and the politics of masculine violence. JAC, 21, 1–31.Google Scholar
Giroux, H.A. (2004). Cultural studies, public pedagogy, and the responsibility of intellectuals. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1, 59–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossberg, L. (1997). Bringing it all back home: Essays on cultural studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, S. (1992). Race, culture, and communications: Looking backward and forward at cultural studies. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society, 5, 10–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, S. (1993). What is this ‘black’ in black popular culture? Social Justice, 20, 104–114.Google Scholar
Jacoby, T. (2004). Defining assimilation for the 21st century. In Jacoby, T. (Ed.), Reinventing the melting pot (pp. 3–16). New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. (1996). Food, the body and the self. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Nestle, M. (2002). Food politics: How the fast food industry Influences nutrition and health. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oliver, J. (Producer and Director), & Gilbert, G. (Director). (2005). Jamie's school dinners. London: Fresh One Productions.Google Scholar
Ozerzsky, J. (2008). Hamburger: A history. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Pramik, N.R. (2011). Self-mastered sponge. In Foy, J.J. (Ed.), SpongeBob SquarePants and philosophy: Soaking up secrets under the sea! (pp. 3–20). Chicago: Open Court Publishing.Google Scholar
Ritzer, G. (2008). The McDonaldisation of society (5th ed.). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Schlosser, E. (2002). Fast food nation: What the all-American meal is doing to the world. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Schwoch, J., White, M., & Reilly, S. (1992). Media knowledge: Readings in popular culture, pedagogy and critical citizenship. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Smith, A. F. (2006). Encyclopaedia of junk food and fast food. Westport: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Stabile, C.A., & Harrison, M. (Eds.). (2003). Prime time animation: Television animation and American culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Storey, J. (2003). Inventing popular culture: From folklore to globalisation. Basingstoke: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sumner, J. (2013). Eating as if it really matters: Teaching the pedagogy of food in the age of globalization. Brock Education, 22, 41–55.Google Scholar
Weiner, E. (2001). Making the pedagogical (re)turn: Henry Giroux's insurgent cultural pedagogy. JAC, 21, 434–451.Google Scholar
Wells, P. (2002). Animation and America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar