Lead blog 10/16/15 - Surviving Whole Foods

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-maclean/surviving-whole-foods_b_3895583.html

For this weeks lead blog post, I thought I would change things up a little, and not write about a video clip. I will therefore be talking about a funny article on the store ‘Wholefoods”, that I once read in a magazine.  Food has always been of an importance in my life; especially since I play sport I am always hungry! However, recent trends, and a growth in the health sector of the food industry, intrigued me and I soon became hooked on the latest ‘superfood’ that is supposedly meant to make you ‘healthy’. Wholefoods is supposedly the biggest health food retailer, and luckily for me one opened up around the corner from my house. Sadly however, this led to a huge hole in my wallet, but as long as it makes me healthy that’s ok, right? This is a common conception and I’ve heard many of my friends refer to the store by saying, “Whole foods, whole pay-check.”

I found this article very funny, as it is an exaggerated depiction of a classic trip to Wholefoods. I think you will only find this remotely humorous if you can relate to this sort of experience. It made me realise that no matter how stupid a certain fad diet is, nonetheless we are willing to pay a lot of money to buy these expensive health foods even though we have no idea what the foods are actually doing to us. All it takes is a so-called ‘expert’ to tell you that a certain tea will make your skin glow and a large price tag on the packet. Regardless of the fact that it tastes like “rotten tea” and costs $20, us naïve humans will still buy and drink it. I also found the way MacLean compared Wholefoods to Vegas extremely amusing because when I went to Wholefoods with my friend we were walking up and down the isles completely overwhelmed with all the different options of organic granola and dried fruit. We left the store an hour and $200 later (but just as healthy as when we came in) with smiles on our faces, but our bank accounts were crying.

Nowadays many people believe that they have certain intolerance but really this is just a fashion and a resemblance of your wealth. Like the article says “have you ever heard of a cleaner with celiac disease?” The answer is no, because only the well off can afford to believe they have a certain intolerance that makes them feel special. I found the extremities of some of the beliefs about health foods humorous. The fact that they call normal bread “poison” is ridiculous, when people have been eating it for hundreds of years and been absolutely fine is. This article picks up on how ignorant we are, in the fact that we are willing buy anything that is sold to us as “good for you” without knowing any of the true facts. I think that if I had to put the reason I laughed down to one of the theories it would be relief theory. I laughed because I was glad I could relate that person in the exact situation.

Response to Kirsten's Blog

Throughout watching the numerous blog posts on ‘funny videos’ I have found out that I am actually extremely hard to please and I really don’t laugh at much. This is strange to discover as when I am around my friends, especially in a social environment people have told me “wow you laugh at everything”. This is true to an extent, I do laugh a lot, so why is t so hard for me to let go and laugh at YouTube videos?

I did not find this video remotely funny, I only smiled once at the beginning when the old man took off his shirt and wanted to start a fight. I fell this was linked to incongruity theory as I was not expecting an old man to become so rowdy. However I found it interesting to analyse why certain people laughed and certain people didn’t. I feel as if the little kid didn’t laugh because he didn’t fully understand what was going on and was more confused as to what they were doing, which didn’t allow him to let go and laugh. Furthermore, I felt that because the elder Women had reached a certain level of maturity and didn’t necessarily understand ‘today’s social media humour’ she was more annoyed at what they were doing because she was thinking about the people in the video as a person, such as “awh the poor baby”, rather than thinking “haha he got hit in the face”.

I think that the fact that at the beginning you are told not to laugh makes you more aware that something is going to be funny, so you pick up on ‘funny’ cues more easily and quickly because you are anticipating humour. The People that didn’t laugh, (such as myself), I felt looked down on the people in the video thinking “what is this crazy person doing?” This actually contradicts the superiority theory as I although I felt superior to them, I did not laugh, and instead I scoffed and cringed at the videos.

Response to Whit's lead blog post

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this skit from SNL and it was the first time I have seen anything from this show, as we don’t have it in the UK. I thought that Bruno Mars performed the impressions of the other artists exceptionally well, to the extent that he even got all the hand movements and facial expressions spot on, for example, the eye twitch movement of Justin Bieber. The artists that kept ‘cutting off’ got better and better, leaving the viewer anticipating who on earth would be next in the line up. In addition to this, Devin gets extremely into the impressions and seems ‘in the zone’ which is hilarious to watch. I furthermore enjoyed the part where Devin was so insistent that he could not possibly perform Michael Jackson without the holy glove. When the other characters suddenly whip out a perfect match for the glove he was looking for, caused me to be caught off guard and laugh as I was not expecting this. This links to incongruity theory, because the fact that the 3 men all pulled out the precise glove is so totally random. When Devin (Bruno Mars) doesn’t even know words to the songs, but makes up some gibberish this made me think of myself and how I don’t actually know the lyrics to many songs but pretend I do as I make up my own version of what sounds similar, to the same beat. It makes you think that the person listening to Panodra is probably thinking “what the heck is going on”, which may be why they kept skipping the songs. Lastly what made this skit great was the sheer talent of Bruno Mars and how versatile is music skill is that he could do such a good job of impersonating a whole array of music artists.