Let's
Visit Farmer Jed: American and Russian cultures collide.
Izvestia, Russia
American Culture and the 'Gospel of Farmer Jed'
"What
associations does the word 'countryside' conjure up for you? I’ll bet it’s
something like this: 'everyone's a drunk, is poverty-stricken, is backward, and
is knee-deep in mud.' … the government cultivates the image of Farmer Jed. And
not only with books."
A Russian farmer: Russians don't see their farmers as favorably as Americans do - and that's intentional.
The average U.S. supermarket counter
with books for the little ones (0-3 years old) doesn't have much variety. At
most there are 20 titles. But prices are from $1 to $3. In Russia, this kind of
money wouldn't even buy a notebook anymore. There's nothing surprising about
this: the U.S. government subsidizes children’s books - and toys. I wondered what
the American government, which doesn't spend a cent without reason, sought to
introduce into these young minds. So I became the owner of the book, Let’s
Visit Farmer Jed.
To say I experienced culture
shock is putting it mildly. The book is constructed like a field trip to a farm
owned by this very Jed. In the course of the drama, Jed makes a series of short
speeches.
-- "It is very important,"
Jed instructs, "to eat breakfast every morning."
-- "Eggs contain
protein," Jed continues on the next page. "It helps build muscles.
Beans and nuts also contain protein. Fruits and vegetables are full of vitamins.
They give you energy to run and play. Eat them at least five times a day."
And finally:
--"Farmers’ stalls and
markets are good places to buy fresh produce. Only there will you find delicious
and healthy food!"
Farmer Jed speaks the truth.
But isn’t this all too mundane? Vitamins, protein, muscles, stalls and markets
… Where's the spirituality? Where's the nurturing of good behavior and the
teaching on good and evil, courage and cowardice, and other dualisms?
I'm sure that for many in the
U.S., Jed's expressions are yet another confirmation of America's preferred
thesis. The West, they say, is a civilization of the flesh, the land of the Golden Calf. Not
surprisingly, their children are brought up to be consumers. But it's not that
simple.
What associations does the
word "countryside" conjure up for you? I’ll bet it’s something like
this: "everyone's a drunk, poverty-stricken, backward, and knee-deep in mud."
Never mind that these rubber stamps correspond to reality in some ways and
don't in others. (Russia has more than a few clean, prosperous country villages).
It's the rubber stamp and not reality that forms consciousness. And
consciousness also contradicts itself: After all, who wouldn't argue that the
countryside is the basis of Russian culture and that nationalistic moral purity
can be found only there? Yes, this is also true and I can hear the choir of urban
intellectuals agree. But still, it's better that the "morally
pure" remain there, and we stay here, left to ourselves.
American ideologues, devil
take them, noticed this long ago. Yes, the local villages there are cleaner
than ours. And yet, young people flee from them, too. So the government cultivates
the image of Farmer Jed. And not only with books.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Anyone who's been to a state
fair in the United States knows I’m not lying. Hundreds of thousands visitors -
many of them children, come to touch the cow, pet the goat, feed the birds. And
there are the farmers themselves - just as they are, standing in cow manure and
holding pitch forks. And there are the old things (old fashioned flat irons,
milk separators, milking pails). "Look how your grandmother lived."
Why does this so appeal to city folk? Because of advertising. Months before the
fair, the entire state is buzzing about it. And TV adds to the buzz: want your
child to grow up healthy, send him to the farm for the summer. Besides, that's
where "their own" cow lives: at the fair, children take a liking to specific
animals, and even if the farm is far away, how can one not want to visit "his
own" animal: feed it, milk it and clean up after it?
Ideology works when it's internally
consistent. It's impossible to "love the countryside in general" and
hate the village of, say, Zakhlyuzovka. At first, the village was "reactionary,"
where the "ideology of private property" remained. Then it became "backward,"
since cow stables were stubbornly out of place next to nuclear reactors. As if
nuclear reactors could give milk. Then began the assertion of "roots,"
while we, at the same time, edited the fairy tales which were born in the village.
I remember as a child, torturing my grandmother: "Why aren't you telling
the story like its written in the book?" recently - finally- the ancient unedited
fairy tales were published. I was amazed: word for word the way my grandma told
me. Perhaps someone thought they were too crass or ideologically unreliable.
In the middle of this decade,
officials suddenly began talking about the village as the "foundation of
our way of life," and then left it at that. But farmers who sell their
produce at subway stations didn't become heroes in children’s books. And it's
too late to fix this business with books. The gap between truth and myth is too
great. The fateful step was taken when they began building apartment buildings
in villages - in order to "improve the quality of life" (because "urban"
means "good"). Unpromising villages were removed from these ant
hills. We have entire regions where curious children see nothing beyond the regional
cultural center.
What to do? I honestly don't
know. Yes, money is needed. The U.S. spends billions - and we need to spend
just as much. But we also need sincerity. Farmer Jed isn't represented by hired
PR agents; you could easily find real American farmers who express the same
thing. We, however, have nothing to replace the simplistic formula: "sell
oil, buy sneakers."
