Front and Back Stages: Goffman applied to the Food Industry

The topic of last class consisted of a discussion on the food industry and the types of advertising they engage in to promote their product and hide its often grisly origins.  The commentator and creator of Food Inc. described a disconnect between consumers and producers of food.  We as consumers are no longer aware of where our food is coming from and the processes involved in creating it.  One way the food industry creates this disconnect is with the brand images they show.  Their product is often described as "farm fresh" and has a picture of a traditional farm with a red barn and green fields.  This is simply not the case.

Interestingly enough, Erving Goffman, a noted sociologist, was brought into the conversation.  And many of his thoughts on impression management can be directly related to the food industry and their attempts to hide their true image.  Within impression management is the concept of  the front stage and back stage of anyone's personality.  The front stage consists of a highly managed impression that one uses with friends and in daily contact to provide a desirable image to others.  The back stage is an area where one can relax their impression management and act as they truly are.  The food industry uses a front stage impression to convey a message to consumers about their product but their backstage is highly industrialized and not ideal for most consumers.  They are a two-faced industry that promotes a highly superficial and downright erroneous image of themselves.

I feel it is imperative to once again reconnect with the origins of the food we eat.  It is important to shorten this gap between us and the food industry for regulation purposes and to forecast any possible detrimental affects it might have on our society.