post-midterm Barker chapters and David Harvey’s Brief History of Neoliberalism. Introduce a defendable thesis statement early on so
that your “universal” academic reader knows what your paper is arguing and why that argument is important. 2. Neoliberal Fast Food
and Transnational Culture In the introduction to their superb book, The Globalization of Chinese Food, David Wu and Sydney Cheung
write, “In Hawaii, a popular Chinese restaurant was built according to stereotypic ‘Chinese’ architectural design, which few Chinese
from China today would recognize as Chinese” (7). Wu and Cheung seem particularly interested in a restaurant’s or restaurant chain’s
self-conscious appropriation of specific culture as well as the patron’s dining as performance and spectacle: “Status-consciousness
and acting out through choice of food and cuisine reflect a strong motivation that is associated with social stratification and group
affiliation, whether they are ethnic, political, or even national” (9). With Wu and Cheung’s work in mind, write an essay that reveals
something important about fast-food’s appropriation, transformation, and commodification of culture. Your focus should be on the
U.S. market— e.g., Panda Express, Taco Bell, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut—and the performative dimension to eating “fast-food.” You
might want to consider fast food consumption and teen culture or youth categories, e.g., Millennials or Generation X; David Harvey’s
brilliant account of neoliberalism, e.g., today’s fast-food worker, like fast food itself, as “cheap” and disposable; and/or Edward Said’s
influential analysis of orientalism (even our James Bond critical essays on Bond orientalism, e.g., “Doctor. No: Bonding Britishness to
Racial Sovereignty”). Of course, you also have those excellent chapters from Wu and Cheung! 3. Subcultures and Participatory Culture
According to Talcott Parsons, youth or adolescence is a “social category which emerged with the changing family roles generated by
the development of capitalism” (Barker 407). One relatively recent classification scheme to help bring a better understanding of youth,
specifically the teenager, is “subculture” (e.g., cosplayers, Goth, hip-hop, metal, punk, skaters, and video gamers). Write an essay that
reveals something important about one subculture and that subculture’s relation to political, cultural, and/or economic reality. Your
essay might address one or all of the following questions: What is produced and consumed by this subculture? How do television,
music, film, and/or social media construct this subculture? How does this subculture participate in and shape political, economic,
and/or cultural space? 4. The Rise of Reality! We considered that the rise of reality culture (e.g., Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The
Jerry Springer Show, and The Bachelor) could be the result of changing tastes in entertainment and socioeconomic shifts. Write an
essay on reality culture that draws on your understanding of any one reality TV show, reality icon, or reality cultural phenomenon. Your
essay should attempt to answer the following questions: What does your example of reality culture reveal about the relation between
late capitalism (e.g., globalization, neoliberalism, and postmodernism), the reality aesthetic (e.g., “live” cameras, “real” people, and
“authentic” locations), social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok), and/or late capitalism’s three attitudinal corollaries
(dispositions): skepticism, cynicism, and voyeurism?