HoW Herbert Reviews
I have created a series of questions to analyse how my nonhuman brethren — specifically grocery carts — are portrayed in various media. Although these are the musings of a shopping trolley, I assure you: they are fit for human consumption.
My analysis is not as wonderfully simple as the 3 questions posed by The Bechdel Test. However, my questions are methodical, and help illuminate the relationships between grocery carts and non-carts as portrayed in human media.
In the reviews that follow, I observe how carts just like me are shown to interact (or not) with non-carts.
What constitutes a “non-cart”?
I have divided “non-carts” into three categories:
life-forms — entities categorized by humans to be “living” or “capable of life” (e.g., store clerks and shoppers, pedestrians, domestic animals, wild animals, bacteria, spiders);
no-longer-living-forms—entities that were once “living” and are now categorized by humans as being “dead” or “not alive” (e.g., harvested grocery produce like oranges and broccoli, the many forms of meat at the butcher’s counter, disinfected bacteria and murdered mildews, human and non-human hair in nooks and crannies, squashed spiders);
Non-living-things—entities that are deemed by humans never to have lived nor had the capacity to sustain what humans call “life” (e.g., infrastructure like store aisles, automatic doors, curb cuts, bus stops, escalators and stair cases; and surfaces like linoleum, concrete, asphalt, grass and gravel).
**Readers should note that my fellow shopping trolleys and I have a serious problem with the human designation of “life form” — not so much because we are not included in that category but rather because humans seem to care so much more for most entities bearing the “living” rather than the “non-living” label. (There are exceptions, which I’ll cover in another blog post, including private motor vehicles (PMVs), which humans sometimes anthropomorphize in ways that few grocery carts ever are. On the flip side, living entities evoking human disgust and categorized alongside “dirt” and “filth” are treated far worse than most humans treat my fellow shopping trolleys. Human researchers have written a number of books to help members of their species “think with things”—shopping carts, of course, being one of those “things.” My fellow Cart-ographers and I expend much effort trying to “think with humans” in order to understand this flummoxing species that is so unfortunately vital to our existence.)
These lists are not clear-cut: there are grey areas. For instance, is the piece of fruit that has begun to rot moved from a no-longer-living-form to a series of new life-forms? A ruminating cart might wonder, Were those life forms always there, just waiting for their moment—their opportunity to be useful? What about partially-swabbed mildew: do we count the dead or the survivors of the colony? And take canned peaches, a no-longer-living-form imprisoned in a cylinder of metal deemed to be a non-living-thing: how should a simple cart categorize this hybrid entity? And what about the viruses: life-forms that infect other life-forms, or non-living-things hastening forms of no-longer-living?
“Life” as a human concept seems challenging. Risking oversimplification, for the purposes of these cart-human analyses, I will consider as separate the banana and the colonies that hasten its decay. As for the partially-swabbed mildew, I recognize those in the colony who survived the siege. And the canned peaches?—There is some disagreement here: some of us would move the entire can into the realm of the non-living-thing, as the aluminum container reduces the likelihood of reanimation through rot. But other Cart-ographers disagree: some remind us that peaches were once “living” and, therefore, should be listed as “no-longer-living” forms within the metal can, and some carts see the peaches as inevitably susceptible to invasion by microbes at some point. Humans are imperfect, they remind us, as is their technology.
(Ahem: if thoughts have just turned to the imperfection of shopping trolleys as human technology, I have never claimed to be perfect. Time enough for the imperfections of carts later.)
And viruses… Well, apparently even humans can’t figure them out. That, too, is a discussion for another day. The Cart-ographers and I are reluctant to argue with microbiologists and metallurgical scientists who acknowledge that some of the metal of our frame was likely assembled through the labour of bacteria. (We carts also have a bit of a soft spot for viruses: they might just be as ubiquitous as we are.)
So, as I analyse human-produced media, what are the questions I consider in Herbert’s Ra(n)tings?
What is the context in which the grocery cart is displayed, posed, and/or used?
Is the context normative/legitimate (e.g., retail site)?; Is the cart being used to convey a message to humans that another “thing” could convey better or more appropriately?
Is there perceptible cart-human interaction?
Is there eye-contact?—physical contact? What is the nature of the contact (e.g., intimate, caring, violent)? Do humans in question verbally address the cart and, if so, is this respectful?
Does the cart enable connections between humans and other humans, or between humans and non-humans? What impact/consequences does this have, if any?
What does the grocery cart witness?
Just as ‘Witness Trees’ are of historical importance for having witnessed some event of human consequence, the Cart-ographers feel that carts often stand as witnesses to events—some important to humans, others significant to grocery carts and other non-humans.
What seems to be the overall human attitude toward the grocery cart?
This is a vital question, as grocery carts are often implicated in scenarios involving questions of culpability. Are we blamed for the actions of humans? Are we the cause of negative impacts to humans who treat us with dignity and respect?
Find blogposts here where I use these guiding questions to dissect the presence of grocery carts in movies, television shows, documentaries, news broadcasts, advertisements, songs, poetry, art… Really: we’re everywhere.
My ra(n)tings are endless.