The Ritual of Fast Food by Margaret Visser

Visser was born in 1940 in South Africa, Margaret Visser was raised in Zambia and lived in England, France, lraq, and the United States before settling in Toronto, Ontario. (She is a naturalized citizen of Canada.)

In this short essay, The Ritual of Fast Food. The author, Margret Visser, carefully as well as precisely dismembers the fast food experience. Visser dives in and vigour’s behind the scene to explains the art of the fast -food experience. It is imperative to recognize how Visser provides a detailed account of the reasons as to why fast food restaurant chains are very popular amongst the ordinary citizen.

The word ordinary is the epitome of emphasis for the marketing administrators and ideologists of the gigantic name fast food companies like, McDonald’s or Burger King. Besides,

Visser underlines that Americans identify fast food restaurants as a part of their culture, and, additionally, it does not matter which state they visit since they can always find a piece of their home in McDonalds or Burger King. Additionally, Visser outlines a precise plus well-aimed set of qualities that the fast food restaurants guests expect. Of all the qualities, Visser emphasizes the idea.

In her account, the potluck supper and the picnic share space with the carefully plotted rituals of cannibal societies such as that of ancient Fiji, where hands were used to eat most foods, but a special wooden fork was reserved for when the meat consumed was human flesh. The way the proprieties are exalted or? ignored can be telling.

Alan Bennett? tells a story about his first experience of Oxford college dining, in the company of public schoolboys whose behaviour failed to match up to his expectations of good table etiquette: I quote,These boys hogged the dough, they gulped the soup and bolted whatsoever was put on their plates with medieval recklessness.

Visser provides a precise besides well-aimed set of qualities that the fast food diner’s visitors expect. They look for a place that is safely predictable, the convenient, the fast and ordinary. Americans perceive fast food restaurants as a good place, home residence where they are confident that there are always polite and smiling workers, where they find stability and, I quote “No Surprises” that is so seldom in the modern hasty world.

Preordained instructions are customary for programming the default demeanour of the fast food networks customers. The prominence is not stressed on the peculiarities. On the contrary, each aspect beginning with the elegance of the restaurant, its menu, ornament, and workers attitude is usual familiar and even inherent.

It is crucial to point out that each individual is afraid of vagaries (changes) and tries to minimize the unforeseen events in his or her life. Margaret Visser contends that fast food salespersons staked on the designing of a ritual while visiting the fast food restaurant. Everything starting from staff behaviour to the typical titles of a standard menu like large fries or Big Mac are there at their usual place, every day of the year in spite of the political, social upheavals and weather changes.

It is vital to emphasize that the author contends that visiting of the fast food restaurant turn out to be a ritual in fact, an important part of day to day traditions of ordinary citizens. It is perceptibly that if fast food restaurants were detested among ordinary clients, they would not advance to such a broad network. Therefore, instigating a ritual of visiting fast food is a callous politics, calculated to the smallest factor, and based on years of marketing studies, considered partialities plus expectations. Fast food restaurant is a hospitable product of marketing approach supported by the latest expertise in technology besides millions of research cost.

It is an intricate question whether fast food chain is bad or good for Americans. Logically, if we will not address the subject of health that is pretty acute for the American state, fast food restaurant is alleged as a home outside a home. It means that, being an ordinary place is a landmark of the achievement of marketing strategy since people visiting them anticipate nothing more than what they are familiar to  style, smell, taste and parental care from a fast food restaurant employees.

The author highlights that convenient, innocent simplicity of fast-food restaurants is only the obvious simplicity. It is a result of invisible labour of thousands of professionals who keep the consistency of the products aggressive and the rituals of serving fast. Parental care is projected thoroughly, casual environment is reinforced carefully.

Similarly it could be contended that a fast food restaurant concurrently with the convenience, familiar menu, no place for surprise is unscrupulous for Americans although it over-simplifies the culture of diet consumption by dulling imagination in addition to transforming a human researcher into a person who is wisely processed by capable marketing minds of massive food corporations.

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