My group has chosen
‘role of popular culture’ as the theme of our presentation. Popular culture is
the entire ideas, desire and pleasure in close proximity to the mainstream
knowledge that is widely spreading among mass people within a given society
(Henry, 1994). Nowadays，fast food culture becomes a significant
part of it under the background of the fast-paced lifestyle. Fast-paced
lifestyle brought by the heavy workload and severe competition in office is all
the rage all over the world, which no longer left any room for the leisure and
slow time for cooking and enjoying the food. It seems that fast food culture is
the dominant culture leading in the current society.
From the
perspective of society, the booming of fast food industry creates many job
opportunities and brings considerable economic outcomes, especially in the
hospitality industry. What is worth noting is that about 1.5 million people
work in McDonald's every day, and McDonald accepted 15million guests each day
around the world. Other statistics show
that Americans cost $6 billion to consume fast food in 1970, while they spent
over eighteen times in 2000 as much money as that in 1970 (Eric, 2002). It is
indeed an amazing figure, which reflects that fast food industry has great
contributions to people's welfare. Individually speaking, fast food is so fast
and convenient that saves a lot of time and makes eating much simpler. What's
more, it gradually becomes a fashion way of consumption. In addition, fast food
is always cheap and it is not bound by location when you eat it, so everyone
has the right to enjoy fast food. However, fast food culture also has
downsides. First and foremost, the increasingly popularity of fast food culture
is drawing more and more people to consume in fast food restaurant. Hardly can
the consumer know the quality of ingredient and nutrition matching the fast
food restaurant uses. Usually, the fast food restaurant provides hamburger,
French fries, soft drinks, etc which contains too much fat or sugar. Eating too
much fast food can easily result in obesity, high blood pressure and oral
ulcer. Secondly, the booming of fast food culture means family members are less
possible to enjoy the joy of preparing for a meal, such as the excitement of
hanging around the supermarket to pick food and the sweet chitchat while
cooking. What's worse, it subconsciously nurtures a bad social atmosphere of
impatience, fickleness and recklessness.
From the
disciplinary perspective, fast food culture is not limited in the hospitality
industry but also other entertainment and publishing industry. Fast food
culture is characterized by consumption orientation, which means it is
market-oriented and tends to meet mass people's desire and needs. Under such circumstances,
many businessmen are inclined to exploit people's appetite and desire, pursuing
immediate and transitory stimulus, abandoning culture connotation and are hurry
to manufacture movies and books. It is no wonder that such movies and books are
just like junk food that can not provide spiritual nutrition. In response to
these movies and books, most target audiences tend to pursue time efficiency
and consume them in a hurried way without thinking and reflecting in depth.
That is, the fast food culture plays a role of the catalytic agent in breaking
down the well-bred moral society where people are earnest and down-to-earth and
can create great works perpetuating through history. For those manages a
restaurant and hotel, they should pay much attention to the downsides of fast
food culture and learn from it. For example, make sure the ingredients are
fresh and employ dietitians to promote food consistent with nutrition matching.
In addition, provide good environment such as comfortable light and sound to
help people slow down the pace of life a little bit so as to make them utterly
enchanted by the restaurant.
The second theme I
have chosen is ‘human rights’. Human rights are the most basic and fundamental
rights of an individual without which people can not live in dignity (Darren,
2014). Human rights include the right to life, right to vote, the right of
personal liberty, the right of privacy and so on.
Human rights are so
important that people in any nation at any time never stop the step to fight
for their human rights. For example, Maoris, aboriginals and a minority of New
Zealand, strives every effort to fight for their human rights in history so
that most of its culture and customs can be reserved until. With the severe
aggression from European immigrants, Maoris were taken land and cruelly
murdered or exiled away from their homeland (Daniel, 2008). And their language
was endangered because English was the official language and the government
regulates speaking the Maori language illegal. In order to fight back, they
decided to unite together and fight with the Britain Army no matter how much
sacrifice and price would pay. Finally, they urged the government to sign up
"Treaty of Waitangi" and reach some consensus through "New Zealand
Constitution Act 1863", "Native Lands Act 1865" and "The
Maori Language Act of 1987", etc (Raymond & Timothy, 1991). Looking at
the current situation, human rights campaign is still the most concerned issue.
People have right to speak out their voice and choose to do what they want to
do without the interference of others and the law and government are liable to
protect their proper right and provide social security, pensions to improve
their right to live better. However, there exist some unbearable behaviors of
some countries who invade other countries through the excuses of protecting
human rights around the world. For example, America sent troops and brought
the war to Afghanistan. Instead of bringing hope and help build a stable
society to the area, it brought fear and darkness.
From the
perspective of hospitality management, the managers are supposed to be more
concerned about human rights. There are many ways worthy of advocating. For
example, many hotels set up special toilets for the disabled, which manifests that
they treat the disabled as a whole person with independent personality and show
great kindness to help them clear out the embarrassment and inconvenience when
the disabled go to the toilet (Stroma & Nigel, 2010). In addition, most of
the hotels are responsible for protecting the guests' information from leaking
out, which show a great concern on the human right of privacy. Every staff of
the hotel are forbidden to sell out the guests' information and should contain
the matter from getting worst once some illegal people try to steal
information. This is the basic and key element of a successful hotel, because
once it is found to make profits from selling information, the reputation will
be ruined. What's more, the hotel managers are expected to eschew the
traditional accepted vision that the number of toilets for women should be the
same as that for men, owing to the fact that there are great difference of
physiological characteristics between men and women and women will spend much
more time on toilets than men do so that women queuing long is often seen. The
suggestion is that trying to provide much more toilets for women, which shows
great concern on women's right. In addition to showing the importance of human
rights in the hospitality industry, it also can be showed in the law,
advertising, event management and so on. Especially in the law, laws are rules
equalizing human rights. If there are standard and equal regulations for
protection of human rights, human rights will be guaranteed impartially.
In conclusion, fast
food culture as an indispensable part of popular culture is booming and
becoming an irresistible trend, which may nurture unfavorable social
atmosphere, but it also bring us a lot of benefits. Human rights are a reflection of human equality, it is
indispensable to the whole world. We should start from me, starts from side
minor matter to promote beneficial aspects of popular culture and to protect
human rights.
References:
Cole, S., &
Morgan, N. (Eds.). (2010). Tourism and inequality: Problems and prospects.
CABI.
Giroux, H. A.
(1994). Disturbing pleasures: Learning popular culture. Routledge.
Nairn, R. G., &
McCreanor, T. N. (1991). Race talk and common sense: Patterns in Pakeha
discourse on Maori/Pakeha relations in New Zealand.Journal of Language and
Social Psychology, 10(4), 245-262.
O'Byrne, D. (2014).
Human rights: An introduction. Routledge.
Schlosser, E.
(2002). Fast food nation: What the all-American meal is doing to the world.
Penguin UK.
Thym, D. (2008).
Respect for private and family life under Article 8 ECHR in immigration cases:
a human right to regularize illegal stay?. International and Comparative Law
Quarterly, 57(01), 87-112.
