ipl-logo

Summary Of The Plastic Pink Flamingo

432 Words2 Pages

In the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History,” (1999), Jennifer Price details the natural history of American culture and its pretentious ideals, while criticizing Americans for their frivolity during the 1900’s. Price illuminates her ideas by utilizing colorful diction, irony, alliteration, and a pink flamingo as a symbol of American destructiveness and superficiality. Utilizing pop culture references, Price’s purpose is to highlight American culture for being obsessed with trends and commercializing them instead of appreciating the genuine beauty within them. Price’s ostensible audience are American people to whom she addresses in a satirical tone while poking fun of for being ignorant and materialistic. Price commences her essay with a critical tone and colorful diction to ridicule the flamboyance when pink flamingos “splashed” into the fifties market. She utilizes verbs associated with flamingos such as “flocking” to portray how American culture transformed a prestigious and unique item that represented “wealth” and “pizzaz” into something commercialized. This evolution of the pink flamingo reveals the destructiveness of Americans and our culture that consumes any and everything for the sake of status. Price provides insight on how the plastic …show more content…

Shortly after, Price utilizes a short, blunt, declarative sentence “But no matter” to express how ignorant American culture is and their dismissive attitudes toward the flamingos that were killed earlier in history and subsequently evolve into a materialistic and frivolous item. Price’s utilization of colorful diction is continued when describing the flamingo’s connection with “leisure and extravagance” due to its expansion from Florida to the city of Las

Show More
Related
232 Words | 1 Pages

Saunders also conveys how business marketing tactics breed cruelty and vanity in society’s elites. The lack of ethics fuels a sense of superiority in product users through brutal subjugation of those who don’t use them. In this society, violent imagery is commonplace and immoral behavior is encouraged to sell products. Society pardons characters like Kevin for their actions because they are winners who are propagating the consumerist message (they help sell the product). This vindication is further illustrated in the third vignette when an orange’s polite questioning of a Slap-of-Wack bar is answered by violent stabbing.

Read More
441 Words | 2 Pages

In a recent essay by Jennifer Price “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History,” her use of irony, juxtaposition, and exemplification reveals her views on American culture in saying that it is too preoccupied with image and money rather than appreciating the beauty of the culture itself. In paragraph two of her article, Price uses strong juxtaposition. She juxtaposes the desert and a lawn by saying, “... conjured from the desert in 1946… even more strikingly than on a lawn.” This gives the audience a picture of how a pink plastic flamingo stands out more in a secluded desert than on someone's front lawn.

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

Stacey Suver's essay, A Pop Life, explores the different types of pop culture and its effect on Americans and their everyday lives. (Suver, 2011) Suver successfully uses devices, such as first-person point of view, several allusions, an informative tone, and rhetorical questions, that work together to form a well-organized essay that teaches his audience about the influences of pop culture. Suver's composition can be compared to Napalm, a piece of street art created by an anonymous graffiti artist out of Great Britain. (Banksy Biography, 2014)

Read More
687 Words | 3 Pages

The consumer culture in America since the 1900’s has become a major issue as certain objects, animals, people, and cultures fall into the “trends” and sell in the market expensively, which not only creates competition and lack of creativity in innovating new products but additionally increases the arrogance within the people who own and proudly showcase their wealth. In the excerpt, The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History (1950) by Jennifer Price asserts the famous plastic “pink flamingo” symbolizes aspects of the modern United States culture; exhibiting fortune. Through her utilization of allusion, imagery, and a contrasting diction, Price provides an analysis of American culture and conveys her distaste for its values in the 1950s. Price

Read More
1133 Words | 5 Pages

The environment is pledging an elitist appeal but the warm colors found in the image attract the populist group. In Jack Solomon’s “Masters of Desire the Culture of American Advertising” he explains a paradox in the American psyche. He argues that Americans simultaneously desire superiority and equality, as a result, advertisers create images that exploit those opposing conditions. He emphasizes that America is a nation of fantasizers. He sums up that advertisers create consumer hunger by working with our subconscious dreams and desires in the marketplace.

Read More
611 Words | 3 Pages

In Prices first paragraph she starts with “first it was a flamingo” the sarcasm is pretty obvious, but her sarcastic tone shows that Americans took a simple item such as the flamingo to build an obsession. Price is able to draw attention the the irony when she discusses the hunting and extinction of flamingos but after draws attention how the Americans used the flamingo as a symbol of fortune and became a popular trend, especially in already-flamboyant places of the previous decade like Las Vegas. Price seems to be supporting this trend, but she is actually pointing out the ignorance of Americans. When Price talks about the extinction of flamingos and says “but no matter”, it represents the mentality of Americans during this time because americans didn’t know the history of flamingos in the U.S. and practically didn’t care because they continued using it for their own good. She later states a rhetorical question about why Americans emphasized the words “Pink Flamingo”.

Read More
305 Words | 2 Pages

The passage "The Plastic Pink Flamingo" was written by Jennifer Price details the popularity of the plastic pink Flamingo in the 1950's. The purpose of this essay "The Plastic Pink Flamingo" is to mock how Americans killed of the flamingos in the 1800's then ended up loving pink, plastic, fake, flamingos. Price uses ironic statements thought her essay, for instance she says that "Americans had been flocking to Florida and returning home with Flamingo souvenirs", which is ironic because in the next paragraph she writes she says that Americans had also " hunted Flamingos to extinction in Florida" in the 1800's. This is ironic because Americans killed Flamingos in Florida and they loved and practically worshiped Flamingos in

Read More
914 Words | 4 Pages

Due to her high socioeconomic status, her American Dream remained effortless. To Daisy, a woman’s American Dream in the early 1900s was to get married, have a child, and be the perfect, beautiful housewife. When Daisy hosts a luncheon she has her daughter dress up because Daisy said she “wanted to show you off” (Fitzgerald 117). In this instance, Daisy’s daughter is more of an accessory to the ensemble of the American Dream than a loving addition to the

Read More
952 Words | 4 Pages

Has America evolved for the better? In Benjamin Banneker's letter to Thomas Jefferson the injustice of slavery was a major issue in American society. 160 years later American culture was obsessed with keeping up with the latest trends like in “The Plastic Pink flamingo: A Natural History”. Americans strived to be up on the latest fashions and the effect of the pink flamingo on America. Now in, contemporary times, Americans are more immersed in the world of technology than enjoying nature like in the 1800’s. Children in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods were not appreciating nature for what it was anymore, technology was the distraction.

Read More
1393 Words | 6 Pages

“They had been honed and trained so thoroughly by that extinguished world that they were doomed in this new one” (Zone One 31). Colson Whitehead 's novel, Zone One, draws attention to the issue of consumer capitalism through a post-apocalyptic plot line. Likewise, Leif Sorensen draws on a similar point by discussing how Zone One feeds into his claim that “the novel’s commitment to closure is driven in part by a sense that repetitive cycles of late-capitalist futurism offer change in name only” (561). In other words, an aspect of consumer society includes a presentation of a new idea, product, or concept that is actually a previous idea rebranded. My essay builds and extends this claim by focusing on an overlooked aspect of the novel, the stragglers

Read More
665 Words | 3 Pages

1920’s Flappers “Flappers initiated in the 1920s, the term “flapper” described women who flamboyantly flouted their contempt for what was back then deemed as societal behavior that was conventional. Flappers were women who were characterized by their choice of bobbed hair, short skirts, and their enjoyment of jazz music”(Co). These women has made a huge impact on woman lives today with their styles alone. The style of the flappers were unique for its time period. These beautiful women was known for wearing skinny tight dresses.

Read More
665 Words | 3 Pages

Price has incorporated certain rhetorical devices, such as strong diction, anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and irony to reinforce her arguments about the United States. Jennifer Price’s use of diction reveals how the “plastic pink flamingo phenomenon” reflects the cultures of America in the 1950’s. She uses the word “bold” frequently to illustrate he pink flamingo’s “splash” into the market. She also inquired that the flamingo stands out “strikingly” in a desert “Anyone who has seen Las Vegas knows that a flamingo stands out in a desert even more strikingly than on a lawn.” Her use of such vehement words let

Read More
864 Words | 4 Pages

The Roaring Twenties revived “The American Dream,” as the last decade was struck with World War I. More Americans lived in cities, people had extra money, and the freedom to do what they wanted. That mentality is definitely evident with Daisy. As a large group was out drinking one evening, Caraway notes that they “drank in long greedy swallows.”

Read More
470 Words | 2 Pages

In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Fountain uses fanatical imagery to describe the numerable possessions of the Dallas Cowboys stadium as a reference to the overall excessiveness that Americans believe to be average. This quantitative synopsis of the country as a whole leads the American people to undervalue other countries and other ways of life outside of what is perceived as “normal.” America is home of the free, the brave, and the powerful…according to Americans. One of the benefits of being the biggest and the “bravest” countries is that it has the ability to protect and help others. Since many civilians of the United States have never seen the reality of serving in the military it is easy to cheer the military on, but

Read More
503 Words | 3 Pages

Selling Patriotism What is the first thought that comes to mind when you notice an American flag? Most people think of patriotic things, such as freedom, strength, and equality, but what about materialism? Advertisements often use patriotic symbols to make their product seem all American. Even though this is the main strategy used to advertise Miss Me clothes, there are other subconscious ploys in place to draw in consumers.

Read More

More about Summary Of The Plastic Pink Flamingo

Related Topics

Open Document