Written Analysis 4 - Week 5

Formulas and Organic Food

The concept of formulas is fairly simple and straightforward. According to Wikipedia (March 2014), formula is identified as a plot that has a predictable storyline, and in literary critiques can “imply lack of originality.” An example of a formulaic tale would be the romantic comedy, where the audience can easily identify the storyline and predict the outcome. In simpler terms, a formula, when applied to literary genres like movies or novels, is a basically a general outline of where the story begins, turns, changes and ends.

In Profiles of Popular Culture, John Cawelti theorized that formula is a molding of the concept of myths into the reality that “all cultural expressions develop in a mixture of the old and new” (Brown, 2005). This theory is referred to as conventions and inventions, where conventions are the stable aspects of the formula and inventions are the newly developed ideas. Each of these concepts depend on the other to create a working formula. Neither one is more important than the other, and by incorporating both into the formula, the story line has meaning and order.

One would think that it would be hard to identify any type of pop culture formula that could be applied to the Organic food industry. However, when it comes to selling organic products, whether food or other organically produced items, the theory of selling the idea has to be effective. The use of conventions and inventions could easily be used to help move the public into adopting the idea of organic products by using something familiar while at the same time introducing a new concept.

References

Wikipedia.com. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_fiction.

Brown, R. (2005). Profiles of Popular Culture. (p. 115). The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, WI.