Ben West
8 Dec 2011
Anthro 5439
Dr. Milestone
Selling “Coolness”: Postmodernism and Propaganda as Style in Frito-Lay Advertisements
Abstract
Undeniably, many companies have made sincere efforts and succeeded in changing the culture of their organizations to reflect a more environmental and social responsibility demanded by their customers. Despite this, there are still those companies that appear to merely pay lip service to these demands. An attempt to make a company seem environmentally or socially responsible, even if they are not so much, a phenomenon also known as “greenwashing,” is certainly not new in advertising, but the methods have changed.[1] Some unscrupulous companies use an assortment of images and language in their advertisements in an attempt to convince consumers that they are helping to preserve the environment, using “natural” or “organic” ingredients, or are serving some kind of noble cause helping humankind. While to some degree the claims made are true, they are often only half-truths. Or, in some cases, the claims made are just plain misleading. The juxtaposition of words and images in these advertisements is what can make them so convincing, this also makes them dangerous to a naïve or even an educated audience. Advertisements are conceived with the goal of persuading a group of potential consumers to purchase a certain product. Yet, advertising that is used to persuade consumers that a company is socially or environmentally conscious is doing something different. It is promoting a company’s ideology in relation to important issues—even if the message is embellished by slick visual images and slogans. While it can be debated as to what is and is not propaganda, I argue that we should undoubtedly consider use of ideological intentions symbolically embedded within advertising to be propaganda—especially if the advertisement also meets the qualifications outlined by Sheryl Tuttle Ross’s “epistemic merit model”.
Perhaps one of the best-known and most widely distributed criticisms of advertising is the magazine, Adbusters. Adbusters is known for using contemporary advertising images to make social or political commentary on them. In this sense, Adbusters is truly postmodern and has been effective at least to its audience of readers—if we are discussing the positives of postmodernism. Of course, the downslide of the postmodern movement in the art world was seen in the early 1980’s when the initial “critical function had become increasingly obfuscated and difficult to justify” (Solomon-Godeau, 255). Especially prominent in the fashion industry, postmodernism is easily corrupted and swallowed up by capitalism—a system that cares nothing for where capital is generated as long as it continues to generate. It is easy to find Che Guevara or the communist sickle and hammer printed on a t-shirt for $20 at Urban Outfitters, just as it is easy to find advertising that uses the postmodern style of criticism found in Adbusters to sell potato chips. While postmodernism as style is not necessarily new, I find it especially fascinating that postmodern influence, combined with a classic propaganda image aesthetic (such as some of the jingoistic illustrations common to World War II posters), can arguably be used to propagate an entire industry’s ideology. Moreover, the audience is not necessarily a general public.
In my analysis, I have found that these particular images are more common and even more exaggerated in magazines made to be viewed by company employees. Not quite trade magazines designed for industry experts, but similar in that the audience is narrow, these company magazines are designed to promote company ideology amongst their workforce. The company magazine that I will be focusing on is Frito-Lay’s, Good Fun. I have chosen to examine Good Fun primarily because, as an employee of Frito-Lay, I have access to the magazine (it is only distributed to company employees). I hope to provide a unique perspective on the images found in the magazine and their social function because of my experience as “observant-participant” (Kaminski, 7) at Frito-Lay. Many images found in Good Fun are also an excellent example of the combined postmodern and propaganda image aesthetic I have described and suggest a class-based marketing campaign.
To support my analysis, I will be juxtaposing images from Good Fun with images of classic propaganda and contemporary postmodern criticism, e.g. WWII propaganda posters and images from Adbusters. The similarities are striking, and while certainly aesthetically similar, the ideological message is also common to both. While the connection between classic propaganda and images from Good Fun is clear, it is more difficult to comprehend how using postmodernism to sell ideology works beyond the aesthetic. I argue that the image/text combination propagates and idea or feeling; it criticizes itself; it argues for the value of itself. This process gets at the “coolness” of the message. Using postmodern aesthetic in combination with a classic propaganda illustrative aesthetic lends legitimacy to the product being sold to workers—in this case, company ideology or indoctrination.
Frito-Lay Culture: My Role as “Observant-Participant”
In a previous paper I discussed my role in critical analysis and data collection during my time employed at Frito-Lay. In this introduction I am including select portions that explain my role in this process, as well as data I have found essential to providing social context to my analysis of images found in the Frito-Lay magazine, Good Fun.[2] A few years ago, I graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in anthropology and soon found myself without the usual steady supply of financial aid loan money to live off. Thus, after several months of being able to find employment, a neighbor who worked for Frito-Lay told me that he would put a good word in for me if I wanted a job there. As I became increasingly aware of the fact that each day without income put me in further credit card debt (as I was using a high interest card to purchase my everyday necessities), and with no other job prospects on the horizon, I applied to work at Frito-Lay and was hired in late 2005 as a Route Sales Representative in the Philadelphia region. The position boasted a decent pay for being entry-level and provided me with desperately needed health insurance—two major factors that seem to make the job attractive to many Frito-Lay applicants.
After having learned the various job functions of an RSR and the novelty of a new job starting to wear off, I quickly became bored and frustrated. What made the job so attractive initially—the relatively decent pay—was quickly overshadowed by having to work long days at odd hours in stressful environments. I became well aware of a constant feeling of over-supervision and surveillance that even seemed to spread to my time outside of work, as I would often get phone calls after work hours and on my days off. While this might sound slightly paranoid, I realize now, and I will show through examples, that my unease was predicated on a reaction of resistance to the disciplinary methods by which Frito-Lay and its management attempt to create a “culture” among RSRs that embodies company ideology. The core of Frito-Lay’s ideology is employee loyalty to the company and demands compliance. As I have come to discover, that in order for this process to work efficiently Frito-Lay uses discipline as its primary means to effectuate “cultural hegemony” and maintain a power hierarchy that gives little power to RSRs individually or collectively.[3] In an attempt to combat my frustrations and unease with the job and the company, I began to use tap into my anthropological training to begin collecting ethnographic research on the people that I was working with. How did these people feel about working there? What kinds of lives do they lead? Are they all company loyalists, like Frito-Lay wants them to be? I did not apply to work at Frito-Lay with the intention of conducting ethnographic research, but it certainly became, and continues to be, fulfilling to use my anthropological background as a way to examine Frito-Lay as a site of organizational cultures and to provide my critiques and analysis in conjunction with the voices of those I work with. I am aware that my own views of Frito-Lay management and the company may influence my research, but I feel that this is unavoidable. I can only acknowledge this fact and state that my views reflect a loyalty to—a comradeship with—my fellow workers, and therefore, any bias that I may have is a reflection of this personal philosophy.[4] While I have built a substantial log of observations through the process of building my ethnographic research, there have been limitations in producing my written ethnography. For one, I feel that I have a duty to my fellow workers to not disclose their names to protect them from possible retribution on the part of Frito-Lay management for statements they made in confidence. This is not to say I conducted research clandestinely all the time, as those workers who have served as informants have been aware of my intentions. Several have taken me up on my offer to interview them formally, though, for the purposes of this writing, I will be relying on informal conversations and my personal observations of worker sentiments. However, in the future, as my research progresses, I plan to use more formal ethnographic techniques, including interviews—especially as I expand my research to include Frito-Lay images, such as those found in the company magazine, Good Fun. Thus, the ethnographic data I am presenting here is not as comprehensive as I would like it to be. Rather, it is more an entrance that will help me to continue producing what Clifford Geertz calls “thick description” (1974, 6).
Also, to protect myself from raising the suspicions of management, and because my position is critical of Frito-Lay, I have not made any member of Frito-Lay management aware of my research. Recently, however, I have made my blog, An Anthropology of Photography, public.[5] My primary method of ethnographic research rests on the classic anthropological methodology of “participant-observation,” which, at least in western anthropology, began with the work of Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920’s.[6] Others, such as Margaret Mead and, later, Clifford Geertz contributed to and refined this methodological theory. In “From the Native’s Point of View,” Geertz poses the question that further expresses the value of participant-observation for ethnographers: If we are going to cling—as in my opinion, we must—to the injunction to see things from the native’s point of view, what is our position when we can no longer claim some unique form of psychological closeness, a sort of transcultural identification, with our subjects? (28)
In the latter part of the 20th century the classic anthropological methodology of participant-observation was rethought as ethnographers such as Marek Kaminski turned the concept on its head. Instead of “participant-observation,” Kaminski introduced what is known as “observing participation” (7). He describes an observing participant (OP) “in contrast to participant observation, with two conditions: (a) OP enters a community through a similar social process as its other members and is subject to similar rules; (b) OP undertakes field research as if he or she was a researcher” (7). Many contemporary anthropologists, such as Brian Moeran and Barbara Tedlock have subsequently embraced the model of observing participation. Tedlock argues that unlike the “coolly dispassionate observers” represented by the old model of participant observation, “in the observation of participation, ethnographers both experience and observe their own and others’ coparticipation within the ethnographic encounter…[and, therefore] both the Self and Other are presented together within a single narrative ethnography” (1). Moeran extends this to organizational ethnography, stating that, “Intensive participant observation, holism, context sensitivity, long-term duration and total social immersion are all ideals adhered to by organizational ethnographers” (6). Furthermore, he argues, “only full-immersion fieldwork can provide a means of…seeing how an organization really functions and why, as one moves from participant observation to observant participation” (Moeran, 19).
Part of my initial inspiration to do this work came from reading E.E. LeMaster’s book, Blue Collar Aristocrats. I have always been interested in Lemaster’s ethnography because it focuses on the lives of a group of blue-collar workers in the United States, something that has not been historically typical for anthropologists to do. He also uses qualitative data to build his ethnography, making Blue Collar Aristocrats an interesting and wonderfully descriptive read. Where I differ from LeMasters, is that I consider myself an observing participant, in that I have built close ties with the subjects of my ethnography by being fully-immersed in their work culture for a period of over five years. LeMasters seemed to gather most of his research from subjects outside of work while they drank at a bar. I make this distinction because I am primarily interested in the culture of working environments—the site of my observation and participation. For this reason, I am able to conduct research from the advantageous view of an insider that, through my experience so far, has provided me with a unique opportunity filling a dual role as both anthropologist and Frito-Lay RSR.[7] The Working Lives of RSRs
While my experience working as an RSR has been conflicted, as I have mentioned, not all of the RSRs that I work with have the same feelings about working conditions, management, and the company. There are some that have college degrees, while many others have military backgrounds. Most are married and many have children. While I have not had the audacity to ask for exact ages, it seems that the range is anywhere between ages 25-55, with the average age being around 30. In my time of employment, I have only witnessed one RSR officially “retire” from Frito-Lay, suggesting that the job is perhaps too physically demanding to continue to an expected retirement age of 62-68. RSRs come from many different backgrounds (ethnic, religious, political) and lifestyles—thus there is no “essential” worker. There are, however, patterns of behavior and common sentiments that are characteristic of RSRs. The most striking commonality among them (including myself) is a shared social class and identity directly related to work. In addition, the majority of RSRs in the Philadelphia region are male, the fact of which deserves further analysis beyond the scope of this paper.
RSR identity—the role and position of an RSR—is crucial to understanding the division between management and RSRs, and between RSRs and other workers at Frito-Lay that, in some cases, are literally fenced-off from each other. There is much more hostility between the Frito-Lay operations team (comprised of separate management and workers that load trucks, pick orders, etc.) and RSRs than among RSRs. This is not to say that RSRs never have conflicts or arguments each other, but they tend to work out their differences and conflicts likely because they interact with each other more frequently and share a common set of experiences on the job. Much of the frustration and hostility RSRs exhibit are either directed toward sales management or operations, arguably because these groups are seen (or unseen, as the case may be) as “others” that are easy targets because of either hierarchal division or invisibility.
Extending their collective identity and comradeship, RSRs frequently fraternize with each other about topics unrelated to work and often get together outside of work—something that Frito-Lay officially prohibits between management and RSRs (although I have never witnessed this rule enforced). Again, this is not to say that RSRs never have these interactions with managers or those from the operations team but, I would argue, for the most part they socially interact amongst themselves because they have a set of unique shared work experiences to base their social relationships on.
The working day for an RSR is often demanding, even though RSRs frequently “rib” each other about how little work they do to maintain some sense of pride: “You only worked 45 hours this week? Try working 60!” Some take great pride in how much work they accomplish, how many hours they work, or that they are successful in hitting their sales numbers for the week. In a typical day, an RSR arrives at the DC early (many arrive as early as 1 am). There is often conversation in the “settlement room”—a large room adjoined by sales managers offices where paperwork is completed and portable computer equipment used in the field is stored. At this time it is early enough that there are no managers around and conversation is much more free. RSRs gather their field equipment and leave the building to pick up their work truck. Each RSR has a “route” that they are responsible for, which consists of any number of stores (ranging anywhere from large grocery stores to small independent corner stores) that they must drive and deliver to, make orders for, stock and merchandise. These are the basic duties in the field, yet the real challenge for RSRs is having to deal with a range of personalities to get through the day and earn enough money. Perhaps more than anything else, this us the real source of stress for RSRs. This stress, combined with the physically exhausting labor part of the job makes the RSR lifestyle a difficult one that makes companies subject to a relatively high employment turnover rate.
RSRs, for the most part, take pride in the work they do. Moreover, the company attempts to instill this value in their workers. As cynical as I am, even I have felt some pride after having made a big sale to an important account or after having spent hours building a grand display that towers over the displays of competitors. However, these feelings are often fleeting, as they are undercut by what can best be described as “passive discontent.” RSRs generally do not take their complaints to the company, and with no union representation, they grumble amongst each other—especially in matters of management or company decisions. While this practice bolsters a sense of camaraderie amongst RSRs, it does little to resolve the issues that face them other than to alleviate some of the stress by blowing off steam. Rather than take positive action against systemic problems within the organizational structure of Frito-Lay, RSRs tend to focus on micro-issues, such as having their truck loaded properly or whether the hand-held computers are updated in a timely manner. Because these issues are ongoing and directly controllable by RSRs, there is a constant attention to them, serving to distract from the larger issues they face that are seemingly out of their control, e.g. wages, benefits, and working conditions. When confronted about these issues, RSRs are indeed cynical. A common response to a recent change in pay structure was, “I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” Some express the desire to leave the job but have similar cynicisms about “never finding something better anyway, because there are no jobs out there.”
Frito-Lay management is not ignorant of the kind of cynicism that RSRs are prone to. They have enacted several measures to combat this—some are negative measures (threats of disciplinary action), while others are positive (rewards for certain kinds of achievement).[8] The reason for this is twofold: for one, it is an attempt to build a company culture—a body of workers loyal to the goals and interests of Frito-Lay and its management. Secondly, any measure used to combat employee dissatisfaction and cynicism is a concerted effort on the part of Frito-Lay management to stave off any kind of union activity, as Frito-Lay is vehemently anti-union. In an attempt to keep out the union, Frito-Lay representatives have suggested that they will do everything in their power to make sure that unionization does not happen. For Frito-Lay, the favorite method in maintaining the status quo is propaganda—not limited to, but notably, in the form of visual images. The Propaganda Aesthetic and Social Class
Publicity principally addressed to the working class tends to promise a personal transformation through the function of the particular product it is selling (Cinderella); middle-class publicity promises a transformation of relationships through a general atmosphere created by an ensemble of products (The Enchanted Palace). (Berger, 145)
Perhaps before diving into an analysis of Frito-Lay’s magazine, Good Fun, it would be helpful to expand on the Berger’s distinction between the “working class” and “middle-class” as I argue it pertains to general Frito-Lay advertisements (those published in magazines for the public) and images found in publications aimed at Frito-Lay employees. Consider this image from a National Geographic supplement:
This advertisement is an excellent example of Berger’s “enchanted palace.” Note the collection of images: a waterfall, a pristine forest, a beautiful landscape, blooming sunflowers. These images, juxtaposed with the larger image of technology that will ostensibly protect the “natural” world from human destruction appeal to an audience that is not only concerned with the environment, but social mobility. Katherine Lutz and Jane Collins specifically discuss National Geographic and what they call the “magazine reader’s gazes”:
The National Geographic sits near the top of a socially constructed hierarchy of popular magazine types (e.g., highbrow, lowbrow) that runs parallel to a hierarchy of taste in cultural products more generally (Levine 1988). Readers’ views of what the photograph says about the subject must have something to do with the elevated class position they can assume their reading of National Geographic indicates. (369)
So, even if the viewer of the Frito-Lay ad for National Geographic is not middle-class, the ad still may pull in an audience from those of lower classes who aspire to be part of the middle-class who can more afford to be concerned with protecting the environment (so they can take vacations to picturesque destinations). It seems to be noted by savvy marketers and advertisers that a different approach is needed in reaching those of the working class, e.g., the bulk majority of those employed by Frito-Lay.[9] In April of 2008, Frito-Lay hired Diablo Custom Publishing, DCP, to create the magazine, Good Fun. According to the company’s website, DCP “was formed to help organizations use branded content to deepen the relationship with their customers, members, employees, and prospects.”[10] Furthermore, DCP assumedly worked with Frito-Lay in creating Good Fun, or at the very least was commissioned to foster Frito-Lay’s corporate ideology amongst Frito-Lay employees as this excerpt from the DCP website suggests: Frito-Lay needed a publication to help roll out an employee education program—and needed it fast. DCP accepted the challenge and produced Good Fun under tight deadlines and demanding turns without neglecting customer service, quality, or commitment. Distributed to company employees, Good Fun explains Frito-Lay product nutrition and health facts using simple-to-understand charts, engaging articles, and dynamic graphics. (DCP)
The last sentence is the important one. It is polished wording, but merely doublespeak and appeals to the perceived working-class status of the majority of company employees that it is attempting to reach in Good Fun. To further underscore the class distinction, consider this image from the April 2008 publication produced by DCP and commissioned photographer, Carter Dow:
In my initial analysis, I made the following observations:
Note the focal point in the image from Good Fun is the enormous bag of Fritos in the basket. Just underneath the Fritos, written on the basket, are the words, "Grown in U.S.A." Additionally, the man's gaze is aimed to the left of the camera, somewhere beyond it that we cannot see. The low angle of the shot makes the man (who happens to be a hulking anglo), but even more the Fritos, seem much larger than they actually are. Then again, it is fiction. Nonetheless, it is a powerful image that conveys a message of pride and patriotism. Indeed, we are told that Fritos are "PROUDLY GROWN IN THE U.S.A."[11] I then compared it with this image of a Victory Bonds poster:
Is this image any different? The same low angle is used, with the gaze of the soldier looking above and beyond us. The focal point in this instance is the soldier and the flag he is holding. Similar to the Frito image, the text tells us something. The only difference is that it tells us we "MUST buy," as opposed to suggesting we buy. Really though, this is only a suttle nuance that can be forgotten in light of historical context. The sense of patriotism and pride is just as notable in the WWII poster as in the Frito poster. Moreover, they are both propaganda--in the modern and contemporary sense of the word.[12] I suggest that both the image from Good Fun and Victory Bonds are propaganda, but how are they propaganda? There are many disagreements as to what is and isn’t propaganda. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky discuss propaganda in terms of a “model” and are primarily concerned with private media ownership as it engenders “elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents” (2). While their analysis is important to understanding how propaganda works systemically, Sheryl Tuttle Ross expands on this analysis to provide a definition of propaganda “especially well-suited to cases where the propaganda in question is also a work of art, since art, from posters and pamphlets to films and novels, has been a particularly prevalent means for the dissemination of propaganda” (Ross, 16).
Ross’s definition requires that the image (in the case of a magazine advertisement, for example) meet “four necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for something’s being propaganda” (25). They include the following:
(1) an epistemically defective message (2) used with the intention to persuade (3) the beliefs, opinions, desires, and behaviors of a socially significant group of people (4) on behalf of a political organization, or cause. (25)
The first condition is perhaps the most difficult to establish, as Ross admits is also “controversial” (26). She describes an “espistemically defective message” as “false statements, bad arguments, immoral commands as well as inapt metaphors” (23).
The image from Good Fun and Victory Bonds both seem to easily meet the last three of Ross’s definitions of propaganda, but is there an “epistemically defective message” in them? Considering this, I argue that the image from Good Fun seems to contain a more obvious “epistemically defective message” than the Victory Bonds poster. For one, Fritos are not “grown in the U.S.A.” The corn to make them is, however. The point is to persuade workers that the company they work for is producing an American product. There is no mention of the chemicals used to grow the corn, or the packaging is possibly manufactured in another country. In this sense, the image contains an “inapt metaphor” and meets the condition of an “epistemically defective message” based on this alone.
The image of a proud worker carrying fritos is intended to resonate with the blue-collar workers that the magazine, Good Fun, is primarily designed for. It is, indeed, a “promise [of] a personal transformation through the function of the particular product it is selling” (Berger, 145). Yet, propaganda is not the only method of appealing to the working class in effect in Good Fun.
“Coolness”: Postmodern as Style
Jim McGuigan has defined “cool capitalism” as the “incorporation of disaffection into capitalism itself” (11). The following image from the same issue of Good Fun is an example of how postmodernism fails as a criticism and becomes mere stylization. As Solomon-Godeau notes,
Although appropriative and quotational strategies had now become readily identifiable as a descriptive hallmark of postmodern culture, the terms by which they might once have been understood to be performing a critical function had become increasingly obfuscated and difficult to justify. (255)
A postmodernist might see this image and say that it is utterly absurd. On a certain level, it is indeed absurd. Jean Baudrillard might suggest that the ear of “Frito” corn is a “simulation” and is rendered meaningless to the viewer.[13] However, if we consider the image with the idea in mind that it is also propaganda it takes on new meaning. It is an attempt to humor the viewer, while persuading them that Frito corn chips are no different than actual corn—completely “natural.” In doing this, Frito-Lay is subverting the postmodern ideal of criticism by recognizing the potential for criticism of Fritos being “unnatural.” However, using the Fritos in this montage renders the postmodern aesthetic mere stylization. Conclusion:
Frito-Lay spends an enormous amount of money on trying to convince, not only the general public, but it’s own workers that it is a “good” and “fun” company that produces “natural” products. However, as has been noted, this is not necessarily true. Why would the company need to build such a campaign if there were not criticism surrounding it? While exploring these criticisms is beyond the scope of this paper, it is something to consider. The images used by Frito-Lay differ in visual content depending on the audience it is attempting to reach. This is determined by class or perceived class distinctions. I argue that the images in Good Fun are undeniably propaganda as defined by Ross (25). This, combined with postmodern stylization, is perhaps an unprecedented and savvy advertising campaign aimed at ideological indoctrination of Frito-Lay workers. However, how effective the campaign actually has been is dubious, and an area for further research.
Notes
[1] For more on types of “green” advertising see Myers.
[2] West, Ben. “Freedom of Speech in the Workplace: An Analysis of Disciplinary Culture and Frito-Lay.” Unpublished essay. 2011.
[3] Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “cultural hegemony” can arguably be applied to the hierarchal relationship between Frito-Lay, its management, and workers. Gramsci states, “The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group…which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production” (12). I would argue that, in order to increase efficiency and production, it is important for Frito-Lay to gain the consent of workers so as to build a broad pro-company ideology that is naturalized and unquestioningly abided.
[4] I agree with Patrick Murphy who suggests, “What voice and self-reflexivity can help bring to a narrative [is] the researcher’s own power within the research process but also the notion that what grounds, challenges, and transmutes the ethnographic encounter is always the experience. Murphy’s ethnographic research, “underscores the productive discomfort of the field experience by opening up the potential to explore power, conflict, and agency” (500).
[6] Barbara Tedlock notes that, “even though Bronislaw Malinowski took on the archetypal role of ‘the ethnographer’ in the opening chapter of his Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and claimed to have invented the method of fieldwork, there are other candidates for this honor, including Morgan, Cushing, Haddon, Seligman, Boas, Rivers, and Radcliffe-Brown” (83).
[7] What I am doing here is, however, not considered “native” anthropology, even though Delmos Jones claims an “‘insider’ [is] the person who conducts research on the cultural, racial, or ethnic group of which he himself is a member” (251). For Jones, “native anthropology” is “a set of theories based on non-Western precepts and assumptions…” (251). However, while I am examining a “Western” culture, I have taken to the anthropological shift championed by Jones that anthropologists do not need to be “bound by the old values of objectivity and neutrality” (258).
[8] In a Frito-Lay company memo distributed to all employees regarding workplace conduct, there is actually a phrase that prohibits “unjustified cynicism.” I found this confounding, as this phrase (which all employees were required to sign off in agreement to) gives all the power to management because it can be assumed that any cynicism may be considered “unjustified” depending on the judge—who, ultimately, would be a representative of management.
[9] According to Frito-Lay’s website, the company currently employs over 48,000 people.
[13] For more on Baudrillard’s concept of “simulation,” see Simulacra and Simulation.
Works Cited
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