“Beauty and the Beef,” first appeared in Spy magazine in 1996. Joey Green tells us a short story and explains how ‘food celebrities’ are pampered before they are aired on TV commercials. He adopts certain techniques in his writing, such as description and process analysis, to explain why fast-food hamburgers look so good on television but are not representative of the real thing.
On television, you see the perfect burger of your dreams. It is a masterpiece of flame-broiled beef, topped with crispy lettuce, true red tomatoes, onion rings and juicy pickles. Everything is well organized in between two halves of a sesame-seed bun. However, you don’t see that the advertising agency devotes at least a day to film a couple of seconds of the food; only two hours are spent setting up the lights for a photo shoot. Examination of the real whooper will show us that the burger has broiled stripes only on one side. Commercials imply that the burger travels over the broiler twice, and therefore has broiling stripes on both sides of its ‘body’. The number of burgers which are prepared for such a commercial ranges from 50 to 75, which are then disposed of as garbage at the end of filming.
In Green’s article, he explains why the food looks so good on television. His article discusses how the hamburger is prepared for the filming of a commercial. Such advertising is designed to target viewers and entice them to believe the burger is as good as the commercial implies. Joey Green has well described the stylist’s work in his article. He uses description in every sentence; every noun has its own specially selected adjective. This helps him to open the curtains of mystery on how the food shoots are executed. The article is ‘well-done’ in process-analysis style. Green has described, step-by-step, everything that happens on commercial day, and how the hamburger ultimately achieves its glamorous look.
It seems that the author is interested in the topic he writes about. He provides the reader with multiple arguments, descriptions, and explanations. The “Beauty and the Beef” article has eleven paragraphs, each packed with interesting information. Green professionally describes the process the advertising agency usually goes through when filming food commercials. Every word in his writing is well selected, accurate and reflects the concept of the entire piece. Readers are likely to be impressed by the article. It is interesting, entertaining, and accessible to a wide readership. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that the piece will make many people reconsider their views, perhaps even those which they have harbored for a long time. Many people consume fast food, and Green appears to have written the article, similarly, to appeal to many people. His choices in terms of style, pace and register seem successful in this respect.
Joey Green, the author of “Beauty and the Beef,” does a good job by showing us how food commercials are made. By adopting certain styles of writing, such as process analysis and description, he contrasts the real hamburger with the one we see on our TV screens. This article is informative, and it won’t change our mind when we want to buy a burger. Thanks to Green, readers can be more knowledgeable in the area many had perhaps never previously thought about.
