Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 67

Capitalism Masquerades as a Postmodernist

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postmodernism as a practice that takes the "urge" to narrate into
account and that reflects on how we legitimize our narratives and
what we leave out of the narratives we tell.
McDonald's recent foray into literacy with its "Reading is
Fun Campaign" invites a reading of McDonald's assumptions atout
narrative:
"What's that place, Ronald?" asked Tom
"Just what it says," replied Ronald. "That's the
library. See that sign?" ("Reading is Fun")
What Ronald McDonald teaches Tom is that language is
transparent and neutral, that reality is unproblematically
conununicated by the text, and that reading is easy. In other words, in
keeping with McDonald's reading lesson, the excerpt from Chief
Seattle's speech which graces the cover of McDonald's annual report
is to be read "simply" as McDonald's allying itself with native
peoples' concerns for the earth. It is not in McDonald's interests to
foreground what is left out of this narrative. In the part of the speech
that does not appear on the annual report Chief Seattle challenges
the very notion of the ownership of land; the buying and selling of the
earth is utterly foreign to his people ("When the Last Red Man Has
Vanished . . ." 34-35). Perhaps, McDonald's does not encourage a
reading of these points in Chief Seattle's speech of 1885 (supposedly
given as he was forced to sign treaties surrendering land to whites)
because they might seem to conflict with McDonald's voracious
consumption of land around the world and neo-colonialist
expansionist program. The cover of the report (with its picturesque
mountains and poetic words) literally and figuratively covers the
capitalist narrative that unfolds inside the pages of the report. But
even as the annual report overwhelms its readers with the columns of
numbers, lists of statistics, and brightly colored graphs signalling the
"reality" of McDonald's success, the speech on the cover undoes the
cool logic of these "facts"; the controversy over Chief Seattle's words
—the inability to locate an "original" archival record of this much
cited document ("Thus Spoke Chief Seattle: The Story of an
Undocumented Speech" 17)—problematizes McDonald's appeal to the
truth value of "facts." Like the event of the speech, which can be
re/presented but not recovered, the facts supporting the "truth" of