Summary Of The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History By Jennifer Price

Price uses imagery by acknowledging how the pink flamingos became popular in America around the 1930s and have made a big hit into our nation. She describes the flamingos by “tangerine, broiling magenta, livid methyl green” to provide an image of the flamingos in the 1950s. Her choice of colors is to picture a flamingo at that time of popularity and also to describe how Americans sense of style has grown bolder and more noticeable (Price 34-36). Since Americans just came out of depression, it was a time where Americans celebrated color and boldness towards a new generation.

Jennifer Price’s essay, “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, details the history of the plastic pink figure that could be seen in the yards of Americans in the mid 1900’s and can still be seen today. Through her use of irony and various rhetorical devices, she criticizes American decadence and materialism while also highlighting an inability to observe genuine beauty.

Trask is able to use logos to prove how tourism has affected the Hawaiian culture. Trask refers to Hawaii as a “She” who “Rubs off” on the visitor with her magical presence. The beauty of Hawaii is used as an escape from “Rawness and violence” for most Americans though, Trask mentions that the land has a “Western sexual sickness” (Trask 1993). “Of course, all this hype is necessary to hide the truth about tourism, the awful exploitative truth that the industry is the major cause of environmental degradation, low wages, land dispossession, and the highest cost of living in the United States” (Trask 1993). Trask says that the areas of Hawaii which were “sacred” to the Hawaiian’s have now been turned into top of the line hotels. The beaches that were once full of fishermen and their nets are used for recreational activities like surfing getting a tan and jet skiing. On most of the beaches owned by resorts, the beaches are reserved for hotel residences only. In the essay, Trask gives the readers logos as to how tourism is changing the land. For example, thirty years ago the ratio of Hawaiians outnumbered the tourist 2:1. Today,

Price's use of similes/metaphors reveal her views on American culture. For instance, at the end of her essay, Price compares the plastic flamingo to a real flamingo. However, instead of describing the real flamingo as wading across a sea of water, she describes it as “wading across an inland sea of grass.” (line 61) This shows Americans clouding up the image of a real flamingo in order to suit their own interests. Instead of having flamingos in water like they are meant to be, they make fake flamingos to display on lawns in order to exhibit “leisure and extravagance.” (line 19) Another example would be when Price describes many flamingo based buildings such as motels, restaurants, and lounges that sprang up all across the country in the 1950s. (line 26) She compares these flamingo based buildings to “semiotic sprouts” (line 28) that just shout out “flamingo” in order to take advantage of the flamingo trend. These buildings using the “namesake Flamingo” (line 27) adopted this new trend and threw out the old in order to “stand out” (line 25) and draw in “riches.” (line 22) Thus, this shows the adaption of the new trend, no matter how much it had deviated from the norm, in order

Price continues building her portrayal of United States culture as superficial and materialistic with detailed descriptions of household items. By downsizing from large-scale hotels described in her first two paragraphs to small-scale household items in her third paragraph, Price exemplifies the materialistic ways of United States culture. Americans purchased “washing machines, cars, and kitchen countertops” in the various shades of pink. The desire of Americans to own the audacious color displays their need for material possessions. Price describes the shades of pink available,

There is a single symbol that encapsulates the majority of these notions throughout the entirety of the book: the bird, the bird in the house, the bird "caught between the two layers of glass" that so changes Vanessa's life. Birds make too frequent and deliberate an appearance throughout the collection of short stories to be mere haphazard additions to the background; instead, they, along with the images and concepts associated with them, serve to alert the aware reader to what Margaret Laurence, through older-Vanessa, through child-Vanessa, is trying to tell us. The birds, and their associated images, are central and representative of the novel as a whole.

The next six lines (or next sentence) heightens the living standards of the affluent tourists, which heightened the contrast between living styles between the ‘turistas’ and the speaker. First, the speaker does not even see the tourists from a completely clear distance--she has to “peek” through the cactus fence. Here, the speaker sees how the women rub oil onto themselves that is “sweeter than honey” and children being playful, sipping on drinks with “long straws, coconut white, mango yellow.” This alone shows the options that these tourists have that may seem privileged to the speaker, for it was her and her family, there would only be plastic straws to basic drinks. The careful attention to what the tourists have and what they do (compared to the lack of attention in regards to the speaker) furthers the notion of class divide and status.

In the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History” by Jennifer price; the author shows implicitly her idea and point of view on the topic on the United States culture. The idea is that the U.S.A‘s culture is very overbearing, this is shown by her view on how Americans are so worried with their image that is seen by society. Price uses many writing techniques to express her view on United States culture, by the usage of diction, tone, and symbolism Price is able to convey her analysis on the greed and the corruption occurring in the American culture.

Price’s essay shifts from stating the artistic appeal of plastic flamingos in the 1950s to acknowledging that many American trends are hypocritical. She appeals to logos by stating how flamingos had gone extinct in Florida due to hunters killing them for plumes and meat. She presents this in order

Jennifer Price uses diction to characterize American Culture as materialistic and thoughtless in her first and second paragraphs. To add color to her first paragraph, Price uses a variety of words including “splashed”, “boldness”, “flocking”, “pizzaz” and “playful”. This word choice characterizes the flamingos, and through comparison, American society as valuing glamour and consequently, wealth. In describing the new plastic flamingos Price even goes as far as to describe flamingos as “synonymous with wealth”, and the middle class as “eager” to enjoy the flamingo culture, associated with wealth. She aids her characterization by calling the flamingos “souvenirs”, pointless chotskies that a person brings home to show off and display their wealth. She contrasts this with the irony that flamingos in America had already gone extinct by the nineteenth century. While describing this extinction,

She uses a very elegant word choice in statements like “the Flamingo, had made the bird synonymous with wealth and pizazz…” giving the audience a more in-depth look of just how much the Flamingos were viewed by Americans. Price the delivers “in 1956, right after he signed his first recording contract, Elvis presley bought a pink Cadillac. This detail enhances her credibility by showing the audience that she is very knowledgeable and an expert in her field. The irony comes into play when she mentions “ Americans had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida in the late 1800s” which taints the reputation of America by creating the image that American society is greedy and irresponsible. She then builds upon this thought by comparing how we treat the Flamingos, and how other cultures treat them “always singled out the Flamingo as special. Early christians associated it with the red phoenix. In ancient Egypt, it symbolized the sun god

It is known in our generation and those past to have trends, rituals, and ideals which have been passed on over the years. Many still exist nowadays with simple meaning in our everyday lives yet we are not familiar with their origins. The well-know modernized pink flamingo had its own roots of popularity around the world that many are not familiar with. Therefore the question is how did the flamingo get its claim to fame. Jennifer Price provides a great explanation as she recalls and summarizes the past history of the origin of the pink flamingo. Price analyzes the rising popularity of the flamingo and she portrays her view on U.S. culture as being glamorous and trendy through symbolism, numerous listing, and implementing a motif corresponding to the color pink.

In an excerpt from the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History,” author Jennifer Price critically examines the role of the brightly colored flamingo in the 1950’s. Following the worst financial flux ever to occur within the United States, the 1950’s marked a massive shift in societal desires in America. Unlike ever before, manufacturers began to produce goods of varying high-contrast colors, rather than the uninspired period just a decade prior. Hues of tangerine, magenta, ruby and pink sprung onto the shelves of stores across the country, replacing the dull products that had been manufactured since the industrial revolution. Additionally, Americans began to flock to travel destinations such as Florida and Las Vegas, which both utilized the flashy pink flamingo and its image. As author Jennifer Price mockingly details, the flamingo became a symbol of opulence, leading to an era of blissful

In a short story by Alice Munro, “A Red Dress 1946”, Color Imagery is used to represent the inner feelings of the narrator and how she wants to be blue. The narrator’s dream is to live a blue life, a life where she is just like everyone else. Munro writes, “when I was unaware of the world’s opinion. Now, grown wiser, I wished for dresses like those my friend Lonnie had, bought at Beale’s store”(1). Lonnie is able to buy things like her dresses from stores which just makes the narrator want to be blue. The narrator wants to be blue even more because of how Lonnie and many other girls can buy things but if she wants a nice dress she can’t buy it she

When I close my eyes and imagine, I can still clearly hear the gentle splash of the waves lapping the shoreline, and feel the slight ocean breeze whizz through my hair, sending it flying in every direction. During the frigid and dreary months of Missouri’s winter, there is one place in particular that my heart longs to be. Marco Island, Florida. When most people think of a luxurious vacation, they imagine crystal clear water, snowy white sands, and a miraculous five star hotel. Marco Island is no Bora Bora, but to me it’s the most enchanting small town that values simplicity and offers pure bliss to anyone coming to visit.