Chapter 7 of Everything’s An Argument presented us with the topic of arguments of fact. These arguments are aimed at making a sound claim and are driven by loads of hard facts and supporting evidence. This past week in class we were faced with arguments of fact in both, You Are What You Grow and King Corn.
Michael Pollan seems to have a knack at making me cringe with his words. Omnivores Dilemma didn’t exactly make me get up and make a ham sandwich after discovering that my slice of ham most likely had a horrifyingly depressing life. Besides the gruesome details that Pollan speaks of, I wondered what exactly it is about his book and article that really make me believe just about anything he’ll put out there. It’s the hard facts; just give me the facts and if they’re credible I’m here to listen.
In You Are What You Grow, Pollan presents his argument to inform the public and supports it with lots of hard facts in the form of statistics and sound nutritional facts. In my opinion, he was definitely successful in getting his point across smoothly without any question from his audience; me. I was glued to the computer screen reading that article. Fact after fact I learned the truth about the Farm Bill and how it only grants subsidies to growers of commodity crops like corn and soybeans. I was deeply saddened to find out that a lot of the corn ends up processed into food that is being fed to school children.
King Corn is another example of an argument of fact with a different set up for presenting evidence. King Corn seemed to have a greater effect on me than Pollan’s article and that was probably due of the striking visuals used in the movie. Visual facts are much more memorable and sometimes more influential because many people tend to believe what they see. The images in King Corn gave a more extrememe picture of everything Pollan described with his words. King Corn actually allowed me to see the massive golden mountains of corns and to look into the sad eyes of the cows which it was being shoved into, in some form or another.
Both pieces of material presented in class opened up a horrifying new world to me by using facts to support an argument. Now I will forever have the thoughts of pigs gnawing on each others tails and the image of a cow with a large gaping hole etched into my mind.
