Shapiro is a biographer while Powell is a memoirist. Use what you've been learning about memoir to analyze the personas of Powell and Child (as represented by Shapiro).
Consider: What kind of opinion does Shapiro want her readers to have of Julia Child? In your response, include some evidence from the reading to support your answer. How is Powell representing herself in this chapter? Again, include some evidence. What is at stake for Shapiro and for Powell in these chapters?
Finally, which text struck you as having a more authentic persona and why?
due by class on 1/18; 300 words minimum
The personas of Child and Powell are very similar (at least from what the authors have led the readers to believe.) They are both supposed to have difficulties and achievements from what we are told. The readers are to believe that they struggled just like any other person would and therefore are perfect models to learn from. However, with both of the pieces, there is some reason to question both of the personas presented. Since Powell is writing about herself, she might write in a positive light so that she is acceptable to the reader. Shapiro has a lot more ways that her persona about Child could be wrong. She could be missing details; she could be exaggerating some details to make Child’s persona be better than it is. Since it is a biography, she almost has a distance that she could have been herself and Child; whereas Powell is writing about herself so she needs to be spot on with her memoir or otherwise people will not believe her.
ReplyDeleteBoth of the authors are clear on what they want the readers to think of the people they are writing about. With Shapiro, it is clear that she wants her audience to fall in love with Julia Child. She presents her as an entertaining cook who is very natural and that everyone loves her. This is really shown when Shapiro writes, “Reading the fan mail as well as the press, Julia could see that the informality and humor that came so naturally were doing just what she wanted the show to do; dispel the fog of intimidation around French cooking. Hence she was willing to play up the entertainment aspect of the program especially in the opening moments” (Shapiro, 120). Powell is more about talking about her experience and showing people that things are more different than they may seem by writing down both her failures and successes. Her goal seems to be the most realistic take to cooking since when Shapiro wrote, she wrote more optimistically about all of the failures. Powell practically just documents everything. It is only when she talks about people or descriptions of food, that she places an opinion. Shapiro is trying to convince the reader of Julia’s positive personality and performance, whereas Powell is trying to prove her authenticity. Her honesty is more at stake than Shapiro’s recollection of Child.
Honestly, both of the stories were authentic. Shapiro’s story was not about her, so I feel like there is some point where the reader has to accept that fact decide for themselves whether or not she is writing from a biased point or not. If she is a fan of Julia Child (which it seemed like she was), then she will write everything in a positive light. For example, when she was referring to the part where Julia would make mistakes, she grazed over those parts until she addressed how Julia did not mind making mistakes and was fine being entertaining without being a clown. She only wrote about that in one or two paragraphs. Everything just seems like it is written with optimism and praise; even the negative parts when Julia’s spin-off shows did not work. However in Powell’s work, she is very open about all the parts of her process. She gives all of her opinions of how she feels about everything; whether they are positive or negative. She always curses when she has a strong opinion and that is (at least for me) very relatable. Since Powell clearly addresses both the positive and negative, I found her piece more authentic.
Shapiro does an excellent job of bringing Childs "persona" to life. The vivid recaps of Julia’s rise to success portray her as a charismatic, and almost overqualified figure. Her professional attitude towards cooking adds both credibility and likeability. Shapiro helps bring Julia to life by describing her initial troubles with on air performance. We understand that her life passion and expertise is food, and television is nothing but the medium she used to display it. Her alleged commitment to her craft leaves no question as to how Child made such a name for herself. As her fan mail put it best, “We love her appreciation of what she is producing.”
ReplyDeletePowell’s memoir features a strikingly different persona. Julie presents herself as almost obsessive. Her apparent addiction to her blog gives the sense that she needs the attention. Despite this she shows a passion and understanding for food and writing. Both of which seem to stem from a desire to find meaning and happiness in her life. The memoir is riddled with the idea of Julie feeling isolated. Julie’s persona intrigues me less because it seems she has much less at stake here. Julia Child has a whole monumental career to uphold while Powell appears to just be keeping her life together.
Powell’s portrayal of herself appears less genuine then Shapiro’s “Child”. While she obviously is forthright with her life, ultimately she is the one deciding what to include. This will always be less believable then an observer describing a life and including what is important to others. Powell dwells too much on minute personal experience for my liking. Shapiro’s story carries more credibility and truly appears to represent Julia. We really feel her desire to make great food and make food great.
The first thing that stands out about the Shapiro piece is that Childs was a hard worker. She worked hard not only cooking, but at everything especially hosting and entertaining. The text includes this quote from Childs “I always feel it is like putting on a performance, or like live T.V. or theater--- it’s got to be right, as there can be no mistakes.” Hard work and a dedication to perfection continued to be the main character traits that I took out of this piece. Shapiro mentioned how much Childs practiced her scripts and how tiring her schedule was.
ReplyDeletePowell is representing herself as somewhat scatter-brained and very determined even to a fault. I get the scatter-brained idea from how many topics she brings up in just this part of the book. Also, she admits to being unorganized and writes that her home is not clean at all even though she was raised by a “neat-freak” mother. She portrays herself as determined by the fact that she won’t let anything stop her from doing what she wants. This isn’t just about the writing about her food, but she mentions other things from her past where she fought what everyone else thought she should do. But I think a lot of the points about her personality seemed to point to the fact she wanted to make sure the reader knew she was different from her mother in every way.
For Shapiro the risk is that she will not do a good job of presenting the real Julia Childs, or represent her is a way that she does not intend. For Powell I think there is less risk because she is writing about herself, but there is the risk that as people read more about her they could lose interest in her writing or find out they don’t like the writer as a person and possibly quite reading.
I thought the Powell piece was more authentic because she was being very open about herself and sharing the thoughts out of her head seemingly without a filter. However, she was still believable and therefore didn’t lose her credibility.
After reading both the memoir and biography, I learned more about who Powell is as a person, but more facts about the life of Child. When reading Powell’s memoir it was like I could hear her distinct voice in my head. She swore a couple of time, referenced many emotions, cracked a few jokes, talked about her family, and mentioned her experiences over a distinct period of time. By the end of Powell’s memoir, I pictured her to be a spunky, say whatever comes to her mind, intelligent, independent woman. She lived in a complete rat hole of an apartment, and constantly ignored her mother’s advice to cut back on the cooking, which tells me she does not need anyone telling her how to live her life. Powell also seemed to idolize Child because she constantly referenced her throughout the memoir, comparing herself to Child and saying how great of a cook she was. Powell wanted to come off to her readers as a relatable, easy to get along with, normal person who just happened to love to cook. That is why she disregards formality throughout the memoir, and constantly updates the reader on what she was honestly thinking and feeling as she told her story.
DeleteShapiro described the television career of Child, but did not really elaborate on the kind of person she was. From the little bit I took away from the reading, Child was very humble throughout her really long career, and had a very supportive husband in Paul. Shapiro is not trying to inform us on who Julia Child was, as opposed to what she accomplished working for a Boston television network. Child changed the game, if not started, of cooking television. Shapiro wants the readers to know that not only was she an amazing cook, but was adored as a host as well, with the constant fan mail as evidence. Child seemed to of lived a storied life, and has been a cooking icon for many.
The main stakes for Shapiro and Child in these chapters is making the reading enjoyable. I like to eat, but I could care less about cooking. Both writers did not over emphasize the ins and outs of recipes and cooking techniques, but instead focused on the people who the writing is about with ties to cooking. In other words, how cooking made Powell and Child the people they are today.
Powell’s memoir struck me as a more authentic persona because she lived what she was writing about, as opposed to Shapiro who was writing about someone else’s life. Shapiro had a very limited idea of what Child was thinking or feeling during certain events in her life, and therefore it was harder for me to relate with Julia Child. On the other hand, there is nothing more earnest than a memoir that vividly describes what is going on in one’s own life.
I think that Shapiro wants her readers to feel the same way she does about Julia Child. She doesn't want them to put her on a pedestal but she does want them to be impressed at Julia's skill level and appreciate her contributions to food. At the same time however, I think that Shapiro wants her readers to be able to relate to Julia and understand that her success didn't come over night. For me, this happened through Shapiro's explanation of Julia's dissatisfaction with herself during her first TV shows. To know that Julia had some kinks to work out with how she performed and that it took her 19 hours to prepare for every show was amazing to me and made me appreciate her hard work and perfectionist nature rather than her god given gift of cooking.
ReplyDeleteI felt that Powell idolized Julia Child a little bit more in her writing, possibly to justify the crazy project she decided to undertake during a move. Powell represents her self largely as a scatterbrain but continuously explains her reasoning for her frantic actions, leaving me, the reader, almost able to connect with her and imagining my self doing the same things if in Powell's situation. Powell was very fun to read however, there were a few times throughout the text where I felt as if she was borderline overdoing it with her recollection of how horrible the process of moving was, how dirty and small their apartment was, and how difficult it was to poach an egg in red wine. But alas, I have never moved in New York or even tried to poach an egg in water so maybe I'm an unfair judge.
What is at risk in both of these chapters is the reputation of both of the authors as well as the reputation of Julia Child. I think in this case Powell has much more control over this because she is mainly talking about herself and when she does talk about Julia its in a way that works for her overall story, not for another story about Julia. Shapiro definitely risks Julia Child's reputation more than her own because she writes primarily about Julia and risks telling her story in an unfair way.
I found both of these authors to be very entertaining, but Powell was a little bit more authentic for me. I enjoyed her use of casual language and opinions on every little detail. It made it feel like she was telling her story directly to me over a cup of coffee rather than like she was writing it down for the world to read. While biographies are much more fact based that memoir, who's authors occasionally twist the truth, I thought that Shapiro's use of quotes from Julia's fans and news outlets took away from it, even though they were being used to make her more believable. Even the quote from Julia herself could have been better used as part of a conversation rather than part of a paragraph otherwise by Shapiro.
Both Powell and Shapiro did a great job of writing their memoir and biography. I would have to say that the text that really stuck with me was Powell’s memoir. It did because the information was coming straight from the source and not from somewhere else. She makes her accounts seem plausible, which as we discussed in class, needs to happen in a memoir in order for it to be believable to the reader.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Shapiro wanted her readers to believe that Julia Child was one of a kind. Shapiro states that Child’s fans did not mind her making errors during her shows. They enjoyed watching her look for things or looking at the wrong camera shots. It did not faze them at all. She showed that despite all of the mistakes Child would make, she was natural. This is what made her program on WGBH believable. Audiences across the country could put their trust in her, even though they only knew her through the TV. She was just like any other person in the kitchen, average and makes mistakes.
After reading Powell’s text, I feel like she is the audience member talked about in Shapiro’s chapter. Julie Powell isn’t the perfect person and admits that quite a few times. I feel like this is why she is drawn to Julia Child’s cooking. Powell describes her ups and downs, including the disencouragement from her mother, beautifully. This gives her a ton of authenticity which she obviously needs since she is writing a memoir, not a biography. She shows that just the littlest things, such as cooking, can be an outlet from the problem areas of your life.
The first comparisons that really stuck out to me between the two excerpts was that Julia Child is such a sweet women with an affection for cooking, whereas Julie Powell is a modern women with a career driven life, that views cooking as a project. Powell has this life that is too overrun with tasks to truly enjoy her new-found hobby to enjoy it in the way that Child did.
ReplyDeleteChild's story is obviously a piece from a lifetime's worth of writing. Her biography I'm assuming takes her entire life and roles it in to one book. While this may be a good read as a whole, it doesn't exactly feel as personal as Powell's frustrations of dealing with change. Powell's story is a very specific moment in her life when she is dealing with more then she can handle and then adding the cooking on top of that. The memoir is easily identifiable as the genre of novel here because of how when reading I felt like I was going on the same emotional highs and lows that Powell was, and was really hooked into her life and the insistence that the "Julie & Julia" project be finished. I really felt bad for Julie as she went through her ups and downs in dealing with such a heavy burden she had placed on herself.
In Child's piece I just didn't feel the same connection as I did with Powell's, and that is the biggest reason why I could see the difference between the biography and the memoir. Although Child's did not come off as strong a read to me, I do find myself seeing a lot of my own Mom in Julia, and I found that a funny comparison...especially since I've seen the film "Julie & Julia".
Shapiro described Child's experience as a budding television chef, "When Julia did start cooking in front of a camera, her earliest fans constantly exclaimed over how 'natural' she seemed on television, how 'real'". Think Powell's memoir gave us a better understanding of her persona due to it being in her own words. Shapiro's story gave us a genuine outlook at the Child's career. Because someone else is writing about her it makes the story come off as more important, questions like "who is Julia Child's and why haven't I've heard if her before?" arose. I think those questions were mostly answered in her own memoir. The memoir gave us a closer look at the career Child's established and her feelings going into it. A more personal perspective, if you will, about the life of Julia Child's. I found it quite humorous the stories of her mother and husband wanting her to "stop cooking!" as though it couldn't be anymore dramatic. Shapiro gave us facts, precise details about Childs while Powell gave us insight and personality about the woman inside the television, flaws and all.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, both Powell and Child are quite similar. They both share a love of cooking. They both worked in government agencies, before realizing what they really want to be doing is cooking. They both enjoy, and focus, on cooking French cuisine, but for different reasons. Child lived in Paris, where she was introduced to the French food culture, which she boldly embraced and then introduced to our country through her television show. In addition, they are both very energetic and enthusiastic individuals.
ReplyDeleteI would describe Powell’s persona as someone who is very in control when she cooks, but is otherwise a very messy and disorganized, which is evidenced by the text. Throughout the excerpt there are many problems that arise: Powell goes through a tough move with here parents in town; her car breaks down during the move; she and her family miss a show, to which they had very expensive tickets; she deals with working a job, which she does not care for; and, lastly, she goes through a time where she is unsure if her friends parents were victims in a neighborhood shooting. The aforementioned information is all evidence that Powell lives a very hectic life, over which she has little control. In addition, she also states of her parents in the passage, “they have managed to raise one child who by all accounts could not care less about basic cleanliness…” Also, throughout the piece, Powell portrays herself as a busy and extremely passionate person, when I comes to what she enjoys, cooking and blogging about what she has concocted.
I would describe Child’s persona, on her show, as someone who is very genuine and well-intentioned individual. In one response to her show, a fan wrote that they “love her naturalness & lack of T.V. manner.” In another instance, Bernard Berenson called Childs “the most life-enhancing person in America!” Through the accounts told by Shapiro, Childs definitely has a different persona on her television show, than in real life. Outside of her show, Childs was a very normal individual. For example, after work Julia and her husband Paul, who assisted her, would pack the car, go home, unpack the car, Julia would have a shot of bourbon, make dinner, and then they would go to bed. Aside from her being a T.V. personality at work, that sounds like an average night to me.
Furthermore, after reading, I feel like Childs had a more authentic persona than did Powell, simply based on the fact that her persona, while on television, touched so many people. Childs was the pioneer of the cooking shows, which now dominate our programming. She was a genuine person in the eyes of so many fans and viewers that fell in love with her personality and her show.
Shapiro definitely wants you to perceive Child as personable yet professional, for example “She liked to pretend she was cooking in front of an audience. In part it was a form of culinary discipline, to keep herself from lapsing into casual, unprofessional methods” and “The self-consciousness that fluttered through the “Boeuf Bourguignon” show quickly disappeared with experience, but Julia retained a real world quality that television couldn’t tame.”. Powell on the other hand wants to portray herself as very much a real person, flawed, likable, and quirky, ergo “The kitchen was a crime scene. Eggshells littered the floor, crackling underfoot. What looked like three days’ worth of unwashed dishes were piled up in the sink, and half unpacked boxes had been shoved to the corners of the room” and ”“Julie, I want you to stop” “I can’t I can’t.” “Honey, this is just something you decided to do. You can decide not to if you want. You can just decide to stop.” “No! Don’t you get it? This is all I’ve got. There are people out there, reading. I can’t just fucking STOP!” and “Most of the stupidest things I have ever done I’ve done in the fall. I call it my First-Day-of-School syndrome”. For Shapiro what’s at stake is her vision of Julia Child and for Powell it is her own identity.
ReplyDeleteJulie Powell’s text definitely struck me as conveying the more authentic persona of the two. Perhaps that’s just because it’s by the person it’s about but overall it seemed more personal and with the many examples of Powell being far from perfect made her very real. I really enjoyed the mental pictures she conjured, while not necessarily pleasant they were vivid.