Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange seems to me a smorgasbord of postmodernism qualities: shifting point of view, issues in globalization and consumerism, media saturation, a mixture of genres (magical realism, film noir, disaster fiction, etc.). Indeed, as I read Tropic of Orange, a number of other texts came to mind.
It was one of those days when [Emi] just felt like a little adrenaline high for real-life horror. Maybe because it was disaster week. So far she had been to a fire, to the scene of a robbery, and had chased the NewsNow van chasing cops involved in a two-hour car chase that started in Burbank and ended up in Whittier. But the thought of seeing mangled bodies in a car wreck suddenly churned about in her stomach. She could always see it on TV.
Perhaps it is becuase we just read Mao II not too long ago, but this passage (and many others in the novel) feels like it could be in one of Don DeLillo’s novels. The idea of this ultra-saturation in media; Emi has an obsession with disaster footage like Mao II‘s Karen.Yamashita’s dialogue also feels a bit DeLillo-ian with its peculiar wit and humor.
Tropic of Orange‘s structure reminded me of another American author often associated with postmodernism (also female, also a minority [Native American]). Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine is told through many different characters, whose stories and lives collide and contest with one another. Like Yamashita, Erdrich also employs elements of folklore and magical realism.
Side note: In the spirit of disaster oranges, I heard about this recent product marketing debacle from a friend. Earlier this year, Tropicana changed their ‘classic’ straw-in-orange logo to a new image. Tropicana enthusiasts, however, were not so pleased with the new look, and Tropicana saw a substantial drop in sales over only a matter of months. One of the popular reasons for the mass- disapproval was that the carton looks ‘cheap,’ too much like the generic-food brands. Consumers said that they might as well buy the generic orange juice if their Tropicana was going to look generic itself. Subsequently, Tropicana has decided to bring back their classic carton design. I chuckled when I heard the story. Has the consumer gone from buying food because it tastes good to buying food because its container looks good? Has the image of the orange juice surpassed the juice itself? I think we can attribute some of this to a nostalgic demand. I thought this was a tiny bit postmodern and appropriately orange. I only hope McDonald’s doesn’t decide to freshen up their logo…we could be looking at World War III.
