M. T. Anderson's "Feed" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

This novel is currently on the 2019-2026 HSC list for Standard Module B. It also on the 2027-2028 HSC list for Standard Module B and this blog was written to match the new HSC syllabus.

Feed is set for study in 2027-2028 in Year 12 in Standard: Close study of literature

But Violet’s feed begins to fail. FeedTech and other corporations refuse to repair her feed, effectively condemning her to a painful death. They can't analyse her consumer habits, so she has no credit.  Titus breaks up with Violet and distances himself from her. Violet’s father berates him for his heartlessness. Finally, Titus does visit her home and tries to tell stories to her unresponsive body that show he learnt something important from her. Titus cries and an advertisement for jeans rolls out on the page to conclude the novel. 

Feed is currently set (2019-26) in Standard Module B Close Study of Literature.
It was previously set (2015-18) in Standard Module C Texts and Society: Elective One Exploring Interactions.

M. T. Anderson is an American writer who challenges readers to look at the world in new ways. He writes for YA readers and for children. Feed won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Feed was also named one of the ALA Best Books of the Year. Other YA books include Thirsty, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge and Landscape with Invisible Hand.

Why choose Feed for Close Study of Literature

• Despite being written 24 years ago Feed is an uncannily prophetic work about the control and manipulation of people and the destruction of the environment by social media companies, corporations and governments  
• It's a satire but parallels so much of what is happening/could happen in the world today 
• Feed offers students the opportunity to engage with a novel in which the interplay between ideas, form and language are relevant to their own lives 
• Students, through close study of the entirety of the novel, will gain a deeper understanding of the ways the author portrays people, ideas, settings and situations in this futuristic, satiric novel
• Choosing a prose fiction for your Standard class needs to consider accessibility, relevance and the capacity of the text to allow students to write with rigour and personal engagement. Feed does this. At first Feed may seem to be simplistic but this is a deliberate and purposeful decision as part of Anderson’s clever satire; this feature adds a richness and rigor to the novel especially for Close Study. Depending on your students, Feed is likely to be a more engaging choice than the prose available in the other two focus areas. 

Distinctive qualities of Feed

• Anderson delivers a cutting satire on advertising and consumerism in our society which can be directly related to students’ own lives 
• The literal meaning of the title Feed is the technology used in this society to deliver advertising and information directly to the brain; however the metaphorical meaning is that advertising and consumerism have now become essential for life, like food, and the feed is consuming the individuals and the society
• Feed has an arresting opening line, “We went to the moon to have fun but the moon turned out to completely suck” and a devastating conclusion 
• The novel has a four part structure: Moon, Eden, Utopia and Slumberland
• Language is the key technique in this novel with the representation of the depletion of language used by the teenagers on this future earth, its deliberate banality, neologisms (‘meg’, ‘unit’, ‘mal’ ‘null’), repetition, and use of clichés to reinforce the failure of communication e.g.  the song lyrics “I like you so bad/And you like me so bad /We are so bad”
• The overall degradation in the quality of language, leads to a greater degradation of thought and ties in with the parallel destruction of the environment and promotion of a throw-away society 
• The first-person narrator, Titus, uses the impoverished language of the feed. However, the reader gains insight into the growing development of this character through his relationship with Violet, whose extensive vocabulary and knowledge force him to start thinking 
• The attraction between Titus and Violet leads the reader to an engrossing contrast between Violet’s empathy and intelligence and Titus’s self-absorption
• A range of language devices and types of texts are employed throughout the novel e.g. allusions both biblical and historical, multi modal forms, italics, advertisements, poetry, political messages, song lyrics and memories
• Extensive use of ellipsis suggests that the feed rolls on remorsefully 24/7 into the brains of the teenage population.

Ways to use Feed in the classroom

Consider what Anderson said about writing the book by exploring some of the articles in the Press section.

Some examples from the website to get discussion going in the classroom 

‘When I was a teenager, I was irritated at the way companies tried to sell me things. All around us, ads and tv shows and movies are showing us images of the high life, playing on our desire to belong. There’s always that subliminal message seducing us and bullying us:
If you just get this, and buy this, and order that, you’ll be cool, and you’ll be loved. See how much fun these kids are having. If you want to be wanted, then you need to want what other people want. And other people – what they want is this. Buy it. Buy it now.’
…
‘This [marketing] has become even more intense (and not just for teens!) now that most of us are connected all the time through devices of one kind or another.’
…
‘I don’t think this would have been an interesting book to write (or to read) if I had only hated the hyper-marketed world I describe. For me, the key to the discomfort is how much I love some of it, how much I still do want to be slick like the people on the tube, beautiful, laughing, surrounded by friends.’
— MT Anderson

What students need before they start the text 

Sue Lynch, a former Head Teacher English and senior English marker who taught Feed offers some valuable advice about what students will need before they start reading the novel.

Students really need support to understand elements of satire and irony before they start reading this text. They also need to be able to identify the characteristics of Science Fiction and Dystopian texts, many students didn't understand that this novel is a send up of our society. Perhaps start with a conversation involving teenagers’ jargon. They could write a piece and perform it, others try to work out, what is being said, maybe Goth speak or Punk speak or Computer Nerd speak so they understand the idea of how jargon is used in the text. It was interesting and funny to note that students complained bitterly about the tedium of the word 'like' being used by the teenagers over and over. I asked them to count how many times they heard each other use the word 'like' in conversation, they were in shock!

Introduce students to satire

Satire is the use of ridicule to criticise aspects of human behaviour, especially our weaknesses and follies.  It can make us laugh but its purpose is not just to make us laugh but to criticise. The tools of satire are exaggeration, irony, sarcasm, distortion, reversal and parody.  
Ask students to suggest films, novels (e.g Animal Farm, Brave New World), and films that are satires e.g. show trailers of Don't Look Up, Catch 22, Life of Brian, Wag the Dog, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, MASH. Distribute copies of the poem The Unknown Citizen by W H Auden and other satiric poetry.   

Exaggeration is a key quality of the language of Feed but just how exaggerated is it? The lesions on people’s bodies are a result of the feed but the corporations and government manipulate people to consider them as attractive body art. Look through some of these examples and discuss the way Anderson employs exaggeration

• Lesions being treated as a beauty feature or face art 
• People without lesions trying artificial incisions with beads of latex to mimic weeping e.g. Quendy’s skin is cut up with artificial lesions “you can see her like muscles and tendons and ligaments” 
• The President denies that lesions are caused by the companies or the feed and comments it’s “just plain hooey”, or as we say today, fake news.

Introduce students to the features of Science Fiction and Dystopian genres

• The Sci-Fi genre explores the science and technology of the future including a human element. It asks the question what would happen if …? 
• Dystopian texts (e.g. Nineteen Eighty Four, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Hunger Games), imagine futures where humanity and information are controlled, people are under surveillance, the natural world is debased, people are pressured to conform and language and vocabulary are reduced and controlled.  
• A video on Dystopian characteristics could be a useful introduction and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6kbU88wu0&vl=en

Discuss the big ideas in the novel

1. Language and education control

In the world of Feed 
Titus praises the intervention of the corporations to change and control schools:

“People were really excited when they first came out with feeds … you can be supersmart without ever working … You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.” 

Titus can barely read. He knows nothing of history (George Washington didn't fight in the Civil War because he died nearly 100 years earlier!) or what is happening in his world. He uses the feed to mind chat, watch television and buy the latest things.  Titus’s limited language depth is because of his constant diet of advertising jingles and consumer rhetoric delivered by the feed. Advertisements reach him all the time, even in his sleep. The feed is all he has and all he knows.  He has no way to distinguish fact from fiction. “We all know they control everything … Everyone feels bad about that. But they’re the only way to get all this stuff ...” (p60)

In our world
Task: Students in groups look for examples to present to a class report  

Look for examples in life and literature and where facts are denied e.g. politics, social media, statements, advertisements and  conspiracy theories

In literature, for example George Orwell, wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1956 and wrote about the controlling Big Brother in that novel “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Look for real life examples where language is debased, especially in politics and advertising

Look for real life examples where consumerism and corporations are taking over our lives e.g. slogans, advertisements, scams.

2. Environmental destruction

In the world of Feed 
Remember, people don't live in the environment in Feed, they live in hermetically sealed bubbles because the earth is dead and toxic.

Task: In groups students identify and explore some examples of environmental destruction to discuss in a class report e.g. Forests and parks destroyed to create an air factory, a throw- away disposable society steak farms replace cattle, people’s hair falls out.  

In our world 
The world is under increasing threat from climate change. And the consequences of climate change are here now.

Task: In groups students look for real-life examples where the environment is being damaged e.g. photographs of worldwide plastic pollution, examples of extreme weather patterns and disasters, articles, on climate change, charts of the rise of global temperatures. 

3. Consumerism and its impact 

The feed is a constant stream of advertising aimed specifically at individuals in the society.  It targets their needs and desires and offers them everything they want when they want it. 
The novel shows how lives can be controlled and shaped by advertising.

In the world of Feed 
Anderson deliberately places advertising in italics throughout the text to mirror the constant intrusions for all those who have the feed. The feed “knows everything you want and hope for … It can tell you how to get them, and help you make buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations … and they make a special profile.” 

In our world 

• Stores know your buying patterns and advertise directly on social media as in Feed. 
• Once you have looked up something on the internet you are bombarded with messages on related goods to buy
• Corporations deliver your personal data to third party operators leading to scams and hacking occurs because of poor security of your data   

Task: In 400 words explain Violet’s outburst to the group and how it relates to the world of Feed and to your world.  

“You don’t have the feed. You are feed!
You’re feed! You’re being eaten...
You’re raised for food.” Violet

Module C style task

Write a diary entry chronicling a day in your life and the times you interact with social media, advertising and technology. Reflect on its impact on you and the way you want to live your life. 

HSC style-like questions for a Close Study of literature 

1. “When … schools were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff … Now that School ™ is run by the corporations … we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom … People were really excited when they first came out with feeds … you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.”

   Explain how Anderson’s depiction of the future highlight his concerns for society.
   In your response, make detailed reference to the extract from Feed and the novel as a whole.

2. It is not only the subject matter but also the narrative point of view that makes M. T. Anderson’s novel disturbing. Discuss this statement making detailed reference to your prescribed text.
3. How does M. T. Anderson’s Feed depict unsettling ideas about the future?

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

In the Standard English course students are required to closely study 3 prescribed texts, with ONE drawn from each of the following categories:

• prose fiction
• poetry
• drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

Possible pathways for HSC Standard course