BTBF PSA: #LetsLunchboxLove

        In this PSA, I attempted to convey the process, often based on how different the food is, and the impact, often negative and ostracizing, of cultural foods being teased at school. The idea for this specific theme stems from my growing curiosity on how your social position impacts how you view certain foods. Originally, my thoughts on cultural foods existed in a bubble: this is evident in how I regarded my family’s jollof recipe. The discussions I had with Chris, Brianna and Totemy about their own special recipes helped reinforce this bubble because I was able to relate to the stories that came with those recipes. However, through resources like Magical Dinners: An immigrant Thanksgiving by Chang-rae Lee, which explored the complex feelings that come with assimilation through food, and Munchies: LA’s Oldest Japanese restaurant, which explored the necessity of building a legacy and how to do so, I came to understand that your cultural background influences how you view certain foods. This idea fully bubbled up to the surface through my graphic novel project. I was able to use other resources to flesh out my ideas on why cultural foods are negatively impacted when they become trends despite the seemingly positive outcomes. Moreover, this PSA is the result of my understanding. Many people, for various reasons, can relate to the preciousness of food, especially cultural foods. However, others are on the outside looking in and because their food story is not your food story are unable to relate to the preciousness of their food. They might want to capitalize on the food without protecting its cultural significance or they might become loose with their language. 

        I believed that the genre of a PSA was perfect for addressing how people become careless with their language when looking in from the outside of a culture. PSA’s focus on conveying a message through various methods, one of them being storytelling. Even if I had decided to create a song based PSA I think that my point would have been adequately conveyed- same with if I had chosen animation. This is because PSA’s allow people to see and hear from people. It is also because even before you watch a PSA you expect for it to teach you something. It’s an announcement that is supposed to help you or raise awareness for something. It’s different from an ad because it’s not selling you anything, but rather convincing you to act a certain way. Therefore, with the PSA format I was able to use individual stories to build a bigger narrative regarding how people use language, with a focus on home-packed school lunch. I was still able to back up my claim with evidence, but it wasn’t as intertwined as other mediums. With the message I am trying to convey, storytelling is more needed than statistics.