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The Tale of the Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632Sep 14 '05 (Updated Sep 15 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line We don’t know what happened to our Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, from Pat & Fred Industrial Co., Ltd., and perhaps it is better that way.
We don’t know what happened to our Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, from Pat & Fred Industrial Co., Ltd., and perhaps it is better not to know. Was it a mechanical suicide? Did it just expire on its own? Was it upset from something a 3-year old might have said: “You’re not a real teddy bear!” Did its injection-molded plastic body have a soul? Did the batteries prematurely fail, taking another Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, before its time? Was this a failure of intelligent design or was it proof of Darwin’s theories? Was it just another piece of crap made in China? We can’t be sure (moral relativism is useful at a time like this). Admittedly, we bought it on sale (discounted), so perhaps low self-esteem was an issue in its premature expiration. I can’t ask it why as I’m not sure from the box what language to use (English/French/Spanish/German/Portuguese) and if the Bear only understands fractional Chinese as spoken by the factory workers making $1.25 a day. I am not a product engineer; only an American consumer. Was the bear an environmentalist and did its will to function in a new society fade as it watched overweight Americans in SUVs pawing over consumables from its toy store window? Did it find our culture and materialistic impulses offensive? Don’t know. [I do know that my family is generally considered underweight when compared to the girths of our fellow suburbanites. We drive a modest import and don’t (generally) over consume. We even recycle with abandon.] The failure of the Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, might be blamed on other sources (globalization and outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing know-how), but there is no real answer. If the Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, was made in the Midwest, say by sturdy Wisconsinites and brought home to a house embedded with the sounds of happy children and the pleasant aromas of beer, Bratwurst, and cheese, would that have made a difference? Would it have willed itself beyond the hour or so it managed to light my daughter’s pink bedroom with stenciled cats on the walls? Did it not like cats? [There were other bears in the room by the way, seemingly happy and content with their surroundings.] Was this bear heavily influenced by Mao? Did it not like the gender specific stereotyping of E’s bedroom? Did it find images of princesses and assorted belles objectifying and dismissive of a women’s worth in this country? Did it want to break out of gender roles altogether and exist in an amorphously defined and constructed sexuality; free to wear high heels and play with trucks? Did the Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, long to exist as something else as it went across the seas in a cargo vessel? Did it really want to stay at the warehouse or be part of Wal-Mart’s “low prices everyday” marketing mythology? Would it have been worth the 5-10 dollars more it would have cost me to buy a product made in the USA? If made in the USA, would the package’s boast of ”Use for All Purposes” been achieved? Would that have served the collective good? If made in the USA, would it then have been made of something other than cheap plastic? $4.00 is $4.00. Can this failure be blamed on Bush administration trade policies and the renewal of China’s most-favored nation status? Can I blame Bill Clinton somehow? Who's going to help me fix the small hole in the wall where it stood silent lighted sentry for perhaps 90 minutes? All these questions cannot be answered by my red/white, (4) 1.5 volt (AA) Battery Powered Teddy Bear Push Light, Item 9632, friend. It no longer interacts with its human master. I’m at a loss, without a receipt.  |
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