On Sept. 18, at a Filipino fastfood center inside Seafood City, I decided to conduct my observation. The place had a stretch of three fastfood chains, a bakery, and a remittance center. The fastfood chains were Chowking, Goldilocks, and Grill City. The place had about 20-25 tables, not many were occupied. There was a family eating on a long table, a mother and daughter occupying a table for two on a corner, and a couple (about 50-60 in age) in the middle of the fastfood center. Other people were in lines; ordering food or waiting for their orders to come up. The rest were simply passing by.
The family that I saw earlier was eating. The father was helping the youngest with her food. The mother was talking to her son who looked like in his teen years. The family would engage in a conversation and then would continue doing their own thing after.
The mother-daughter scenario was different. They were eating the same kind of food. The mother was half-way through it, while the daughter was almost done. They were having a conversation and laughing from time to time. The mother would ask questions to her daughter and the daughter would answer. They would keep quiet in various moments and their silence would be broken up by another conversation.
The couple in the middle had plenty of food. They were having their own soup, chicken, rice, dessert, and packs of bread and pastries. The woman would sometimes rest from eating, while the man would continue munching down to the last bite. The woman was talking to the man and the man answered or nodded.
The people in line had things in common. They were pointing out the food or discussing with the people they were with. The cashiers were mostly young women, in their late teen years or early twenties. The customers would come up to the counters and converse with the cashiers. Occasionally they would laugh, but most of the time they were just smiling. As for the people walking by, I noticed a mother holding on to his son. The mother had one hand on her belongings, the other hand on her son.
The stores had mostly women in "front of the house" while the men in the kitchen. The women were the one taking the orders, while the men were the one doing the heavy work at back.
After observing the area, I realized that the environment had a different kind of love in the air. It wasn't a shallow one. Most of the people in the area had love for their family. I can see it through their togetherness and inevitable happiness. These took me back to the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The part wherein Big Daddy and Brick were arguing about what Fatherly love should be about. The interpretation of the whole place itself was like Big Daddy's love from his father. The kind wherein memories were left behind, not material things.
Gramsci's ideology can also be inserted in this social context. Gramsci claims that the bourgeoisie maintains economic control over the proletariats. Just like how the scene with the cashiers in the fastfood was. They were placed there for a certain reason. Cashiers were to take orders from other people; people who would most likely have a higher economic status. There would always be that person higher in status.
As I have observed, the cashiers were mostly women. The men were in the kitchen doing the heavy work. Derrida's theory shows that the signs in our society still equates to men being higher than the women. The signs such as women in the counters show that women are the ones who converse with people, smile, and stay pretty; while the men in the back shows strength and hard work. Not a lot of people may notice this but if we watch closely, we'll see that it is still very common in our society. Men are taken to be strong while women are taken to be gentle, thus, the work placement of people. Also, noting Gramsci's “ideas, meanings and practices which, while they purport to be universal truths, are maps of meaning that sustain powerful social groups”, we are able to see that there are social groupings constructed within the society. There are certain standards given to male and female in which the society ends up being gender specific.
