I came home the other day to my roommate, Julian, who is in the process of refining his nefarious plans to take over the world via web site and I said, "Cereal Boxes."

He, of course, said, "What?"

I said, "Cereal boxes. Aren't cereal boxes the most subversive form of information dissemination conceivable? All those mornings where you're tired and groggy and you just can't focus on anything and so you reach over and start reading the cereal box, isn't that stuff totally ingrained in your mind? Can't you imagine a cereal box right now while I'm talking to you? If it's a kid cereal it's got the bright primary colors on the front and a strange, hyperreal picture of the cereal in the bowl, almost as if, by eating their cereal, you would develop a zoom lens eyeball that would enlarge all those grains into insane hyperreal detail. Let's not forget the totem animal, the cartoony character on the front that's developed some sort of unhealthy fetish on the breakfast food itself. Here, the person is supposed to identify with the aggressive cartoon character, ready to take the cereal. Teach those kids to be aggressive. They want to be in charge, boom, they're some sex-crazed frog in a T-shirt with an entire bowl of cereal before it.

"Or, if it's a healthy adult cereal, it's in subdued colors, usually white, and the cereal not as aggressively pictured. In fact, the cereal is usually on the receiving end of the cereal box's money shot, where milk splashes orgiastically on the relaxed and receptively wanton bran flakes. Here, we're supposed to identify with the passive bliss of the cereal, be on the receiving end for a little bit. Nothing the adults long for more than a chance to just relax and give up some control, you know.

"And then there are those cereals in between, with either athletes and people on them with that strange hyperreal detail but the more subdued backgrounds, or else more garish hyper colors in the background and heavy sexual fetishization of the cereal in front. These are the midlands, these cereals that try to convey that air of, you know, 'I'm not constipated,I just like the taste.' It's not about sex with these cereals, you know, it's more about love. It's something you do because you're loyal to the product, just like the athlete is loyal to his team. You go to the same church your whole life, you eat Wheaties your whole life.

"But that's just the front. All the subversiveness is on the sides. From where, after all, did we inherit our blasé attitude toward ingestion of chemicals (whether by choice or by environment) than from the side of the cereal box? That whole 'gee, I'm eating sodium ascorbate right now, and I feel okay so I guess it's good' sort of thing. That very definition of Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch' when you realize exactly what's on the end of your fork is an experience that, paradoxically, you realize less when you're eating cereal and reading the box. Because even if you do somehow manage to make that conscious realization that you just shoveled pyridoxin hydrochloride into your mouth (as opposed to the subconscious acceptance that will help make you utterly blasé about chemicals in the drinking water and toxic leaks in the desert), you don't really realize that you're eating more than that. You're eating a construct. You're eating a machine, a machine constructed by someone to (maybe) give you a certain amount of vitamins and (possibly) a certain amount of iron and a whole lot of zest and a certain amount of urge to go loosen your bowels. Is it any wonder that the children eating pre-packaged breakfast cereals during its rise in the 50's were dropping acid in the 60's? Of course not, and this country will never be able to decrease its drug usage as long as we continue to give our children cereal for breakfast.

"But that side, the drug side, that's the healthy side of the deal. The unhealthy side is, as I said, the unconscious complicity that we develop with the world that things are not okay. Breakfast cereals are little more than the brainwashing of our subconscious minds into devouring, uncomprehending consumers (as if our ids needed any help in that direction at all). In other words, our spiritual sides, our magical belief system, begins and ends at the cereal bowl. And we don't even know it! Look at all those people who, when they get depressed, eat a bowl of cereal at night. You know, maybe instead of dinner, or even real late at night when they can't sleep. They're usually fanning out their consciousness -- - watching TV , reading, leafing depressedly through old love letters- - - and eating cereal all under the iconic presence of the cartoon animal on the front of the box. Well, good lord, what is that, but the classic ritual of raising up the god and offering it sacrifice. Under the watchful eye of Toucan Sam, I ate a bowl of cereal and thought (without really thinking) about how my life had gone wrong. If I were sharing an orange with the Buddha, or offering up to Yahweh the hind end, cooked with wine and flavored with myrrh, at least my conscious mind would know what my subconscious mind is doing. Here, the left hand has no idea that the right hand is offering up sacrifice. To a cartoon bird!

"I know from a personal experience that when a person starts eating nothing but cereal 24/7, every meal and a couple of snacks, that they're depressed. Hell, they'll even tell you. But what's really sad, sad because nobody knows it, is that they're going through a spiritual crisis, returning again and again to do with their subconscious mind what their conscious mind calls meditation and prayer and appeasement (it makes sense that in this culture we indulge to pray, rather than to abstain and fast. And doesn't the word "breakfast" come from that term. The breaking of the fast?) And that's where the other sides of the box come in. Products, hype, maybe rudimentary fun facts about the world, nothing of any spiritual appeasement at all and, in fact, now, with the toys inside the box gone and only product tie-ins and marketing hoopla offered, the consumerist spirit is the only advice offered on the mountain. Although looking at it now, I can see the toy was worse, because the toy in the box was a metaphor for personal enlightenment. You know, 'reach inside yourself and find what you seek.' "Hey, a whistle!" Maybe kids today will be so turned off the chintziness of the cereal boxes that they'll return to the older types of food, eggs, bread, homemade gravy spread over oatmeal, and they can maybe even look out the window with their food, hopefully past the fences, past the cars, past the windows and the TV's and the newspapers (newspapers being to our breakfast-religious minds what hell was to the Puritans but never mind that now) and find the spot, the small spot in the earth where the weeds push stoically through the earth, where the soil is still wet with the dew and maybe even a tree spreads up, heralding the arrival of the morning sky with branches outstretched. And maybe those kids, deprived of the whistles, tops and magic pens that enslaved several generations, will realize where their food comes from, particularly if the bread is baked at home, and the eggs have not been bought, and see what their secret minds are really supposed to be reaching for."

What Julian said to this, I forget. In fact he may have left in the middle and gone to bed because it seemed like I thought about what I was saying for a while and when I stopped and looked around, not only was Julian gone, but it was late at night and all the lights in the room were out.

Images from this site came from a really nice archive on the Tick Tock Toys site.  My thanks.

email me at groder@red.org

All material on these pages is © 1997, 2000 by Jeff Lester. With the exception of non-profit distribution, all other rights are reserved.