Reflections

Reflections on “Pure Product” and the interview

The article “Pure Product” is really just illustrating the point of the Pacey article in another way. Wainaina is explaining all of the devices that are meant to be charitable, technically ingenious and complete solutions to technical problems. The devices such as a wind-up radio and $100 laptop may be solutions by our Western society’s ideals, but are not received well because African culture has a different point of view from Western culture. The wind-up radio may be a solution to the technical problem of conveying information to a population that does not use electricity or obtain news another way, but the information being sent on the device is not sensitive to the listeners. As the author put it, the broadcasts told them that they are fucked—they are impoverished enough to “need” the wind up radio and the information being sent is about AIDS. He describes the only people using the radios anymore as people from Western society that feel “vague guilt” for things they do not experience such as poverty and the AIDS epidemic.
Similarly, the corn from America might as well have been good food, but the message it sent to the people eating it was that they were in need of help, when they didn’t feel they were needy. “Pure Product” is the idea that a self-contained technical device can solve some problem and that it is pure because it is charitable, but it really fails to take into consideration how the product will be received and whether the recipients even want the device.

We reserved a room in the Biomedical Library to conduct our interview from three to six, but Michael had to stay at work for a bit longer so we didn’t get started until about seven. We set up the camera, waited, played hangman, got to know each other better, entertained ourselves, talked about how to conduct the interview, talked about our expectations, revised the questions and so on until Michael finally showed up.
When Michael came in I could tell he was eager to start sharing his stories with us, he gave us each a Marine Sergeant coin and began explaining all about it—I had to hit the record button right away so we didn’t miss too much. We all sat around the table out of sight of the camera, but spread out enough to make him feel comfortable. I sat to his side so he didn’t feel like we were all facing him to interrogate.
It was difficult to acknowledge everything he said without saying “yeah” or “uh-huh,” but he kept his answers to the questions nice and long, explaining how he felt in great detail. He seemed like he came into the interview wanting to share his ideas with us and even some very personal details.
The library shut off the lights to get ready to close up and that cut the interview a little short, but we still managed to get a great deal of usable footage from the 52 minutes the camera was on.
I was really happy the interview was successful because I was so nervous while I was anticipating it for those four hours we waited. I’m not upset that we waited so long because I saw our waiting as a normal occurrence in video production. The crew needs to be set up and ready to go no matter how long the talent takes to be ready to perform. I was really just relieved that Michael was so friendly and eager to tell us his stories.