Introducing Nashville's finest sorbet, Purpura Solanum (Purple Strawberry)! Don't do anything stupid. Make the world a better place please.
Other featured flavors include Rubber Persea (Red Avocado), Ater Ananas (Black Pineapple), and Caeruleus Solanum (Blue Tomato).
Ben & Jerry’s has the right to stand with Palestinians and boycott selling their products in Israel. Although it is unfortunate for the Israeli people who do not have anything to do with the attacks, continuing to sell ice cream would mean that the company has a hand in harming millions. The graphic designer’s claim that the boycott is anti-semitic raised some red flags for me. Any sort of criticism towards Jewish people should not be misconstrued as being anti-semitic. There are valid criticisms about the Israeli occupation in the territories once belonging to Palestine. Forcefully removing people from their homes is not something that should be encouraged or celebrated. To me, Ben & Jerry’s is doing the appropriate thing by no longer selling in Israel, and hope other companies take action in a similar way.
Subverting expectations when it comes to advertising is not something that I thought much about until I took this class. I often found myself believing in everything that was being advertised on social media and on TV. At first, I did not take much time to consider how the advertisements were influencing my perception of the everyday foods that I consume. However, now I am questioning the validity of more claims that advertisements promote. For example, some advertisements claim that consuming a lot of fruits will be great for you in the long run. But some people are severely allergic to fruits like pineapples and strawberries, so does this logic still apply overall?
My sorbet flavors are a continuation of the work I did in the Misinformation Design project. I am highlighting what it means to classify fruits and discussing the semantics around it. By giving the fruits a different color than what they present in real-life, I am subverting the expectations people typically have when they think about them. The names of the flavors are written with the color and the fruit’s genus name in Latin. Scientifically naming the sorbets may cause some confusion, and that is a reflection of how I feel whenever I am learning about classifying fruits in a botanical sense. Why does the word ‘strawberry’ have the word ‘berry’ in it, when technically the fruit is not a berry? Why are avocados considered to be a fruit, when they aren’t as sweet-tasting to begin with? Do all fruits have to have some kind of sweetness to begin with? These are just some of the questions that I have posed while conceptualizing my sorbets.
The flags in the sorbets are all compositions of my identity. I have Ghanian heritage, I have lived in Tennessee my whole life, I attend Vanderbilt University, and I am a black woman. Each sorbet comes with these flags because I feel the need to embed some of my personality into everything I create. Implanting a flag into objects is also reflective of the colonizer mentality to insert themselves into everything that they come in contact with. Although I am not, nor will I ever be, overimposing and insufferable like the colonizers in the past, there is sort of a parallel in how I leave my mark in all of my creative projects.
