Halloween is approaching, and there's this one house that has been getting ready for it by stretching artificial
spider webs all over its front gate. Others have leaf bags colored to look like pumpkins or body shaped bags to look like
scarecrows. It's pretty clear that these things are not intended to actually scare or astonish anyone over the age of four and are simply symbols of the holiday. We know that the house with the fake spider webs is trying to convey, but only because we know what fear or anxiety can be had from seeing or walking unknowingly into a real spider web is like.
Most things plastic are like this. They remind us of what their real counterparts are like, and in that absence we do not see that we disregard it so easily as nothing unusual. For example, where would you most likely see a bowl of plastic fruit? Put aside public buildings for now. You would see them in fairly high end homes, and they would look very real, being bought at any of the fine boutique stores that sell them to look exactly that, waxy and bright. Some will go as far as to have fruit shaped stones, carved and polished with realistic stems and gradation in color. On the other end, you would also likely seen them, as I have, in the poor lower end homes. Here, they are often rubbery and dusty, like you'd see in the store window displays of grocery stores or Hallmark. While I'm sure there have been times on the high end where wax fruit was humorously mistaken for true, it is likely rare, and as well even more rare with less convincing frauds gracing the particle wood coffee tables of the low end. I will not bother guessing what the middle class would do with regard to plastic fruit, because the middle class is disappearing anyway.
I myself have never understood the purpose of fake plastic anything, the point of having fake plants, flowers, fruits, or vegetables. To me, it is just another excuse to fill your home with things that you don't need while also not really fulfilling the need we have to see nature in our duplexes and condos. I feel that same way for every basket of seashell shaped soaps on the back of the toilet or by the sink that you aren't really supposed to use, along with embroidered hand towels that require ironing. It is our failed attempt to bring a little natural beauty into our homes that requires none of the work and therefore, reaps little benefit to use other than reminding us of what ferns look like, what fresh apples and cucumbers look like, and nothing more. If anything, I'd say that they remind us of what we've lost more than anything resembling beauty.