Corporate America

[mgeoffriau]

This article isn't entirely political in nature, but sections of it are pertinent to several of the discussions going on in the forum. I have bolded those sections I think apply.

McDiculous

A new film that blames fast food for America's weight problem is clever, entertaining, and totally misguided

by Chuck Klosterman | May 01 '04

STAYING ALIVE IS COMPLICATED. There is just so much in this wicked world that can kill us: cancer, avalanches, liver failure, street gangs wearing baseball uniforms, gravity, electric chairs, Rwandan death squads, hammerhead sharks, werewolves, hemlock, and a boundless cornucopia of other coldhearted entities that exist solely so that we may not. Everything is bad for you. Food is bad for you. Food—something you need in order to stay alive—is probably killing you right now. Food hates you. But food cannot be held accountable for its diabolical actions, even if Morgan Spurlock thinks otherwise.

Spurlock is the director of the documentary Super Size Me , which opens May 14. The film chronicles Spurlock's experiment on his own thirty-two-year-old body. For thirty days, he ate nothing but food from McDonald's. If it wasn't on the menu, he did not consume it. (For example, he wouldn't even take aspirin, as McDonald's does not offer pharmaceuticals.) Within the reality of the movie, the results are staggering: Spurlock gains twenty-five pounds, watches his cholesterol spike sixty-two points, shows signs of liver failure, becomes profoundly depressed, and vomits on camera. The goal of Super Size Me is to illustrate how fast-food restaurants contribute to the overall obesity of America. (Sixty percent of U. S. adults are overweight, according to this movie.) You may recall that in 2002, two girls unsuccessfully sued McDonald's, claiming that their inability to stop eating was the restaurant's fault. (One of the plaintiffs was five feet six and weighed 270 pounds.) Perhaps you thought that lawsuit was frivolous. Well, that's because it was. It was completely idiotic, as is the entire philosophical premise of this movie.

Now, before I get into this, I want to be clear about something. Super Size Me is not an unwatchable movie. It's generally interesting and always entertaining, and it won the documentary director's prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival in January. Moreover, Spurlock seems like a great guy. He came over to my apartment to screen his documentary on my living-room TV, and he drank four Sierra Nevada beers, and he has a cool-looking Jack McDowell mustache and a foxy vegan girlfriend who vaguely resembles Brady Bunch star Eve Plumb. I hope Spurlock makes money from this movie. In fact, I encourage people to see Super Size Me , if for no other reason than to consider its two problems.

The first problem is tangible: Is this movie true?

Honestly, I'm not sure that I can answer that question; maybe it is and maybe it isn't.

The second question is ideological: Does this movie make a valid point?

No.

Let me first address the former query. It may seem irrational to question the reality of Super Size Me , since the evidence appears on the screen. We see Spurlock go to the doctor, we see him eat a ****load of Big Macs, and then we see him go back to his physician to track his devolution. Around day twenty-one, a doctor suggests that Spurlock may die if he doesn't change his diet. I question that diagnosis, and here's why: I once did something very similar to this. In 1996, I ate only Chicken McNuggets for an entire week. For seven straight days, I consumed nothing else—no fries, no Filets-O-Fish, no McDonaldland cookies, no nothing. All told, I ate somewhere between 230 and 280 McNuggets. And you know what happened to me? Nothing. Nothing happened. I gained exactly one pound. My cholesterol and blood pressure actually went down .

Now, did I feel stellar at the end of that week? Not quite. I felt like I was coated in petroleum jelly. But I've certainly felt far worse at other points in my life; I think I feel worse right now. But in this movie, Spurlock struggles almost immediately. By the third day of the experiment, he starts to act like a dying smack junkie. It all seems pretty sketchy.

Granted, it's possible that I'm well suited to this kind of contrived gluttony. For some reason, my body has an unbelievably high tolerance for everything, and my organs seem indestructible. But I still suspect Super Size Me is somewhat exaggerated; if it wasn't, it couldn't exist. You could not sell a movie about eating fast food and feeling fine. And Spurlock didn't just eat; he gorged himself at every possible turn. He was ramming down five thousand calories a day. He was eating unreasonably on purpose. But when I pointed that out, he implied that I was missing the point.

"Someone else asked me about that," he said. "And he argued that if you ate nothing but broccoli for a month, that would make you sick, too. And that's probably true. But you know what? Nobody is telling you that broccoli is a meal. McDonald's is trying to convince people that their stuff is a legitimate meal, and that you can eat it every day."

Here is where the second problem with Super Size Me —the larger philosophical problem—comes into focus. This is a movie about alleged victimization. But the biggest problem with America is not faceless corporate forces. The biggest problem with America is people who blame faceless corporate forces instead of accepting accountability for their own lives*. And that's what Super Size Me is ultimately about: It's about blaming a chain restaurant for offering a product that people choose to consume.

Early in the documentary, Spurlock poses an important question: He asks us where personal responsibility ends and corporate responsibility begins. Super Size Me never answers that question, but I will: Corporate responsibility begins when corporations start breaking the law; meanwhile, personal responsibility never ends. Spurlock questions the ethics of offering consumers forty-two-ounce beverages and massive portions of fries, arguing that people can't help themselves. "It's just human nature to eat what you get, even if you don't need it or want it," Spurlock says. Well, whose ****ing fault is that? Why is a restaurant supposed to worry about people who get fat by eating food they supposedly don't want? **

Now, don't misunderstand me; I don't feel altogether comfortable defending McDonald's. I almost feel like I'm saying, "Hey, man, Darth Vader had every right to build the Death Star. He had all the proper zoning permits." However, the paradigm advocated by Super Size Me is wrong. McDonald's is a publicly traded capitalist venture. Its function is to earn as much as it can by offering people a product they want. Perhaps you hate that notion. Well, go ahead and hate it. Hate it hard. But don't blame McDonald's because you can't control your own life.

Spurlock criticizes McDonald's for not being up-front about the lack of nutrition in its food. This reminds me of people who sued tobacco companies because nobody told them that inhaling smoke is less healthy than inhaling oxygen. Spurlock also attacks the prevalence of McDonald's advertising campaigns, and he hates the way they target children. This is intriguing, because I remember seeing thousands of "Just Say No" advertisements when I was young, and those didn't seem to take. All those "Got Milk?" ads don't seem to make people crazy for milk, either. Why is it that the only advertising campaigns that work seem to sell bad things that people actually desire? Isn't that a weird coincidence?

Commercials for McDonald's claim its food is marvelous and that you should eat it constantly. And maybe you believe that. And maybe you need documentary filmmakers to protect you from yourself, because life is dangerous. And life is dangerous. Like I said, staying alive is complicated. But I'll take my chances.


* Actually, this is more like the second biggest problem in America; the biggest is that we somehow managed to elect the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant. But it's tight.

**Yet—amazingly—this appears to be already happening. In early March, McDonald's announced that it plans to phase out Super Size items by the end of the year. Company officials insist that this move has nothing to do with the release of this documentary. I insist they are lying.

[one-eyed-fatman]

Hey, go blame the supersized lawyers in America. Their the one's creating this sh@t.

[beardman2]

I didn't read the whole article. I actually just watched that tonight. I found it very interesting. I didn't take from it a anti corperation thing. In fact he does say in there essentially that to remember they are businesses. In the end the answer to the shareholders.

If your a fast food eater like I am I highly suggest it. Creepy to see what he goes through.