***Official SUPER SIZE ME Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Paul.S]

Thanks for your compliment re "good post" and other comments, Zen.

Re the link in post #60: I read the the main "The journey begins..." story, the USA Today article linked to in the "Media Coverage"/"Print Media" area of the CEI site and the Soso Whaley press release available on the main linked page.

First of all, the irony of Competitive Enterprise group's description as a "free-market advocacy group" has to be pointed out. I noted a story slug, but have not read the story in its entirety, on the CEI home page that intimates that "greens" (that's environmentalists to the less cheekily partisan) complaints about "media conglomerates censoring their views" are unfounded because a movie like The Day After Tomorrow is being released by (neo-conservative) Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Hello? 20th Century Fox and the film's producer Mark Gordon are falling all over themselves to position the film as mainstream entertainment not an pro-environmentalist piece. They didn't make it as an anti-global warming tract, it's just that some people--including Al Gore--have seized the opportunity.

And that's a variant of a perfect word to describe Soso Whaley: opportunity. Both her and Chazz Weaver's projects strike me as opportunistic and reactionary. (Did you note the "Contact for Interviews" information at the top of the Whaley press release?)

A few comments about Soso Whaley items at the CEI site:

Whaley says:
As Spurlock points out in the film, most Americans do NOT exercise regularly and most Americans eat more than 2,000 calories a day.

Logic 101 bottom line regarding Chazz Weaver and Soso Whaley and others with similar positions: it is faulty logic to posit that proving the converse of a premise somehow disproves the veracity of some of the conclusions based upon said premise. In other words, just because someone can indeed lose weight eating at McDonald's does not obviate the validity of Spurlock's project and his experiences.

-p

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Caught this in Toronto on the weekend, where it's playing on quite a few screens. The house was completely full, for what it's worth. Latecomers in groups of two or more were being broken up to fill vacant single spots here and there.

Fantastic movie!

As I mentioned in one of my opening posts in this thread, I'm sure Spurlock's as guilty as any documentarian, though not nearly as bad as Michael Moore, of tailoring his footage to make his point, but he freely admits that his was an extreme undertaking and not representative of everyone who eats fast food. He simply presents what COULD happen - maybe even has happened - over a longer period of time to many obese people in the United States and elsewhere. His task was also partly in response to McDonald's claim in it's defence against two obese girls that a person could not get fat just eating McDonald's food (can't remember the wording exactly, but Spurlock highlights it in court documents in the opening minutes.

The biggest audience laugh - among many - up here in Canada came during Spurlock's patently unscientific but amusing survey of American grade school children in which none of the kids - at least those he chose to show - could recognize a painting of Jesus Christ (even the dubious westernized "white guy" version) but all could recognize the photo of Ronald McDonald. That's comedy, baby!

I have to say that I grew a teensy bit distraught with this particular audience's need to tsk-tsk and groan in judgment nearly every time Spurlock trained his camera on some unwitting tubby hobbling down the street in insert shots designed to foster just such a reaction. Granted, Canada doesn't have anywhere near the obesity problem the U.S. does (although we do have far too many overweight people, we just don't have as high a percentage), but being in an audience of nearly all average-to-slim-built people (believe me, I watched nearly all of them coming in) and hearing a good number of them repeatedly take the bait like that speaks to the power of the moving image, I suppose.

Second biggest audience reaction probably came when he asked the lawyer defending the two fat girls in their lawsuit against the company why he was doing it. The lawyer says something like "Besides The Money? You're asking for some higher moral reason?" or some such, then looks up and away as he searches for an answer. Spurlock cuts away before we ever know if he had one, but the effect is extremely funny.

Overall, I felt that there was a reasonable balance here that I've found lacking in Michael Moore's work. Many of his interviewees are clearly on side with his thinking (despite many of them appearing to be a little overweight), but if you've do your own research beyond this film, you'll find that these views have been long held by many areas of science.

Sure, some other people may indeed prove they can eat McShit three times a day and LOSE weight, but as Paul S. points out above, that DISproves few if any of Spurlock's claims. And Spurlock himself seems to be, when all is said and done, pushing the personal responsibility angle recommended by many naysayers earlier in this thread.

Personally, I'd love to see a documentary sequel to this based on Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, detailing the history and scandal surrounding the meat packing industry through the ages, but somehow I can't help but think Spurlock pulled off the less Herculean task.

Incidentally, the version I saw, which I have to assume is the same everywhere, has an addendum in which Spurlock addresses, however briefly, the fact that McDonald's pulled the "Super-Size" option from its menu.

 

[BridgetJZ]

Hmm, interesting comments. I saw this recently and have been avoiding posting about it bc it infuriates me, but here goes.

First things first, as a film, it was kind of funny. Spurlock is undoubtedly very witty, the way in which the film was edited was very comical, at times. However, at other times, I thought it was just really boring (e.g. all the interviews w/ nutritionists)

I'm glad people are realizing that this film was highly cut to prove Spurlock's point... although, I have no problem w/ the constant shots to all the fat people... America DOES have an obesity problem, should McDonald's be the only to blame for it?? Of course not...I think lack of exercize has WAAAY more to do w/ it than some stupid fast food chain... i mean just look at the big mac king, his cholesterol is lower than most people i know.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, Spurlock is not blaming McDonald's solely, but is using its ubiquity in Western culture to prove his points.

 

[Jason GT]

Watched this on the weekend. PQ isn't too great (nor critical as it's a documentary) so if you can wait for it on DVD you won't miss much

That said, I enjoyed the piece quite a bit. Though there was definitely an air of "I know most of this stuff already" in my mind, I still found the documovie interesting.

First off, I don't think *anybody* has considered this brilliant science as it is anything but. The strawman put forward by some others (not speaking of anyone on this thread) is quite... laughable. The look into school food was certainly interesting.

Though I certainly believe that choosing food comes down to personal choice, one must evaluate that in the context of a society that (here comes sweeping generalization that isn't meant to be so sweeping) seems to shirk personal responsibility. Furthermore, the lack of healthy choices in schools should be worrisome. Whatever happened to packing a lunch for your kids?

Another thing that was emphasaised was the growth of size of portions, regardless of Super Size or not. Being in Canada we have some pretty large food portions but when I was in the states recently I was truly floored by how much larger the typical restaurant meal was. This isn't necessarily true of McD's, as I think the portion sizes on both sides of the border are the same.

The miniature look at corporate business was also interesting. I won't go into too much detail, but I truly found one of the most disturbing parts of the movie (which is of course subject to editing) the famous faces versus Ricky MicDicky. Not so much that the children couldn't recognize Jesus (though that's somewhat disturbing unto itself) but rather how familiar they appeared to be with The Clown.

 

[Chris_Morris]

If that was his task, then he failed. A person cannot get fat just eating x food, it takes apathy and a lack of exercise. To blame portion sizes, menu choices, etc. before blaming lack of exercise, lose weight with one pill scams, eat all of this kind of food and you will lose weight diets is missing the forest for the trees.

Unfortunatly, what most of the "joe 6-pack" public will take out of this is "McDonalds is what is making me fat" then they will drive across the street to Wendys and chow down.


Chris

 

[Ben Osborne]

Chris, I agree. James Bowman makes a similar point in his review. He says, "..people do not only choose their own poisons but also actively seek for ways to deny their ability to choose them."

 

[Lew Crippen]

IIRC, a ‘normal’ bottle of coke in the 50s was 6 oz.

Not exactly super-size.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

We talked about this, too, after the show and kinda came to the conclusion (based on our own anecdotal opinions, naturally), that yes, there will be people who leave the theatre thinking Fast Food is the sole cause of the epidemic (altough I fail to see how in light of Spurlock's arguments), but conversely there will be those, even among the Joe Six-Packs, who will easily deduce that Spurlock has just probed into one area of the equation, with passing acknowledgement to other areas of concern. The topic is simply too big now to be adequately handled by just one film, just as there are four or five top-notch books on the subject, each offering something the other does not, but all coming to largely the same conclusions.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the theatre in which I saw this was packed, yet I can honestly say I didn't see one fat or obese person in attendance (certainly the kind Spurlock features in his many calculated cutaways). And I say this as an absolute because we were sitting in the back row, jumped up and leaned against the back wall near the exit to "watch the credits" and then watched everyone leave. No fat folks. Sure, lots of people, myself included, who could've stood to lose a few pounds, but not one soul in a theatre of around 400 looked like they would be re-examining their eating habits or feeling despondent because of their weight because of this film. Mind you, this is nothing more than anecdotal evidence because you weren't there with me, plus it was a theatre full of Canadians, and the obesity problem is not so severe up here as it is in the U.S.

I honestly wish I could stand outside of every theatre showing this film in North America and watch the body types of the exiting audience. If my experience at the Toronto theatre is any indication, I might not see a whole hell of a lot of obese people coming out those doors. Why on earth would a fat or obese person, who knows full well they have a stigmatic problem, willingly attend a movie that ultimately slaps them in the face for not having the ability to control themselves? (and that is one of the film's messages)

It saddens me somewhat to think that the people who really NEED to see this film will avoid it like the plague because they think they already know what it's going to tell them. Those who do see it will not likely be obese and, as such, will come away with more justification in their minds to continue to cluck-cluck and tsk-tsk fat people from afar.

All in all, though, I think Spurlock succeeded quite well in proving the point he set out to make: a steady diet of McDonald's food (and like food from other sources) CAN and WILL make you fat, particularly if you're a rather sedentary person. Maybe not obese, but you will gain weight if you eat too much, even over a more extended period of time than he did. I don't recall him exactly ignoring the exercise angle completely. I came away quite glad that someone had finally used the visual medium to expose the methods corporations like McDonald's to indoctrinate us when we're young and keep us hooked as we grow older. You can tell people over and over that it happens, and that many written studies, articles and books prove it, but sometimes seeing it on the big screen is the only way to expose the inner workings of big business to the ignorant masses. Books, sadly, require too much time and effort for a lot of people.

And of course, not long after writing all this, I discover a story about someone suing the Atkins Diet for clogging his arteries. Perhaps this trend of questioning the validity of low-carb high-fat diets, which is also touched on in FAT LAND and other sources, would make for an interesting sequel.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/d....ap/index.html

 

[Chris_Morris]

Now that, I would love to see. Atkin's did more harm to this country than McD's ever will.


Chris

 

[Adam_S]

Since there doesn't seem to be a separte review thread...

:star::star:½ (out of four) - recommended with reservations.

This is an enjoyable film, and Spurlock does a good job of staying much more balanced than Michael Moore, he also takes a more generally ironic tone rather than the caustic bitter sarcasm and sardonic tone Moore takes, both of which are refreshing.

That sense of ironic outrage informs most of the film. Spurlock is not a crusader, he's not out to wreak vengeance and bad mouth corporate america and the food industry. Instead he lays the groundwork for a wide variety of issues that inform the obesity epidemic. Next to the gimick of the 30 day diet, the side issue he devotes the most time to is the programming of children, and how bad habits are being ingrained into our children while lip service and a surface veneer are given to doing the right thing. There are two telling interviews, one is with a school cafeteria manager who passes the buck after offering up some very weak excuses Spurlock shoots down with ease. The other is a lobbyist for the Food Industry who Spurlock has refuted earlier in the film, but doesn't bother to comment on at the time of his interview. Both essentially say the same thing, the parents need to educate their kids, and kids are being 'taught to make the right, their own, choices." The problem I have with these is that parents and helath advocates don't have a chance against the food industry. The food industry has a minimum, minimum, of three to four orders the budget of healthy alternatives (2x10^9+ vs. 2x10^6) to tell people what to do.

As mostly DVD nerds, many here should be aware of the recent on the Front Lines, Walt Disney Treasures release. Some of the government sponsored propaganda on that details how people were given positive messages about healthy lifestyles--the film refers to this spuriously as the rationing system, which is unfortunate, it was much bigger than that--and many of those legendary fifties era balanced meals came about because of those programs.

In other words this film tends to attack advertising more than just about anything else, and it highlights personal responsibility along with the prevalence of unhealthy choices that have become ubiquitous in my lifetime (the last 20 years). It's telling that they show the original sizes of drinks and fries vs modern sizes for both Burger king and McDonalds. There are so many factors it's hard to find a common denominater, except personal responsibility. The food industry certainly works hard to condition us and its our job to fight the intense indocrination in our society to make unhealthy choices.

It's not in the film, but consider that durable goods had no national brands before the Sears Roebuck catalogue was introduced. The whole conception grew out of the industrial revolution and assembly line innovations, it was revolutionary and it directly led to the commercial revolution (which in my opinion hasn't yet been given the same weight as the industrial by historians, despite that we now live in a world with Wal-Mart in a position not all that different from Standard Oil), but it was the introduction of radio and advertising that led to the introduction of national brands for replenishable goods and needs. Before radio there was no Gold Medal Flour and C&H sugar in every grocery store in America, there wasn't Ivory soap and Barbarol shaving cream at every drug store. Sure brands existed, but many things were provided locally--and the emphasis wasn't on name brands vs generic brands--labeling and marketing the label were huge innovations.

hmm I better stop now, back to the film, it's biggest drawbacks are that it lays the groundwork for a lot of interesting topics but does not go in depth on any of them. Spurlock needs a better grasp of hook and maguffin, the hook is his diet but it's also a maguffin because everyone in the audience already knows what will happen, we don't really care other than the morbid details at the end, and so the concentration on his eating quickly wears thin, especially with all the other interesting things he opens up in the film. In a way this is ideally the sort of introduction to a miniseries--say this were the first part of a six part miniseries on PBS or something, then it would succeed better because the rest of the series could address the major issues Spurlock doesn't go in depth with. The film is a primer of things I mostly already knew, and that's my biggest disapointment. Despite this, I still heartily recommend the film, and will be telling my family to see it if they get the chance!

I'll leave with this food for though. It covers a lot of information about how humans are evolved to eat calorie dense foods, but not in the extreme quantities we're now capable of.

Adam

 

[BridgetJZ]

Chris_Morris - This is why people mistakenly think that Spurlocks major agenda for this film is slamming McDonalds and blaming them for everything. It's more than obvious that the man has some kind of personal issue w/ the fast food industry, but just as everyone says, its all about personal choice. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

I did get the references to Western culture, which is what i chalked the majority of this film up to, but they're hard to see clearly. If this is his point, its a major flaw of the film.

I found this interesting interview w/ him, recently. Puts a lot of his "intentions" into perspective:

From:
http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News...?oid=oid:67290

We Are What We Eat
Morgan Spurlock discourses on corporate vs. personal responsibilty, rampant obesity, the scourge that is No Child Left Behind, the crap kids are fed in school lunch programs and his documentary film, Super Size Me

by Ann Lewinson - May 27, 2004
Also see cover art

Three trips to McDonald's a day is a little boy's dream--but the reality was a nightmare for Morgan Spurlock, whose film Super Size Me documents his one-month subsistence on Big Macs and Egg McMuffins and its disastrous consequences. ( Super Size Me is currently screening at the Academy of Music in Northampton.) Now fully recovered from his dietary misadventure, Spurlock is spinning off his Sundance award-winning first feature into 30 Days, an FX series premiering this fall that will examine other issues such as poverty, religion and sexuality. I visited Spurlock in his SoHo office, where he keeps a set of vintage McDonaldland dolls including the Grimace, the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese.

Ann Lewinson: Your mother cooked dinner every single night when you were growing up.
Morgan Spurlock: She did.
Lewinson : But you had these toys.
Spurlock: I did. I'm trying to remember when those toys came out. I guess it was '76, '77. I got those for Christmas, so I was six or seven years old. They sold them at Kmart. I think Remco made them.

Lewinson: So you did, sometimes, go to McDonald's.
Spurlock: Actually, I loved Burger Chef when I was a kid, then the McDonald's came in. We would go once a month. If we went out to get fast food, or if we went out to eat anywhere, it was a treat.

Lewinson: How did you get the idea for this film?
Spurlock: I was really inspired by the lawsuits. I was sitting on my mother's couch -- Thanksgiving, 2002 -- and a spokesman from McDonald's came on TV and said, "You can't link our food to these girls being obese. Our food is healthy, it's nutritious, it's good for you." The light went on--if it's good for me, I should be able to eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30 days straight with no side effects, right? I turned to my vegan girlfriend and said, "I've got a great idea" and she said, "You are not going to do that."

Lewinson: You had created an MTV show which dared people to do dumb things.
Spurlock: I Bet You Will. It was the first show that was started on the Web that went to television. We would go out on the street and get people to do silly things for money. We got a Wall Street trader to sell us the clothes off his back, and he ended up being in his underwear and his shoes at eight in the morning.

Lewinson: Was this before Jackass?
Spurlock: When we launched the show on the Web it was before Jackass. We did 53 episodes for the network and then they canceled it. We had this money left over and I said, "Let's make a movie." This movie was really cheap, it was something that I knew we could completely execute on our own, and most importantly it was something that I was really passionate about. It started off as a film about fast food and obesity, but the more I started to research, I said it needs to be more about corporate vs. personal responsibility, and that's the core of the film, I think. Where does corporate responsibility stop and personal responsibility begin?

Lewinson: Where does it begin?
Spurlock: I think that we are very much in control of what we buy. We are bombarded with advertisements from such a young age. Look at countries like Finland, Denmark, Sweden, which ban advertising to kids under the age of 13. At a certain age I think we have a lot of responsibility. And there also has to be a level of responsibility from a corporation. McDonald's alone feeds 46 million people every day. Do they have no obligation to help educate their consumers? Everyone knows it's bad for you, but I don't think everybody knows how bad it is, and I think that really comes across in the movie. As bad as people think a high-fat, high-sugar, super-über fast food lifestyle is for you, they really don't know how bad it is.

Lewinson: Your doctors didn't know.
Spurlock: The doctors had no idea. Here're three physicians who all said, "Yeah, maybe you'll gain some weight. Your cholesterol will go up a little bit, your triglycerides maybe, but that's it." That's three doctors, so what's the average guy going to think? Every day most of America overeats and underexercises. The film is a fast-forward of your life--in 30 days you look at what could happen to you over 20, 30, 40 years of overconsumption. You're on a path to get heart disease, liver failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, hyperuricemia, gout, kidney stones...

Lewinson: You also had symptoms of addiction.
Spurlock: Addiction, depression, impotence...
Lewinson: But addiction speaks to the issue of personal vs. corporate responsibility. Obviously if you were having mood swings and felt better when you had a Big Mac, then there's something going on--not that there's something in the meat. You do make the connection to the tobacco industry.

Spurlock: Look at Joe Camel. They used Joe Camel as a great piece of marketing towards the kids. And here's this clown. You never see the clown eat the food. Why is that?

Lewinson: Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald.
Spurlock: He created the character, and then they fired him because he was overweight.
Lewinson: You also talk about the way McDonald's markets to kids through Happy Meals and playgrounds in the restaurants. A playground would seem to be a nice contribution to an inner city, but you see it as pernicious.

Spurlock: The playgrounds aren't there just for kids to come play. Parents bring their kids there, so things get sold. Will they allow you to go into the playground without making a purchase? A lot of places they won't. You've got to buy your ticket to get in, and it's usually a burger or fries or a Coke.

Lewinson: And if kids drank less Coke, maybe they'd need less Ritalin...
Spurlock: We always talk about how kids can't pay attention in schools. For me the scariest thing in the whole movie is the school lunch program. We're supposedly educating their minds, but we're doing nothing to educate their bodies. We're eliminating physical education, we're eliminating health education, and we're doing nothing to build a platform upon which to have a healthy lifestyle. Our priorities are so out of whack because we continue to cut education, and we're forcing the boards and state legislatures to find ways to get more money. So they're making these deals to pay for the band and the football team. And parents have no idea. At some of these schools it's like these kids are having lunch in a 7-11. One school we shot in, they have a slushie machine in the lunchroom.

Lewinson: The school in Naperville?
Spurlock: Yeah, you can get a cherry or a Coke slushie for lunch, along with pretzels and candy bars and Gatorade and ice cream. They're saying it's good for the kids to be able to make choices. You know what? When the bell rings at three o'clock they can walk out those doors and all those choices are right outside. This is the one place where they shouldn't be able to make a choice.

Lewinson: You also visited a public school for teens with behavior problems where they have a nutritious lunch program.

Spurlock: And these are the bad kids!
Lewinson: It costs the same -- so why isn't this more common?
Spurlock: Because it's about the contracts. It's about getting some additional kickbacks to pay for things. We're selling out kids down a path that's going to lead to illness and we have blinders on.

Lewinson: New York City recently banned the sale of soda in the schools...
Spurlock: But then they made a contract with Snapple for $167 million. This is happening everywhere. The soda companies are saying, "OK, we'll take the soda out, here's the Fruitopias." It's 10 percent juice, 90 percent corn syrup. They need to get all the machines out.

Lewinson: How does No Child Left Behind fit in?
Spurlock: No Child Left Behind was one of the worst pieces of legislation ever, and it's destroying our educational system. The whole idea was to create much more well-rounded students -- they are getting more well-rounded, right around here [pats a nonexistent gut].

Lewinson: At this point in the movie you flash a picture of Bush.
Spurlock: Well, No Child Left Behind was his baby. We have this healthy president who talks about how important health is, but we never see anything to back that up. We have no problem buying massive amounts of jets and fighter planes and tanks, but putting money into schools is a problem.

Lewinson: It's a good thing you didn't have a distribution deal with Disney.
Spurlock: Yeah.
Lewinson: So after the film premiered at Sundance, McDonald's said it was phasing out supersizing.
Spurlock: Six weeks after the movie premiered at Sundance.
Lewinson: Was that a coincidence?
Spurlock: What do you think? They said it had nothing to do with the film whatsoever. And then the day before the movie opened, they launched the Go Active Happymeal. Just another amazing coincidence.

Lewinson: Jim Cantalupo, the McDonald's CEO you tried repeatedly to contact in the film, had a fatal heart attack last month.

Spurlock: It's a really terrible thing. The guy was 60; he was not an old man.
Lewinson: Did you ever think about just going to his office, standing in the parking lot with a megaphone?
Spurlock: That's what everybody says: "Why didn't you storm the doors?" That's somebody else's movie.
Lewinson: McDonald's actually hadn't been doing well, and in Cantalupo's 16 months as CEO he really turned the company around. A lot of this was credited to the introduction of the "premium" salads.

Spurlock: They talk about how many salads they're selling, how that's what's turned this company around. I personally believe it's the McGriddles. I would love to know the number of McGriddles they've sold. McDonald's sold 150 million salads last year, an impressive sounding number until you realize they feed 46 million people a day. That's almost 17 billion people a year, so less than 1 percent of the people who go to McDonald's are buying a salad. What are the other 99 percent getting?

Lewinson: What would you like to see happen as a result of this film?
Spurlock: I would love for people to walk out of this movie and say, "Holy shit, I've got to take better care of myself. Next time I'm not going to get a giant size. Maybe I'm not going to go there at all. And I'm not going to eat out four to five days a week anymore. I'm going to sit down and eat dinner with my kids, with the TV off, so that we can have a conversation and talk about what we're eating, actually have a relationship with one another and our food. I'm going to go down to the school and see what my kids are eating." And it would be great for a corporation to say, "Of our $1.2 billion in advertising we're going to dedicate $300-400 million to promoting healthy lifestyles." How great would it be to turn on Saturday morning cartoons and see somebody going, "Apples, they're the greatest thing ever!" and Justin Timberlake going, "Hey, I love running! You should go for a run!" How great would it be if they asked you to minimize, rather than supersize? How great would it be if rather than having to look around for nutrition information, it's right there on the big board? Ruby Tuesday is putting it in their menu.

Lewinson: That's a chain restaurant?
Spurlock: It's like TGIFridays--it was one of the original "flair" restaurants with people with buttons and sleds on the wall. It's going to say, "Giant double-fudge chocolate brownie dessert, this many calories, this much fat, this much sugar." How cool would it be if you walked into McDonald's and it said, "Double quarter pounder with cheese: 690 calories?" But if you really start to educate your consumers you stand to take a hit on your bottom line. So how much do you educate them?

Lewinson: Do you still eat fast food?
Spurlock: I don't eat at McDonald's. If I'm going to eat a burger I'm going to go somewhere that makes really good cheeseburgers. I was just in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago and I ate at one of my favorite burger chains, Tommy Burger. It's the original Tommy. They've been making burgers in this little shack on the corner of Beverly and Rampart Boulevard in East LA for 57 years. All hours of the night there're people lined up there. It's one of the few places that the slices of tomato are thicker than the beef, and then they cover it with cheese and chili. It's a heart attack in a wrapper, but I hadn't eaten that in a year and a half and it was great. But I do that once a month. I don't do it every day.

Lewinson: Have you seen the Burger King Subservient Chicken?
Spurlock: Somebody was talking about that but I haven't seen it.
Lewinson: I first thought it was a hoax because Burger King doesn't link to it from their site.
Spurlock: You tell the chicken what to do.
Lewinson: It's a man in a chicken suit wearing a garter belt. You would think that Burger King, like McDonald's, would be marketing to families, but this seems to be targeted more towards...

Spurlock: ... college kids ...
Lewinson: ... Internet porn fans, I think. Doesn't a satire of porn webcams have the potential to upset parents?
Spurlock: I think a lot of things have the potential to upset parents. I think that parents just don't get upset enough. We as a nation have been complacent for so long and we can't do that anymore. I hope parents get upset when they see some of the things in this film, because we should be getting upset, the way we're franchising out our lives. Morgan Spurlock faces his nemesis: He subsisted on a McD´s-only diet for a month and lived to make a documentary about it.

 

[Chris_Morris]

Being that his girlfriend is a vegan and that the above is pretty much the PETA 'party line' on meat or animal products, it would cause me to take everything else he says with a grain of salt.


Chris

 

[Ricardo C]

Well, that certainly was a "fair and balanced" interview...

 

[Mike Broadman]

I don't understand this comment. If Spurlock was depressed, etc, what does that have to do with his girlfriend? Nor was PETA ever mentioned in the film, and Spurlock himself is not a vegetarian.


It amazes me that so many people are more angry with those who sue McD's than at McD's themselves.

I live in Manhattan and I'm sick of seeing a McD's at every block. I visited the Champs D'Elysses in Paris to experience a foreign culture and came across multiple McD's. No, you won't find my losing any tears over any suffering McD's might experience.

Those who slam Supersize Me! for shirking personal responsibility are either out of their minds or haven't seen the film. At the end Spurlock says, point blank, that at the end of the day, we make our own choices and are responsible for what we eat and how we live. Even in the interview quoted above, Spurlock's hopes for the film's impact is more on the consumer than on the company (though he reasonably wants them to do their part).

 

[Paul.S]

In response to Ann Lewinson bringing up in the Valley Advocate interview that Morgan experienced "addiction" during his 30-day project, Morgan replied "Addiction, depression, impotence..."

Chris_Morris said:
Thanks for your responsive comments, Mike. I was going to chime in earlier, but had tentatively decided to let it go since, frankly but with no disrespect intended Chris, I've had an issue/problem with your comments in each of your three posts to this thread so far. Since you broached responsive comments though, Mike, I'll amplify/toss in my 1.5 cents.

Although I respect a sense of healthy skepticism regarding what can be collateral influences, in this instance I think you've overreached, Chris. I found the comment kinda absurd, offensive and patronizing. Morgan's girlfriend being vegan may cause one to take what he says about his "addiction, depression, [and] impotence" with a grain of salt, but it is a non sequitur/simply does not follow that one could leap from that to taking "everything else he says with a grain of salt" (underline mine). It seems to me that you're visiting what you purport to be her 'sins' on him. How would you feel if people--regardless of the topic--generally didn't take you at your word, Chris, because of your girlfriend's/spouse's/partner's position on some issue?

The intimation of your comments is that, at best, Morgan's project is suspect/can not be taken seriously because of his girlfriend or, at worst, he is her puppet and can't think for himself (despite the fact that he did the film over her protestations, some of which are shown in the film).

I don't think any of us are privvy to the backstory/context their relationship may provide, but for now it seems to me she 'guilty' of nothing more than being concerned about and supportive of her partner . . . and cooking fabulous-looking meals. We should all be so lucky.

-p

 

[Ricardo C]

I have no words. Wow.

No, wait, I do. Your knee-jerk reaction is far more offensive than Spurlock's entire film.

Hey, it's not much, but your words were unbelievably baffling.

 

[Paul.S]

Or to the extent you wish to try to remain, purportedly blissfully, ignorant of the company's far-reaching impacts beyond whether their food is going in your mouth or not.

It's just not that simple, Ricardo. There's a litany of evidence to support what I'm saying, but I'll simply mention three items.

Did you know that the curator of the Dachau Museum had to fight to keep McDonald's leafletters from approaching people and hitting them up to go to the Dachau McDonald's? Yes, there is a McDonald's adjacent to the Dachau concentration camp. The company paid people to literally walk up to visitors, say "Hi, welcome to Dachau. And welcome to McDonald's!" and hand them a leaflet. Think of the corporate gall it took to not only do this in the first place, but then to fight the museum curator on the issue when she protested (and eventually prevailed).

Did you know that McDonald's analyzes census data so as to locate their restaurants in high-growth/(soon-to-be) heavily-trafficked areas/neighborhoods? Think of how this is affecting traffic congestion, pollution and the fate of local eateries in communities all over the world.

Speaking of pollution, just earlier today while walking to a store two blocks from my house, I noticed over a half-dozen pieces of trash easily-identifiable as being from McDonald's. Yeah yeah yeah: what of the (lack of) "personal responsibility" on the part of the jamook who threw their trash on the ground. But what of the larger corporate responsibility of McDonald's using more biodegradable materials to package the millions of excuses of food they dish out daily?

Each one of these just three examples of McDonald's behavior is inextricably linked to their market dominance. And that dominance is an issue whether or not you eat those greasy, fried lumps of reconstituted chicken parts that are held together with polymers and deep fried in oil (twice!) that they call McNuggets or not.

-p

 

[Chris_Morris]

Those are both great examples of advertising and market research, which is what our economy is based on. Do you really think no other company looks into the growth potential of an area they are thinking of moving into? Only companies that don't plan on being around long do.


Chris

 

[Ricardo C]

Paul, I've searched and searched, and haven't found any info online about a McD's restaurant in Aischwitz. Do you have any links? It's not a trick question. It's unbelievably crass if true.

As for your other complaints... Sorry, man. My answer would be a long rant peppered with "free enterprise" and "personal responsibility"