Posted on 01/06/2006 7:15:59 AM PST by Squawk 8888
The first big attack on fast food's place in popular culture came in the form of the 2004 movie, Super Size Me, by gross-out filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. In the movie -- styled as a documentary -- Spurlock goes on an all-McDonald's diet for a month. He must eat at that restaurant morning, noon and night, and whenever he is offered a "super size" portion, he must accept.
Spurlock does for the nutrition debate what Michael Moore does for politics -- he acts as an incendiary troublemaker who never lets the facts get in the way of scoring a few points and selling a few more tickets. He's not a documentary filmmaker as much as a jester; Super Size Me was not a serious investigation into North American health.
If Super Size Me were instead a defence of fast food produced by a burger company, it would be torn to shreds for its conflicts of interest. Spurlock's wife is a vegan chef whose business is flogged not just on the movie's Web site and credits, but in the actual movie itself. Natural Ovens Bakery, which lobbies to get school lunch contracts, receives promotional consideration in the film's credits, and is featured as a kind of anti-fast-food hero in the film. That's what consumer advocates would call "product placement" -- when money-making corporations ensure that their products just happen to show up in a movie in a positive light. For Spurlock, Super Size Me wasn't just a chance to rant, it was a chance to do some subliminal advertising for businesses run by his wife and friends.
But all of that pales next to Spurlock's decision to contract out editorial direction of his movie to John Banzhaf III, the health "expert" used by trial lawyers to quarterback litigation against tobacco companies.
Banzhaf was the health-law strategist who destroyed the concept of personal responsibility when it came to smoking -- and helped secure trial lawyers more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in winnings from tobacco companies. Now he's set his sights on suing food companies, and Spurlock was more than willing to let Banzhaf steer his film.
Banzhaf has perfected a legal strategy for taking on companies that have traditionally been seen as harmless, normal entities -- as cigarette manufacturers once were. Banzhaf managed to convince a few juries that smoking wasn't just a habit -- it was a full-out addiction that no reasonable person could ever escape. Tobacco wasn't simply something that everybody knew wasn't healthy -- it was diabolically unhealthy, and because cigarette companies didn't fully disclose everything they knew about it, smokers couldn't be responsible for their own actions.
According to Banzhaf, cigarette companies trap and manipulate smokers like marionettes, especially children. Under Banzhaf's direction, Spurlock made all these points against fast food companies, too.
The word "addiction" is used by Spurlock dozens of times in Super Size Me -- and he even claims that he himself became addicted to McDonald's food, that he was irritable until he got his daily fix. The claim falls apart under the slightest scrutiny -- Spurlock is shown easily and happily moving back to his wife's veggie cooking. But how many thousands of movie-watchers now believe with their own eyes that McDonald's is addictive?
Banzhaf knows exactly what he's doing -- he's shaping the battlefield, laying down layers of sediment for when the lawsuits start. He even appears in the movie, quoting himself as it were. "In terms of responsibility it's fair to point the big gun at McDonalds," he says, in case anyone was wondering who the first deep-pocketed plaintiff would be. Why not start with the biggest bank account? After bringing down big tobacco, Big Macs must seem like easy pickings.
McDonald's doesn't just advertise, claims Banzhaf. It "lures in young children." Responsible people market. Predators lure. Banzhaf knows what he's doing.
"You've got to take your kid there," he insists. Thanks to McDonald's playroom facilities, claims Banzhaf, parents aren't able to resist their pleading kids who want to go. Again it's not a matter of personal choice, even for parents. It's about corporate executives "luring" children, and parents unable to fight back.
Banzhaf claims he cares about kids -- more, even, than their own parents care about them. But he also interviews Samuel Hirsch, another anti-McDonald's lawyer. He's less shy about his own motivations. Asked why he's filed lawsuits against fast food restaurants, he answers "you mean motives besides the monetary compensation? You want to hear a noble cause, is that it?" It's a rare flash of what the anti-hamburger lobby is really about -- tobacco-style cash payouts to lawyers. Kids are just the tear-jerking excuses to get at the corporate treasuries.
It's a huge task to rebrand an entire industry as criminal -- and it's certainly an audacious one. It's shocking to hear the first time -- but the millionth time it's repeated, it's conventional wisdom. Cigarettes were once an acceptable personal choice, just like drinking is. Not any longer -- Banzhaf-style denunciations have turned radical ideas into the commonplace. That's Spurlock's job - and right now, only gross-out TV jesters and voracious trial lawyers might be up to it. But they're just the point on the end of the spear. And others with a personal or economic axe to grind aren't hard to find.
Spurlock himself tried hard to come across as the neutral investigator -- a real documentary filmmaker, not an agent provocateur. But, true to his roots, he couldn't resist the most exciting scene in the film, when he forced himself to vomit up his Big Mac on film. It won't win any Oscars for best Actor, but it certainly drove home Banzhaf's point: Fast food is poisonous.
Spurlock's film had some particularly incendiary footage, some of which was mercifully cut from the theatre version, but which was added to its DVD release. One such scene was an interview with Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation,another calumny against fast food.
Schlosser agreed with Spurlock's wife that beef production was a "cruel, cruel system." Fast food wasn't just unhealthy, or a choice that could be made in moderation; it is "food poisoning," and damages the environment. It increases homelessness, and hurts people in the Third World. If tobacco executives were bad, food executives were positively diabolical. Just in case he wasn't clear, Schlosser called McDonald's and the other restaurant giants "mean, greedy companies." And if that wasn't clear enough, Schlosser said that McDonald's goal to have one common taste, worldwide at all of their outlets, was a mantra "that's like sieg heil." Even cigarette makers haven't been called Nazis.
Spurlock was delighted -- and Banzhaf, Hirsch and the other lawyers, no longer on screen, must have been, too.
Ronald McDonald, by appealing to children, was "insidious," said Schlosser. In case viewers couldn't get the point, Spurlock prompted him further: "Is Ronald McDonald comparable to Joe Camel?" he asked, alluding to the now-retired cartoon camel allegedly used to draw children to cigarettes.
No urban legend or conspiracy theory is too nuts for these two; and while such arguments might not make it in a court of law, there's no defence lawyer in the theatres to object to the junk science and junk economics being offered up as fact. Whichever of the arguments lobbed up by these two McDonald's-haters sticks, doesn't matter -- as long as one of them sticks, and sticks long enough to jurors in the coming trial of the century.
(((.)))
Spurlock's next effort is the "Republican's War on Science"--
LOL that's rich! Thanks for topping my RDA for irony.
It's true.
Spurlock has optioned Chris Mooney's "Republican War on Science"--this is an effort to go after some vulnerable GOP Senators.
Spurlock has optioned Chris Mooney's "Republican War on Science"--this is an effort to go after some vulnerable GOP Senators.
Sounds like Spurlock and Banzhof ought to meet up with some unexpected calamity. This nation doesn't need any more crap like this. Volunteers???
I get this unexplained urge for a Big Mac once in a while. It can't be helped. An intervention may be required. There are no warning labels on the wrapper either.
But "product placement" often adds to the realism of a movie or a novel. That's why I use it in my writing, not because I get anything from it (I don't).
I've often been amazed at how CSI can display a whole grocery shelf of realistic-looking products with fake but real-sounding names on them. I guess putting real products there would antagonize the advertisers, who are paying to have their own products mentioned during the advertising breaks.
Actually, they only claim to want zero risk, knowing full well that it's impossible, in order to gain money and/or power via unearned guilt. Ayn Rand, for all her faults, did a pretty good job of exposing this phenomenon more than half a century ago.
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