Super Size Me - Review

Is there some kind of forced feeding of McDonalds 'food' going on that I haven't heard about?

The film answers this inane question very effectively. It opens with a chilling scene of American schoolkids chanting the glories of fast food like it was a brain-washing nursery rhyme. Try resisting the pressure from your over-weight 10-year-old kid, as I have had to do, when, after you've been to a popular kids' film, the McDs so-called "happy meal" comes with a free toy franchised from the same film.

I've got two sons (13 and 8) and they've probably had, at a guess, about 5 McDonalds meals in their lifetimes. Neither boy is obese (or even overweight).

Don't blame the business if the parents of these obese children aren't strong enough to sort out their children's diets. Blame the parents.

Do five year old children make their own way to McDonalds, buy as much as they can eat and then pay for it all by themselves? No - they're taken there. And yes, I DO know all about pester power! :-) But kids always nag for things. It doesn't mean to say you have to give in to them.

I don't think the film is intended to unmask any sinister plot to force feed anything, but to inform people of just how terrible the product is, so they'll stop eating there. Simple as that really.

It's surprising how few people know just how toxic this shit is. Many people I know think it's just mildly unhealthy, until they learn the full facts. McDonald's also do their best to deceive people into thinking that their food is nutritious.

Cigarette companies used to run ads saying that smoking was good for you. Nothing new here then.

In the USA, McDonalds pioneered "supersize" portions. Since the film was released, they've pulled these from the menu, and ran full-page ads about this film, which shows just how rattled they are about the truth coming out.

Good book for more info is "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser:
 http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/books/schlosser.html

"And the parents of these kids are too weak to say no?"

So you seem to be saying that child-targeting intensive marketing campaigns create a need for authoritarian parenting, which tends to beget dysfunctional behaviour, usually either timid submissiveness or reactionary awkwardness. Young kids can't neccessarily understand the arguments involved and stand to be socially excluded and bullied if they don't consume mass-culture commodities.

I'd like to thank SXB for his lesson in parenting, but I reserve the right to be angry about having to bat off the demands provoked in young people by transnational corporations who want to make them addicts of their products even if it kills them in the process.

Isn't the abnegation of personal responsibility one of the main dangers of any 'nanny' (totalitarian?) state? It is silly to pretend that parents and families don't have a choice. For a start, they could resolve to watch less TV, or they could, as a friend of mine has done, boo everytime a MacDonalds advert comes on (her kid doesn't crave them), or or or. Advertising is NOT mindcontrol, it is a bunch of failed writers and disillusioned graduates struggling to come up with something that looks good enough to be paid stupid money for.

Isn't McDonalds just the unhealthy tip of a much bigger problem? Most food sold in supermarkets is 'highly processed'. It's more profitable to sell it than letting people grow and cook their own food. Much better to have all the parent(s) at work so they're too shagged out to cook a nice meal for themself(s) and their kid(s). Anyone who thinks that TV adverts don't pile on the pressure on said parent(s) hasn't been reading their Orwell.
Marx first (?) tried to theorise the adulteration/cheapening of bread in mid C19th London. For the individual capitalist food producer, e.g. McDonalds, it 'cuts costs' but all capitalists benefit if wages can be lower because people can buy cheaper processed commodified food.


/ btw...that's the theory, my 2 kids don't necessarily practice what I preach ;)

Predictalby, and predictably boringly, when somone makes the kinds of comments that Richard makes re the effect of advertising the silly response occurs that advertising 'doesn't work'. Of course it does! Do you think the megacorps are stupid!?

They wouldn't use it if it did not work. Why is this not obvious?

The argument that it would be OK if only parents were 'strong enough' to resist it just ignores the huge change in the nature of familial culture which has been engineered by the Propaganda Apparatus. The time when particular families had their own culture and distinctive values is gone - the boundaries around the family have become permeable. Ironically, the 'abloition of the nuclear family' once called for as a revolutionary slogan by cultural leftists is now being accomplished by the culture machine of Capital.

The only cultures within the advanced nations which appear to manage to insulate themselves from this are religious fundies and White Nationalists. I feel that 'alternatives' maybe shoud learn from them - but to do so they will need to ditch the paralysing ultra-tolerance and liberal individualism shown in some of the responses to richard.

...after I'd read Richard's review above. Excellent film. Only 98 minutes long, but this was the right length for the subject matter.

Being a US film meant for a US audience, it went for a light touch on the underlying economic issues. Only at the very end did he point out that a corporation being responsible only to shareholders might have something to do with the problem.
He also didn't expand the issue to address how all food is being corporatised, how we are pulled further and further from the production of our own food, alienated from our food by the growth of packaging, by the shrinking number of food providers, etc. These issues underpin many of the threats that the fast-food industry seems to pose by itself, and it's important to see this as just one symptom of a much larger problem.

Instead he chose to personalise one important problem of fast-food around a "what-if" experiment. His self-deprecating humour made a nice change from Michael Moore heroism, and there were lots of "and this is what it's done to my dick" type anecdotes. :)
He also made it clear at the start that McDonalds is not the only offender, they're just the worst offender, with the most outlets.

I think SXB is right in one sense: saying "no" to poisonous junk is the right answer to the problem. But it can be much harder for some people than it is for others, and for parents on behalf of their school-age kids, to get the full facts and to stand up against the pressure of billions spent annually on marketing. Modern advertising definitely is a subtle form of mind control, and the megacorps keep shelling out for it because it continually provides a direct, measurable and immediate boost on sales, paying for itself many times over. The film spent some time showing how piss-poor McDonalds is at allowing customers access to "nutrition information", which shows how hard it is even for people aware of the problem to make an informed decision.

So the answer seems to lie in building a culture of resistance to fast food. This is already a well established part of the growing anti-capitalist culture in the US, UK and other countries. It now needs to get taken to a wider audience, and well-made, accessible films like this are a good way of doing that.

Anyone want a copy on cd-rom? Send me an e mail and i send it to you.

> David Murray (is that his real name?) derides the suggestion that advertising
> doesn't work, commenting “Of course it does! Do you think the megacorps are
> stupid!?” This applies to animal testing too. Of course these techniques work !

There's a difference. Corporations aren't *forced* to advertise, therefore if they spend money on it they must be getting something back. But they *are* forced to provide some kind of evidence that their drugs, cosmetics etc are safe to use. Animal testing is the cheapest, but not the most scientific, way of doing that.

It's all very simple from the perspective of profit.

They use animal testing not because it works, but because they are legally obliged to provide some kind of testing, so they pick the cheapest option.

PS Who gives a f*** if David Murray is his real name?!?!?!

... that the last poster adds a remark re animal testing that was not part of my post that s/he/it was replying to and then replies to what they have added to my post !!!

It's because she was replying to a comment which did include a reference to animal testing, and also asked if David Murray was your real name. That comment was removed after she had replied to it, because its content was not of an approved nature whereas hers was. This often happens on Indymedia, and makes it rather difficult to follow the arguments sometimes. They do tend to seem one-sided when they've been edited in this way.