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Saturday, December 09, 2006
Fast Food Nation is a movie that could change your life.
Posted by Justin Jeffre
For those who’ve read the 2001 best seller Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser, you might be wondering how this expose of the fast food industry could be adapted into a fictional story with a star-studded cast. Schlosser and director Richard Linklater create several interweaving story lines that touch on the books most important issues.
Even with big names like Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Wilmer Valderrama, Chris Christopherson, Patricia Arquette and Avril Levine this film hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, possibly because it takes on a very powerful interest. Just think of Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry.
Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is the marketing brain behind the success of fast food chain Mickey’s (not to be confused with McDonald’s) the “big one.” Sales are up and so is the fecal content in the meat. Anderson is sent to find out what’s going on. He travels from the laboratory where they create the smell of flame broiled burgers with chemicals to a fictional small town in Colorado where the dark side of the industry is revealed.
Like a modern day version of Upton Sinclair’s expose The Jungle, Fast Food Nation takes you inside a modern meatpacking plant called Uniglobe. There you get an inside look at the dangerous working conditions and abuse of workers that are part of the systems drive to maximize the bottom line. Undocumented workers are all too often exposed to sexual abuse, permanent disabilities and death. These are some of the most dangerous jobs there are and the ugliest.
The movie follows undocumented workers (Wilmer Valderrama and Catalina Sandino Moreno) who are so desperate to make their lives better that they are willing to risk their lives to cross the border and find work doing whatever they can. They end up working at Uniglobe where their American dream becomes a nightmare.
An untold number of these workers never make it across because those that aren’t counted in life don’t get counted in death. No matter what your take on the immigration issue, seeing the human faces of it makes for a thought-provoking story.
The faster the line moves at Uniglobe the larger the corporate profits, but there’s a down side for workers and consumers. After watching the “kill line” you may never look at a hamburger the same way again. As Harry Rydell (Bruce Willis)—the go between for Mickey’s hamburger chain and Uniglobe—puts it, “Everybody eats a little shit sometimes.” Rydell warns Anderson that if he pushes his investigation he could lose his job and you get the feeling that’s not all.
There are hidden costs that get transferred to society. Aside from the inhumane treatment of animals, these factory farms create giant pools of animal waste that would be comparable to the amount of human waste created by the people of Denver. This waste doesn’t get the same treatment and often seeps into the ground water and pollutes drinking water.
An idealistic young Mickey’s employee named Amber (Ashley Johnson) joins a student environmentalist group. They decide that a letter writing campaign isn’t effective enough so they set out to free thousands of cattle by cutting the fence. A brave move considering they know under the Patriot Act they would be charged as eco-terrorists. To their dismay the cows like many people can’t emancipate themselves from mental slavery and happily sit and wait for their demise. Other than quitting her job at Mickey’s and refusing to support it anymore, they alone don’t have much of an impact.
The end of the movie is a powerful sequence where you go through the “kill line” and see the ugly process of a bull being dismembered. Even more powerful was the tears of a beautiful undocumented worker named Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) that gets treated like a piece of meat by a sexually abusive supervisor of an abusive corporation and destructive industry. Her tears speak to the pain and frustration of millions of abused women and workers.
On the down side there were a few times where Linklater could’ve cut a few side stories like the kids who talk about robbing the store, but it never goes anywhere. It was a little odd that Anderson is gone for a long time and finally shows up in the credits where we learn he makes a terrible decision to play it safe for himself and sweep the cow chips under the meat.
This film points out serious problems and leaves you feeling that the solutions are left for us to figure out. It shows us some of the effects of putting the all mighty dollar before the health and well being of workers, consumers and the environment. In a culture that values profits over people, human beings are too often dehumanized, marginalized and become voiceless victims of industries that leave destruction in their wake.
It’s refreshing to see a film challenge us to look at the effects of this mentality and the socioeconomic world it has created, where half of the worlds population can’t live decent lives because of our over consumption, greed and unrestrained corporate power.
We all play a role and most of us are part of this problem. It’s our responsibility to be the solution. With human rights day approaching on Dec. 10th, it’s a timely reminder that we should think about the effects our consumption has on our planet and our species. The bottom line is that life as we know it is more important than the bottom line. Get the book, go see the movie and don’t support the real Fast Food Nation!
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10 Dec 2006 at 11:37 pm | #
jeffre - I think you meant “Avril Lavigne”. I figured you would know how to spell her name since you guys did a mall tour together - HA!
11 Dec 2006 at 05:38 am | #
Anyway…
Justin here provides a nice review of an important film. If Yossarian could drop his absurd agenda for just a moment, he might be able to see that.
Actually, he probably did see that. He was up all night trying to figure out how to make an insult.
11 Dec 2006 at 10:45 am | #
life as we know it is about hte bottom line
11 Dec 2006 at 12:29 pm | #
"life as we know it is about hte bottom line”
Are you a corporation or just an idiot?
11 Dec 2006 at 07:05 pm | #
Dean, I think it is valid for Yossarian to joke about Justin’s past in a boy band. Justin made some serious money “exploiting” the blind desire young girls have to believe in sweet, innocent boys. The meat industry sells us some happy illusions too. Maybe Justin should examine his past more closely and he won’t sound like a scold all the time.
11 Dec 2006 at 07:27 pm | #
Trey, I laughed out loud when I read that comment—and then I realized you weren’t joking…
If Justin cares about issues like this, maybe he actually is much more sweet and innocent of a boy than you have imagined.
But this has what to do with the movie, or its message?
11 Dec 2006 at 08:51 pm | #
Has anyone read the book? I got half way through it and decided to have “one last meal” at McDonald’s before going into the chicken nugget chapter. I couldn’t eat fast food after that and I still don’t.
I remember there was a song on the radio a few years back that was mostly spoken word, and there was a part that made me laugh in it “Want a 55 gallon drum of Coke with that?” Then I saw Supersize me and the amount of sugar in those huge cruiser cups. Blech.
Did you know that a woman in Michigan was charged with child abuse because she fed her her child so much fast food? He was 4 and weighed 120 lbs. And then she got busted for bringing him McDonalds during her visitation period with him when he was hospitalized (after being taken out of her custody).
Obesity is a huge problem, unfortunately I think most people will be shocked by the facts in the movie and book, but not enough to stop eating their McGriddles. Highly processed food is really cheap at the supermarket too.
12 Dec 2006 at 10:48 am | #
Essentially it seems you are all saying...DON’T EAT OUT.
Its easy to only lay the blame on the fast food joints but having worked in a non fast food as a teenager, I can assure you if you knew what went on in any restaurant kitchen you wouldn’t go.
12 Dec 2006 at 01:24 pm | #
I’ve worked in restraunts also, but the quality of the food was better than the fast food joints. I know what you mean Bearman, but there’s a big difference and if you read the book you’ll understand.
It really is about food security. The farther away your food comes from, the more processed it is and the more pollution it causes. It also isn’t good for your local economy. We should rethink what we put in our bodies. We are connected to those that handle our food so we should be concerned about workers rights.
12 Dec 2006 at 01:46 pm | #
Dean, I’m going to partly agree with you. I regretted my comment right after sending it. It was too personal. I think Justin did a good job in reviewing a serious subject. I do think a few of his phrases are a bit too naively utopian for someone in their 30’s to have. Like: “a culture that values profits over people” , “half of the world’s population can’t live decent lives because of our overconsumption”. Those phrases sound grand but I don’t think mean much.
Bearman is right in pointing out that examining any trade would reveal the differing goals of the traders. The eater wants a meal that was given as much attention as he/she would give it and the restauranteer wants to fill the order as easily as possible. An eternal problem. Finally let me say a word for fast-food. Sometimes a nice, hot, cheap, tasty lunch served quickly is what helps millions of people make it through work each day. The fast food market was truly a remarkable innovation. (Even though I rarely eat there any more.)