Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Portions
Written, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock
Screening nationally at Dendy cinemas
It's hardly novel to say that McDonald's food lacks nutrition and eating it can be bad for your health. But if you employed a combination of investigative journalism and brutally brave "method" acting, as American film maker Morgan Spurlock did, you'd start to get a glimpse of the gargantuan public health juggernaut that is McDonald's and the fast food industry.
Spurlock spent 30 days eating nothing but McDonald's while a team of doctors monitored the ensuing changes in his physical and mental health. His simple rules were: if it's not on the menu, he couldn't have it (including water); he could only "super size" a meal if staff offered it to him; and he had to eat every item on the menu at least once.
The result is Super Size Me, which also examines the wider role of McDonald's in American society, especially its contribution to a recent, unprecedented epidemic of obesity.
Super Size Me undoubtedly benefits from the trail blazed before it by Bowling for Columbine, but this is not Mike Moore at work. Spurlock only partially delivers on the landmark potential of such an unusual documentary. It's marred by poor production values and its twin aims sit together awkwardly. It almost feels like we're watching two different documentaries at the same time: one is an indictment of a poisonous industry; and the other resembles a slow-moving schoolboy prank.
Spurlock started the trial as a healthy and fit young man. His physical and mental deterioration over the course of a mere 30 days is disturbing and occurs in ways that none of the doctors predicted. Watch out in particular for one doctor's alarm on day 23 — compelling stuff.
The overriding message of Super Size Me is that corporations such as McDonald's must take responsibility for their social impact. Why then does Spurlock contradict this message by book-ending the film with stereotypical shots that ridicule fat Americans and a weak concluding polemic? These only serve to feed liberal myths of individual choice under capitalism, which is not helpful.
But to his credit Spurlock makes some attempt at investigating America's public health crisis. Two key themes that he touches on are the corporate power of McDonald's and their unique targeting of children. American children are bombarded by 10,000 food advertisements a year, 95% of which are for nutritional garbage. McDonald's global direct media advertising budget is US$1.4 billion per year.
Additionally, the abrogation of state responsibility in many American towns means that for parents with young children, the ubiquitous enclosed McDonald's playgrounds are often the only safe place to go.
Super Size Me is at its most powerful when it confronts McDonald's as a fast food version of the tobacco companies — equally as insidious, intentionally ensnaring children into a lifetime of addiction and loyalty to their poisonous product.
But there are powerful factors missing from Spurlock's film, whose absence left me yearning for more. Super Size Me offers no insight into McDonald's massive land holdings in Latin America, where environmentally destructive beef cattle ranching is carried out; the infamous McLibel legal action; and the army of sweatshop teenage labour that McDonald's exploits around the world.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 2, 2004.
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