mandalay

Morgan Spurlock: McSuperstar

face off 

today ross and i went to see supersize me. now if you're an indie film buff, chances are you've at least heard about this film, but maybe you're like me and just haven't managed to muster up enough desire to learn one more reason why america sucks. on some level, i think all of us need to maintain at least a bit of self-delusion. see, i can only do with so much reality in a given day, which leads me to not watch the tv news and its 30-second tragedies. honestly, i'd prefer 3 hours of tragedy, like the documentary domestic violence, the book minamata by w. eugene smith, projects by sebastio salgado and recycling every piece of plastic, glass, cardboard, paper and aluminum that i can. i have my healthy level of social awareness, encouraged partially by my vegan brother. i know how chicken nuggets are made, and veal, and i was even discouraged to buy a down comforter that i had wanted for years once i learned how they actually "harvested" the down. however, ross did become vegan too late to keep me from purchasing my shag rug. and i am sorry to say that only a few years ago, i was naive enough to think that these rugs were made from only the wool, not the skin of the sheep.

sigh.

but i digress. before i saw the movie, i decided to go to wendy's. what a silly thing to do you might think, but i had the same fear that kept me from doing a documentary on a meat-packing plant in maine: that i wouldn't be able to maintain my delusion after learning the truth. my friend sam actually worked at a slaughterhouse and i've heard a few of his somewhat untoward stories. i don't eat fast food very often, maybe once every few weeks (which of course is still too much), but every now and then i do get cravings for wendy's fries with honey mustard. so today i got said fries and a grilled chicken sandwich and diet coke and returned home for (possibly) The Last McSupper. yeah yeah i know it was from wendy's and no i'm not that clever anyway - i got it from the movie.

so the premise of the film is that filmmaker morgan spurlock, inspired partially by the lawsuits being launched against the fast food industry (and i would be willing to bet he also read fast food nation, whose author, eric schlosser, will have an interview on the supersize me dvd), decided to go on an all-McDonald's diet for one month to see what the effect really was of fast food on a completely healthy adult. before he began, one of his doctors actually said he was "in perfect health." i won't tell you what the actual medical results were, but i will say that morgan gained 25 pounds in 30 days. and he did a pretty good job of fact-checking and didn't really include any sensationalist stuff like michael moore would have.

the moral of this story is that you should see this film. and read national geographic and drive hybrid cars (accords will be out in the fall) and save the rainforest. but let's start small.

posted by amanda @ 4:26 PM