The Seemingly Golden Rule of Satire: Defame McDonalds Restaurants

McDonalds to me cops such an unfair rap from any and every source of the public. It's not their fault that they have become the leaders in fast food restaurant chains, and thus, become the image of grease and poor nutrition and a nation of fat fucks.
I really resent how people seem to care about how bad McDonalds is for them, and they really enjoy pointing out every last fault in a McDonalds menu according to dietary guidelines, yet they don't apply the same level of scrutiny to everything else they put in their mouth. It's not like McDonalds is the devil of foodstuffs, and everything else is just fantastic and A-OK. Where there's smoke, there's fire, as the old saying goes. Or to put that into a more appropriate context: Where there's bad food, there's A LOT of bad food.

Morgan Spurlock thought it would be a really neato idea to devote 30 days of his life to prove once and for all what any nutritionist could prove (with evidence) in 1.2 seconds. Supersize Me probably turned something like, 11 people off ever eating McDonalds again. McDonalds' failure to find a position in a healthy human's diet doesn't compell or surprise anyone. People know that fatty foods = fatter you. There's not one person taking a bite out of a Big Mac thinking that it's a healthy lunch. And the really gallant thing is, McDonalds have never sought to deny this fact. Yet still, they are constantly blamed for the obesity epidemic and the sheer lack of restraint of a heavy population. McDonalds just sell the burger. Once it's out of their hands, it's the consumers right to decide what to do with it.

This supposedly all means nothing however, another movie seeking to expose even more nasty facts about fast food is here. It's Fast Food Nation, this time by Richard Linklater, who I actually have a fondness of. But with this, I think he's taking a slight misstep. It's not that I'm a massive McDonalds fanboy, I'm not. And it's not that I think traces of feces in a burger patty isn't an alarming issue, but nevertheless, this is clearly a menial exercise. It's basically a series of gross-out sketches based in and around a family restaurant, taking major potshots at a legitimate, traditional business. All the teenagers are incompetent and funny-looking. All the marketing department are sleazy people with small hearts. And apparently, having illegal Mexican aliens working in a factory is meant to be really shocking and appalling. I mean, really, ask yourself; What corporative factory doesn't have illegal immigrants working in them? They can be hard-working people, you know. It doesn't automatically mean the food they have a hand in preparing is going to be of horrible quality.


To me, this is sort of in the vein of Thank You For Smoking, but at least in that movie, it had the wit to not only satirize and make a political point, but also defend the tobacco industry from the lashings it gave out. Fast Food Nation seems to take a very one sided approach in scaring us from having our own opinion and our own right to decide what to put into our bodies.
So, once again, I doubt that this will deter anyone from actually abandoning convenience. Because in this day and age, convenience overrules pretty much everything, even when it comes to selecting a target to build a satirical film around.


Fast Food Nation - Fox Searchlight Pictures
Anticipation Level: Low-Medium.
Look out for: Greg Kinnear in his typical, typical, obvious role chatting with a food scientist about flavouring. It's mildly amusing.
US Release date: 20th October, 2006.
Trailer Source