Food, Inc. Robert Kenner: Film Analysis

1718 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Arguments for industrial farming

How do you accept reality? Is it what you see in newspapers or on the news? Most of the time it’s other peoples’ point of views that we accept as our own. Even in documentaries, directors are trying to persuade people to change their perception on reality or go against a certain problem. For example, in the documentary Food, Inc Robert Kenner dives into corporate farming in the U. S., and is exposes their unethical ways to mass produce food for our country that is hurting our environment and having effects on our health. The film dives in to the industrial production of meat (chicken, beef, and pork) and looks at the industrial production of grains along with vegetables calling them inhumane, economically and environmentally unsustainable. …show more content…

He states that “Any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality, and to this extent it must function also as a deflection.” (Burke 45) In this quote from the text, Burke explained that the words we use or not just a bunch of letters made to form words and sentences, but, they reflect “parts” of our reality and deflecting those “parts” of reality they aren’t. Word choice is critical to this theory. For example, if I tell you that I date a “model” you expect her to this beautiful, slim, and sexy woman. However, if I changed the word “model” to “librarian” she would sound less attractive. Your selection the word “model”, the word “model” reflects someone beautiful, and me not using any other word to describe her is deflection. This same theory can apply to Food, Inc. In this documentary they expose how big food companies use this theory in their packaging. Big food companies use reflection, selection, and deflection by putting whatever information they want to use to attract customers, for example, they might put “100% pure beef”. That then reflects the contains of the package may be high quality or the best on the market, however the case might not be true. Deflection comes into play by not putting the real facts on the packages such as that it contains genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) or that the beef your getting is corn fed and not …show more content…

This can be explained from an excerpt from Language as Symbolic Action by “Can we realize how much of what we call ‘reality’ has been built through nothing but our symbol systems” (Burke 48). In the film Food Inc, Kenner tried to influence the readers by using soft music to build suspense. They kept the same slow sad melody playing in the background to make whoever is watching feel sympathy for farmers and what they have to go through to just get by. Our symbol systems unknowingly think negative towards what is being portrayed simply because of the music. He also uses direct quotes and video recordings of processing factories. As well as using video of other people opposing the processing factories to show that the people are against these big-name companies that only care about profits instead of

Show More
Related

  • More Pros Than Cons In A Meat-Free Life Analysis

    125 Words  | 1 Pages

    The argumentative article “More Pros than Cons in a Meat-Free Life” authored by Marjorie Lee Garretson was published in the student newspaper of the University of Mississippi in April 2010. In Garretson’s article, she said that a vegetarian lifestyle is the healthy life choice and how many people don’t know how the environment is affected by their eating habits. She argues how the animal factory farms mistreat the animals in an inhumane way in order to be sources of food. Although, she did not really achieve the aim she wants it for this article, she did not do a good job in trying to convince most of the readers to become vegetarian because of her writing style and the lack of information of vegetarian

    Read More

  • Barbara Kingsolver Called Home

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Video 'America Revealed: Food Machine'

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the video, “America Revealed: Food Machine,” the host, Yul Kwon, investigated the modern American agricultural industry, with an emphasis upon the contrasts between contemporary farming and the American farming of previous generations. At the start of the program, Mr. Kwon discusses the route of a pizza delivery person in New York City, and he describes the origins of the ingredients of the pizza. To do this, the host travels to California’s Central Valley, a region that was once a desert, but is now the breadbasket of the United States. In this valley, thirteen million tomatoes are grown per year as well as fifty percent of the country’s fruits and nuts. Water is the most expensive resource in this region, as it must travel many miles from

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Film American Meat

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the movie “American Meat” the writers discussed the difference between commodity farming and sustainable farming. The film does not give a balanced view between the two types of farming. The future of farming is sustainable farming. As seen in the movie, it is possible to sustain all of the American people while practicing sustainable farming methods.

    Read More

  • Eating Green Margaret Lundberg Summary

    1226 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lundberg describes how the demand for animal protein was incredibly higher than the production. She quoted Marlow’s article stating, “A nonvegetarian diet requires 2.9 times more water, 2.5 times more energy, 13 times more fertilizer, and 1.4 times more pesticide than does a vegetarian diet and the greatest difference comes from beef consumption” (Lundberg 483). She then questions: "Do we really want to wait until it’s too late to change our way of eating?” (Lundberg 485). These two points will make readers subconsciously pause to answer this question themselves, put themselves in the situation imagining the products used and having an immediate reaction to it.

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Industrial Farming By Bill Mckibben And Blake Hurst

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading McKibben and Hurst’s articles in the book Food Matters, both authors present arguments on “industrial farming”, and although Hurst provides a realistic sense on farming, McKibben’s suggestions should be what we think about.

    Read More

  • An Animal Place By Michael Pollan Summary

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    When people are eating meat, have they ever stopped and asked themselves what they 're eating, or what type of life the animal they 're eating went through. The articles “An Animal’s Place” by Michael Pollan, explains the moral issue if it 's correct to consume meat. “The Omnivore 's Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals”, by Blake Hurst, defends himself against critics who says negativity about industrial farming and the ways animals are treated. After close examination of both articles, the reader would be able to determine what type of farming is more logical.

    Read More

  • The Truth Behind The Food Industry In The Jungle, By Upton Sinclair

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    The article highlights and includes the documentary Food, Inc., which exposes the inability of the profit system to provide safe and healthy food for the vast majority of the population. Eric Schlosser, investigating journalist, quotes, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000.now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us”. Schlosser also quotes, “Birds are now raised and slaughtered half the time they were 50 years ago, but now they’re twice as big”. He believes they not only changed the chicken, but they changed the farmer, implying that capitalism has taken the place for the need of small scale farming.

    Read More

  • The Man in the High Castle: Criticisms of Reality and Dictatorship by Philip K. Dick

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” -Philip K. Dick

    Read More

  • Singer's Argument Against Vegetarianism

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, Hare’s pro demi-vegetarian argument provides an unequivocal view on the discussion of economic, ecological, and moral topics. While the look into market trends of meat is lacking Hare discusses a reality of the meat industry and its food competitors, that being the cost behind animal rearing and husbandry. While the high costs incurred does not entail permissibility the surrounding circumstances do. If fodder is grown on terrain only suitable for a pasture, then as a result husbandry and animal domestication (and later slaughter) is permissible because the economic consequences of harvesting crops would greatly outweigh the benefits and as such the community improves more from the meat/animal byproduct industry. This economical and ecological argument is one of several that Hare provides in his article Why I Am Only A Demi-Vegetarian, in addition to the market term being coined and reasoning behind

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Pleasures Of Eating By Wendell Berry

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    Berry does not hesitate in using harsh words and metaphors like “the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot”(Berry 10). This provokes the readers to feeling horrible about industrial eating. He uses our pride while pointing to the lies of the make-up of industrial foods. He plays on human self-preservation when writing about chemicals in plants and animals which is out of the consumer’s control. He tries to spark a curiosity and enthusiasm, describing his own passion of farming, animal husbandry, horticulture, and gardening.

    Read More

  • Jonathan Safran Foer Eating Animals Rhetorical Analysis

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jonathan Safran Foer wrote “Eating Animals” for his son; although, when he started writing it was not meant to be a book (Foer). More specifically to decide whether he would raise his son as a vegetarian or meat eater and to decide what stories to tell his son (Foer). The book was meant to answer his question of what meat is and how we get it s well as many other questions. Since the book is a quest for knowledge about the meat we eat, the audience for this book is anyone that consumes food. This is book is filled with research that allows the audience to question if we wish to continue to eat meat or not and provide answers as to why. Throughout the book Foer uses healthy doses of logos and pathos to effectively cause his readers to question if they will eat meat at their next meal and meals that follow. Foer ends his book with a call to action that states “Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.” when dealing with the problem of factory farming (Foer).

    Read More

  • Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author talks about, not only vegetarianism, but reveals to us what actually occurs in the factory farming system. The issue circulating in this book is whether to eat meat or not to eat meat. Foer, however, never tries to convert his reader to become vegetarians but rather to inform them with information so they can respond with better judgment. Eating meat has been a thing that majority of us engage in without question. Which is why among other reasons Foer feels compelled to share his findings about where our meat come from. Throughout the book, he gives vivid accounts of the dreadful conditions factory farmed animals endure on a daily basis. For this reason Foer urges us to take a stand against factory farming, and if we must eat meat then we must adapt humane agricultural methods for meat production.

    Read More

  • To what extent is Meat Consumption responsible for Global Warming?

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is much to be said about how exactly meat is being produced. In the present day, there are hardly any farms out there that still practice the traditional and environmental - friendly way. Animal agriculture is widely used all over the world and greatly contributes to climate change. Meat production leads to global warming because of the combination of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The process of raising animal is the major source to these harmful gases. It is vital to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change by reducing meat consumption. However stopping this meat eating system is extremely difficult, given that we had been consuming meat ever since our ancestors domesticated animals for that purpose. Over the decade Animal agriculture has been getting worse and worse. In 1973 when the Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz announced ‘’ what we want out of agriculture is plenty of food’’, overproduction was encouraged and lowering the price of meat was carried out; this originally started when there was a massive increase in corn (Wolfson). In order to keep up this mass production of meat, multiple pounds of grains are fed to livestock. Livestock industries depended on corn and soy based food and used over half of the artificial fertilizer used in the United States (McWilliams).

    Read More

  • What Are The Ethical Issues In Food Inc

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    The way that our society has been able to produce food has changed in the last fifty years that the several thousand years beforehand. Robert Kenner addresses problems of our society’s food system and how there is only a handful of large corporations that have basically taken over the food system in the United States in the film Food, Inc. Large businesses have been able to significantly produce vast amounts of food and set low prices for consumers, usually because of government subsidies, which results in enormous profit and greater control of the food supply sources. This leads to negative health, safety, and economic consequences. This documentary examines the exercises of the few large food corporations from the start of production

    Read More

More about Food, Inc. Robert Kenner: Film Analysis

Open Document