Fast Food Nation
On December 1, 2016 I rented from Amazon prime, Fast Food Nation, a movie directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay was written by Richard Linklater and the author of the book by the same name, Eric Schlosser. The film opens with Don Anderson, family man and the Marketing director of a Mickey’s Burgers learning that there is high count of E Coli bacteria in Mickey’s “Big One” burger. His department is marketing; he does not understand what he is being told so he is told in a manner anyone could understand, “There is shit in the meat.” The company CEO sends Don on a trip to the town of Cody Colorado the home to the one and only meat packer of the Mickey’s “Big One” burger patties and the location of the first Mickey’s Fast
…show more content…
Did I only want to munch down on a hot juicy “Big One” and keep a dime in my pocket? Fast Food Nation introduced me to a small family from Mexico crossing the Mexican American border. The film follows Raul, his wife Sylvia and her sister Coco to the land of good and plenty. The viewer is introduced to these characters in a dark alley on the Mexican side of the border where they meet up with others with the same dreams of coming to America to work. Raul and his family knows of jobs in Cody Colorado he pays the Coyote (human smuggler) for the trip to Cody. They endure many trials and tribulations in the desert then are packed in back of a van as cattle to market, with a gun wielding driver named Benny, they arrive in Cody Colorado. It is here that the film starts to show the dark underside of the meat packing business in America. My take on how the meat packers see migrate workers is the same as they see the cows in the holding pen. Something to use and dispose of not, as human beings. The meat packers know that they hold all the power over these individuals. The film showed me this when in a crowded motel room where close to twenty labors lived, Mike the gutting line manager enters and picks and chooses workers for the night shift. Raul is one of the workers chosen. The film allows us to follow Raul through his introduction to his new job at Uni-Globe meat …show more content…
Uni-Global is a fictitious slaughter and meat packing company Mr. Linklater makes up for the film. The view inside the Uni-Global is the center of the film. We see it from the illegal Aliens point of view. Don Anderson marketing director from Mickeys Corporate headquarters is given a whitewashed cleaner than God tour. Mr. Linklater does not break the fourth wall and talk directly to his audience instead he visually informs us of the cold treatment of the workers in the plant and the inhuman treatment of the cattle in the holding pens awaiting slaughter. I was repulsed by Uni-Global. I nearly wept when Sylvia is forced to sell herself sexually to Mike for a position on the gut table only to be placed on the kill floor by him. It is at the moment when a cow enters the cattle chute and I saw the gun come up to a place behind the cow’s ear that I stopped the film. I was not able to watch
Ruben Martinez was fascinated with the tragedy of three brothers who were killed when the truck carrying them and 23 other undocumented migrants across the Mexico – United States border turned over in a high-speed chase with the U.S. Border Patrol. “Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail” is a story about crossing and life in the United States.
McDonald's is one of the multiple fast food restaurants that serve greasy and oversized meals that are harmful to the human body. Throughout a thirty day McDonald's only diet, Spurlock surrounds himself with logos, ethos, and pathos to impact the viewer's opinion on the true cost of eating fast food
Today what is known as In-N-Out Burger was first founded by Harry Snyder and his wife Esther Snyder in 1948. The first location was in Baldwin Park California (ReferenceforBusiness.com). Now with over 200 locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Texas it has been ranked number one in many polls (ReferenceforBusiness.com). Today its headquarters are in Irvine California.
John Steinbeck does not portray migrant farm worker life accurately in Of Mice and Men. Housing, daily wages, and social interaction were very different in reality. This paper will demonstrate those differences by comparing the fictional work of Steinbeck to his non-fictional account of the time, The Harvest Gypsies.
America has always been about being the biggest nation: the biggest houses, the biggest cars, biggest cities and unfortunately the biggest bodies. There is no doubt that fast food is causing major health problems for many Americans today. In his documentary, Super Size Me, released in 2004 Morgan Spurlock decides to eat only food from McDonald’s for thirty days to see how it would affect his health. Spurlock starts out healthier than the average man for his age. Throughout the film, we can see that his health gradually degenerates and reaches a critical point, before his thirty days are over. Super Size Me is very persuasive in showing the negative effect in fast food restaurants by using logos, pathos, and ethos.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
“Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer that grew the potatoes,” (Schlosser 117). Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser brings to light these realities in his bestselling book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser, a Princeton and Oxford graduate, is known for his inspective pieces for Atlantic Monthly. While working on article, for Rolling Stone Magazine, about immigrant workers in a strawberry field he acquired his inspiration for the aforementioned book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale).
Built off of the backs of immigrants, it is the very same people that are poorly mistreated but are the reason for the country's booming economy. Yet, a century ago these migrant workers who devoted their health and time to the factories receive a poor man’s salary. They worked long strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process. The corporation had no compassion towards its laborers. This extract from Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explains the terrible conditions in which employees worked: “...your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell,” (Sinclair, 12). Mikalos, a character in the novel, is used in this instance to personify the way in which the employees had to conduct their job. They had to focus on working as fast as humanly possible even if they were injured. The character states that he accidently made a laceration while deboning an animal. Even though his injury is significant, he is not to breathe a word of it to his employer. The employer cares not of the accident nor of the worker wasting valuable time chatting about “frivolous” events such as their health. It did not matter if a laborer lost a finger, the only thing that mattered to the businessmen was making more money. This was how life was working in the factory and it shows that the industries
In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser goes beyond the facts that left many people’s eye wide opened. Throughout the book, Schlosser discusses several different topics including food-borne disease, near global obesity, animal abuse, political corruption, worksite danger. The book explains the origin of the all issues and how they have affected the American society in a certain way. This book started out by introducing the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station beside the Colorado Springs, one of the fastest growing metropolitan economies in America. This part presents the whole book of facts on fast food industry. It talks about how Americans spend more money on fast food than any other personal consumption. To promote mass production and profits, industries like MacDonald, keep their labor and materials costs low. Average US worker get the lowest income paid by fast food restaurants, and these franchise chains produces about 90% of the nation’s new jobs. In the first chapter, he interviewed Carl N. Karcher, one of the fast food industry’s leade...
Over the last 50 years, the fast food industry did not only sold hamburgers and french fries. It has been a key factor for vast social changes throughout America. It has been responsible for breaking traditional American values and reinstating new social standards that specifically aims to benefit the industry’s growth. These social standards have inevitably changed the way the American youth respond to education and self-responsibility. Eric Schlosser, an author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, excellently uses logic to present the tactics used by the fast food industry to cheapen and promote labor along with the social changes that occurred in the American youth as a result. Schlosser aims to dismantle and dissect
After that he wrote Fast Food Nation in 2001, soon created it into a film in 2006 called Chew on This. As you can see, Eric Schlosser has a tremendous life and has written many articles and books, but only one thing remains in common, they are all non-fiction. Form, Structure, and Plot: Fast Food Nation is organized into parts and chapters. Also, it is very cheap.
In 1998, McDonald’s, in order to remain strong, tested the “McDonald’s Big Xtras” or “MBX” which was a potential hit. The “MBX” was a 4.5-ounce burger launched mainly to compete with Burger King’s “Whopper”. It was also reminiscent of the1980s “McDLT”, In ’98; they also brought back the “Filet-O-Fish” which in 1996 had been replaced by “Fish Filet Deluxe”. On a promotion basis, they offered novelty sandwiches, like “Cheddar Melt” and the “McRib”.
McDonald’s, one of America’s fastest growing fast food restaurants, has made more than its share of money within the last twenty years serving more than 46 million people daily. They have twice as many restaurants as Burger King and more restaurants than KFC, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell Combined. Often children have the dream of eating fast food for every meal of every day. Well, Morgan Spurlock took the challenge to see how dangerous it would be to eat McDonalds for every meal. He also took the challenge in response to a lawsuit against McDonalds by a family whose children became obese by the contents of its meals. Directed and starring Morgan Spurlock, who is married to a vegan chef and a healthy man for his age, Super-Size Me is a film that followed Spurlock for 31 days as he follows certain rules set by a series of physicians. He was only allowed to meals off the McDonalds menu including water. Also, he couldn’t exercise but had to walk the same amount of steps as the average American. Filmed all over the United States, Super-Size Me was made to inform the public on the manufactured foods they consume daily. The film also raises awareness on the dangers of what manufactured foods do to the body. Super-Size Me showed how one of the most popular fast food restaurants around today may be leading future generations to severe health problems.
Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.
Competition Among Fast Food Chains MARKETING INFORMATION NEEDED FOR THE FAST FOOD INDUSTRY. To begin with, for the fast food industry around the world, the leading fast food chains marketing information is wrapped around convenience location, changing preferences, quality of food, pricing of fast food, potential customers, age of the customers, menu selection and diversification and last of all superior service. From a marketing perspective, location for the fast food service to the potential customers is most important, according to Maritz Marketing Research. A recent study showed the location has to be convenient. The analysis said that adults under the age of 65 prefer a convenient location for their fast food.