Food, Inc. Robert Kenner: Film Analysis

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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

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