Documentary films have become a very popular in the last few years with the success of Michael Moore’s films fueling interest to learn while being entertained. Two filmmakers have benefited from this new interest in the non-fiction film movement, including directors Morgan Spurlock and Lee Fulkerson. The two filmmakers both made documentaries regarding healthy eating, or the lack thereof, in North America. Spurlock’s film, Super Size Me was about a healthy man who wanted to see what would happen to his body if he ate nothing but items from McDonalds for an entire month. On the other hand, Fulkerson’s Forks Over Knives is about a man on a quest to improve his health by consuming a plant and whole food based diet only. Despite the differences in their respective journeys the films of Spurlock and Fulkerson both combine several modes of documentary cinema including, the expository mode's use of narration, reflexive mode's use of the filmmakers on screen presence and the participatory mode in that they are both on a personal, and thus relatable, quest for knowledge.
Both Super Size Me and Forks Over Knives use narration, which is prevalent in many documentaries. Both of the films know the audience in which they are making it for and are able to play to their respective audiences by engaging them with both off and onscreen narration. There are a number of facts and stats that are thrown out as a matter of evidence to support the respective thesis statements that Spurlock and Fulkerson are set out to present. On one hand Spurlock is out to discover if eating a ton of McDonalds over the course of a month is a bad idea, and what would happen to you if you did. While, Fulkerson is out to discover how healthy his diet actually is an...
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Works Cited
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Even though on his own he may have been able to get his point across of how fast food can destroy a body, he still consults with all types of doctors and specialists. Spurlock even goes out to schools and the streets to interview random people to help his belief in the subject matter. 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 regularly.
The negative representation of Spurlock is revealed in many instances in Fat Head. Firstly, Naughton mirrors Spurlock’s 30-day fast food binge, which he uses as a means of demonstrating the faults in Super Size Me. Another error the director analyses is Spurlock’s daily consumption of more than 5000 calories. By displaying the calculations on the side on screen as Naughton’s criticises the errors, the director accentuates the fact that none of the meal combinations that Spurlock could consume contain 5000 calories. He also manages to construct Spurlock as sinful, dishonest person, which is symbolised by the red background. While Naughton explains his calculations, the lyric ‘Something here doesn’t seem to add up’ is played in the background. This song works together perfectly with Naughton’s commentary of Spurlock’s errors, since it further emphasises the director’s biased argument, that is, Spurlock is a prevaricator. This ensemble of v...
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
Morgan Spurlock decided to make this documentary to investigate the fast food companies, and the effects of certain fast food chains products, particularly McDonalds, on the health of society. This Documentary explores the United States growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes as well. Morgan decides to eat nothing but McDonald's food for thirty days. He must eat one of everything on the menu at least once, and when asked to super size his meal he must do so. Another stipulation of Morgan's experiment is that he can only take 5,000 steps a day to replicate the exercise that most average Americans get on a daily basis. He must also eat three meals a day, no exceptions and if McDonalds doesn't serve it Morgan can't eat it.
The film Boogie Nights provides an interesting case study of the unique nature of human relationships, specifically love and friendship. It presents a crisscrossing mash-up of various combinations of traditional love categories: friendly (plutonic or nonsexual) love, family love, lust, master/servant or apprentice/teacher love, etc. Besides being entertaining, Boogie Nights presents these combinations to provoke an insight on our part into the nature of love. This insight is exemplified in Jack’s notion of the ideal pornographic film. His ideal film also serves to echo the same flaws found in Plato’s ideal forms. Boogie Nights attempts to demonstrate the false nature of a definite, meaningful love by disrupting its categorization and presenting the absurdity of its definition. Jack’s movie cannot exist by definition, and as a product of natural language neither can the common conception of love.
Hungry for Change is a thought provoking documentary produced by James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch that delves into the implications of eating a modern diet. Using pathos, facts and figures, and association, Hungry for Change delivers a meritorious performance that engages viewers and leaves them questioning their own diet and lifestyle choices. The film’s use of rhetorical and advertising strategies and its ability to captivate viewers make this an effective, life changing documentary.
In February 2010, a remarkable chef and speaker, Jamie Oliver, presented himself to a TED (Technology, Education, Design) audience as ruthlessly real and charismatic. In his speech, “Teach Every Child about Food” he shares powerful stories of his anti-obesity project and makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food. Jaime Oliver’s speech aims to alter the perspective of Americans and their decisions about food and its effects. Since then, Oliver’s TED talk has been viewed across the nation and brought a reality to the issue with food education. Jamie Oliver successfully utilizes ethos, logos, and pathos to portray his belief that without the use of food education, America and its children will fall under the weight of its own obesity.
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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 follows Spurlock for 31 days as he follows certain rules set by a series of physicians. He was only allowed to eat 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.
Pornography as today, is the representation in books, magazines, photographs, films and media, of scenes of sexual behavior that are erotic or arouse sexual acts. Defining and classifying materials that are considered pornographic has proven somewhat elusive and has varied considerably across time and across different social and cultural context. Pornography can be divided into three categories; Erotica: which are images that express mutual pleasurable sexual expression between people who have enough power to be there by positive choice. Participants have the same power and there is no sexist; Nonviolent pornography: images that have no explicitly violent content but show unequal power relationships;
Pappas, Stephanie. (2010). The History of Pornography No More Prudish Than the Present. Web 13 Nov 2013.
The ideation of objectivity remains a highly debatable subject among philosophical elites. Some philosophers may argue that human’s understanding of objectivity is subject to the scope of understanding of the term and exposure (Livingstone & Plantinga 10). When the term objectivity is entwined with realism, it yields a complex ideation that remains highly debatable and less agreeable among erudite authors (Livingstone & Plantinga 23). However, to understand and appreciate the concept of realism and objectivity in film, it becomes critical to adopt a definite definition. First, the term reality in film is used to describe concepts that are visible in nature as experienced on a daily life by one or more individuals (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). The term objectivity in this case is used to define a set of ideations or perspectives that are incorporated in the film (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). Documentaries are used to create a form of reality, an experience or ideation of the person or group of person experiencing an event or phenomenon. The argument in this analysis is that it is impossible for documentary films to objectively capture reality.