One of the last phrases in the film Food Inc. encourages the audience to take action by stating, “[t]he FDA and USDA are supposed to protect you and your family. Tell Congress to enforce food safety standard and reintroduce Kevin’s Law.” The film, Food Inc., displayed the harsh realities of America’s current food debacle. There is emphasis on the importance of American consumers to support a better, healthier food industry. The film utilizes visual techniques such as backgrounds, color choice, and composition, consumer and professional testimonies, sounds and music, and phrases on a blank screen to persuade and inform their audience. Food Inc. effectively persuaded their audience of American consumers that the food most commonly supplied and …show more content…
consumed is harmful to animals, consumers, and small farmers in America; Food Inc. also effectively informs American consumers that they can do something about the discrepancies in the food industry. The film, Food Inc., implies the food industry is not as it once was.
The food industry is not what American consumers believe it is. The first scene of the film shows rows of crops lining various acres of land, amid a sunny day. The next scene shows a man on a tractor who gathers hay with a large, red hay baler. Cattle roam and the farmer rides his horse with a lasso in his hand in the third scene. The narrator begins to state, “the image that is used to sell the food…” cuts to yet another scene depicting an immense red barn, behind a white picket fence, in the center of a hilly, grassy field; he continues, “is still the imagery of agrarian America.” This dialogue introduces the audience to the idea that American food is not made this way. While the camera pans the aisles of a grocery store, eerie music plays in the background. Abruptly, the lighting dims and the colors displayed change to only the hues of black and white. A factory with large, extensive assembly lines display upside-down, headless chickens is revealed as the supposed “farm” of today’s society. The only vibrant colors portrayed on the screen are the uniforms of the workers. Similarly, when the argument about the diets of the livestock is discussed, the scenery of both scenarios is drastically different. In a darkened setting, Allen Trenkle has his hand wrist-deep in the stomach of a cow. The music playing in the background abruptly comes to an end and the cow lets out a loud and pitiful sound. The scene …show more content…
cuts to show the head of the cow, which is clamped by what appears to be two heavy meal doors. The shot focuses on the cow, cramped inside the metal, cage-like structure, jolting each time Trenkle places his hand inside its stomach; the cow eventually lets out another loud and pitiful sound. However, as Joel Salatin, a Polyface Farms owner, is interviewed, his farm of various shades of green is shown behind him as the sounds of nature like birds chirping and the moos of cows can be heard in the background. As he herds his cows, they trot past him into a new grass-filled pasture under a bright blue, nearly cloudless sky as Salatin smiles. Scenery is used to set a dark mood for factories and a light-hearted mood for farm-based food. Through the various elements like lighting, background, and the focus of each scene allows the director and filmmakers to exemplify their verbal descriptions with what their audience visually sees. Many of the images in the film are of the luscious backcountry farms or the silver-coated machinery in the food industry.
The images that stuck out most, though, were the homemade films of the child who lost his life to E. coli, as a result of the negatively revolutionized food industry. As the short clips play, the mother speaks of his story while mysterious, drawn-out notes comprise a background melody. Sounds and music throughout the film vary from scene to scene; in many of scenes, music and sounds are evident even before the narrator speaks. The effective use of sounds and music allows filmmakers to further set the mood and tone of a scene. In this film, lighter music and natural sounds gave a lighter mood to the scene; eerie music and the sounds of heavy-duty machinery set a darker mood. For example, at the beginning of the film, the camera pans the stocked supermarket shelves as a dark melody, almost sounding as if it were out of a horror movie, plays in the background. When small farms are displayed on the screen, light bluegrass music plays. As factories from the food industry are shown, there is often no music at all; which leaves the audience listening to the roaring sounds of the heavy-duty machinery. The use of emotion-evoking sounds and music assist in further swaying the beliefs of the
audience. Robert Kenner directed Food Inc.. Though he began the directing the film with less knowledge about the food industry, Kenner claims he learned how obstinate the industry was. People in society needed to be provided with the information to understand what they are eating (Farquharson). Kenner likely believed his audience would be those who had an interest in, or previous knowledge of, the food industry. However, as technology has improved, his film has reached many American consumers with varying levels of knowledge on the issue. His determination to reveal the secrets in the food industry persuades consumers to take action. Towards the end of the film, the phrase, “[y]ou can vote to change this system. Three times a day [,]” appears on a black screen; there are even more persuasive phrases that follow. Through introducing and informing viewers of the issues within the food industry, Kenner can grab the attention of the audience. Through adding simple motivating phrases at the end of his film, he effectively persuades his audience to act upon the issue. Food Inc. uses various techniques such as visual elements, testimonies, visual and verbal dialogue, and music and sounds to effectively inform and persuade American consumers. Many food products are falsely labeled with images of acres of green farmland, when in reality, the products are produced in large factories, lined with several types of machinery. The sounds and music add to the images by arousing and intensifying the emotions of the audience. This is evident in the testimony of Barbara Kowalcyk, whose son passed after he was struck with E. coli. The sounds and images in her testimony evoke the feelings of the viewers even more than if her story was presented as she simply sat in front of the camera, with no other sounds in the background. Overall, the director and filmmakers persuaded American consumers to speak out against the faults in the American food industry.
Companies nowadays are using different and strong methods in marketing their food products. The Companies are very competitive, and the results can affect the people. When we think about this job field, it is convincing that those producers should use cleverly ways to gain their own living. In the other side they shouldn’t use misleading ways that could harm the people. Food companies should be straightforward with every marketing method they use. People have the right to know what they are consuming and also to know the effects of these products on them, whether it is harmful, useful, or even neutral.
Eric Schlosser enters the slaughterhouse in the High Plains to show behind the scenes of fast food and how it is made. He was not expecting what actually lies behind the cold doors of the factory. People remain to have the misconception of fast food being made in the restaurant. Nobody thinks about there being a dark side to it all. Schlosser pulls on his knee high boots and guides readers through a pool of blood to show where we manufacture our food.
Food Inc. addresses many political issues during the film to draw in the audience. Issues such as: the environment, education, workers’ rights, health care, climate change, energy control, to name a few. Director Robert Kenner exposes secrets about the foods society eats, where the food has come from and the processes the food went through. It is these issues that are used as politics of affect in both an extreme visual representation and a strong audio representation that has the biggest impact on the audience and their connection to what they are being told. This paper aims to discuss the film Food Inc. and the propaganda message for positive change, as well as, the differences between seeing food and deciding...
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
“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any creature that every lived (Berry 9).” This a great example that makes that makes us learn and think about when we eat a fast food product and also what it contains. This should a reason for us to be thinkful of the food products that we consume on a daily basis, and so do our
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.
One issue the documentary highlights is the abuse of animals and workers by the food companies, in order to reveal how the companies hide the dark side of the food world from the public. In several instances, we see animals being treated cruelly. The workers have little regard for the lives of the animals since they are going to die anyways. Chickens are grabbed and thrown into truck beds like objects, regulation chicken coups allow for no light the entire lives of the chickens, and cows are pushed around with fork lifts to take to slaughter. Many chickens are even bred to have such large breasts that their bones and organs cannot support their bodies. These chickens cannot walk and they even wheeze in pain for the cameras. The film is clearly using the unacceptable premise fallacy of appeal to emotion in this instance, because the viewer is meant to feel pity at the sight of the abused animals. This supports their conclusion, because many American’s imagine their food coming from a happy, country farm and would be horrified to know the truth.
In her book Marion Nestle examines many aspects of the food industry that call for regulation and closer examination. Nestle was a member of the Food Advisory Committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the 1990’s and therefore helps deem herself as a credible source of information to the audience. (Nestle 2003). Yet, with her wealth of knowledge and experience she narrates from a very candid and logical perspective, but her delivery of this knowled...
The film Fed Up uses its platform to emphasize the issues in the American diet and reason for the change in health. Lobbying efforts seem to be solely to blame, because it is the advertisement that links the new change in poor diet. Soechtig utilizes a number of rhetorical appeals to drive her argument; a few include factual data and statistics, informed opinions, and comparisons. The exigence for the film is the increased amount of issues and expected issues to come for American’s if our normal diet continues. The director is attempting to persuade a healthy change in food consumption by explaining the issues with advertisement, health programs, and the food industry
Throughout the film, various companies are exposed for promoting products in a manner that depicts the products as a healthy alternative. The ultimate exposing is done on the government and the USDA. The government is exposed for making deals with food companies to not demonize companies that sell unhealthy food. Even Michelle Obama 's "Let 's Move" campaign against childhood obesity started out bringing unhealthy companies to the light but died down by emphasizing exercise and not talking about food.This is largely in part due to a deal made with major corporations who weren’t too pleased with the original approach of “Let’s Move”. In addition, the USDA is exposed for promoting products such as cheese, milk, and high fructose corn syrup in a fictional way. They provided no information that they were unhealthy in the
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
In a society that is facing numerous problems, such as economic devastation, one major problem is often disregarded, growing obesity. As the American society keeps growing, so does growth of the fast food industry and the epidemic of obesity. In order to further investigate the main cause of obesity, Morgan Spurlock, the film director and main character, decides to criticize the fast food industry for its connection with obesity in America. In his documentary Spurlock performs a radical experiment that drives him to eat only from McDonald's and order a super-sized meal whenever he is asked. By including visual and textual techniques, rhetorical appeals, and argumentative evidences, Morgan Spurlock was able to help viewers know the risks of fast food and how it has caused America to be the world's “fattest country”.
destruction seen in the film into their own lives, by using familiar, mundane sounds that make a
Enhancing the sustained fright of this film are an excellent cast, from which the director coaxes extraordinary performances, and Bernard Herrmann's chilling score. Especially effective is the composer's so-called "murder music," high-pitched screeching sounds that flash across the viewer's consciousness as quickly as the killer's deadly knife. Bernard Herrmann achieved this effect by having a group of violinists frantically saw the same notes over and over again.
Today’s modern society focuses on the need for bigger, better, and faster things. For filmmaker Robert Kenner there is no place this trait of greedy progress is more obvious than the modern food system. Robert Kenner’s film, food Inc., uncovers the unwanted truth behind the effects of the industrial food system, ranging from the abuse of the animals and workers to the destruction of the environment and public health. Kenner uses striking imagery and distinct comparisons to create and defend his claim that the industrialization of the farming process has negatively affected the animals, the workers, and the general public.