Summary
Our primary guide is Don (Greg Kinnear), a cheerful can-do marketing guy for [Mickey]'s. (Like most of us, he knows that fast food isn't so great, but he enjoys eating it, and what's the harm?) When some of Mickey's frozen burger patties test positive for E. coli (source: shit of an undetermined origin), Don is sent from the sunny California boardroom to drab Cody, Col., tasked with checking out the meat-processing plant that provided the patties.
[Richard Linklater]'s earnestness also results in an emptying-the-fridge effect whereby it feels like every social, political, economic, environmental and cultural ill is on Mickey's plate. Artificial flavors, the PATRIOT Act, employee-driven crime, sexual harassment, meth labs, eminent domain, puppy mills, civil disobedience and the futility thereof - these are relevant issues, but appear disjointed without the context of the book's extensive research. Fast Food Nation, the film, isn't a complaint just about the food industry, but about the blanding and corporatizing of everything, and how we're all either happy robots controlled from Madison Avenue or anti-progress malcontents whose tiny railing voices are never heard.Early on, when an offhand remark is made about the meat-packing facility's "kill floor" and how the workers there toil ankle-deep in blood, you just know that's where one of our unlucky workers is gonna end up. What's less expected is that we see it. Linklater shot the Uniglobe scenes at a meat-processing plant in Mexico, slaughter and all. Proceeding from that cheerful opening shot of Mickey's, Fast Food Nation eventually shows you exactly how your burger is related to a shit-covered cow whose guts are spilled by an exploited migrant worker. We know this already, though I have to admit, it's something else to watch. In English, and some Spanish, with subtitles.See the full content of this document
Extract
Fast Food Nation
Fast Food Nation
A Menu of Troubles(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes obscured text omitted.)STARTS FRI 17AS THE FILM OPENS, it's another great day at Mickey's, a popular fast-food joint: Clean-scrubbed families are happily ingesting their Mickey's Big Ones and fries. The camera...See the full content of this document
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