…and i’ll find me a soapbox where i can shout it

It turns out that eating McDonald’s for every meal of the day is not healthy for you.  This sounds pretty obvious, yet watching Morgan Spurlock indulge himself in Super Size Me to prove a point that we all already knew is entertaining nonetheless.  The movie is more generally about obesity in the United States, but Spurlock focuses on the fast food industry, using McDonald’s as the face of unnatural chicken and fries that never seem to go bad.

 I think that using a film such as Super Size Me in a classroom can have a very influential effect on student writing.  Spurlock takes an issue that is largely ignored in America and raises awareness of this problem in a very creative way.  If you are like me, after watching Super Size Me you told yourself that you are never going to eat fast food again.  Now I am sure that I will, because in the society we find ourselves in it is tough not to fall back on old habits (as Spurlock, although maybe unintentionally, shows in this film), but I am certain that I will be eating fast food a lot less.  The power of influence is at work here; one man with one idea made something that has made so many people question their eating habits.  If students can become as passionate about an issue or something in their lives as Spurlock demonstrates in this film, their writing can be used as a tool for displaying their thoughts.

What Spurlock does in this film should raise many questions.  For example, how would things have been different if he had exercised?  Is this a fair assessment of American society?  Can we really believe everything that we are seeing?  Since the success of Super Size Me, McDonald’s has gotten rid of the Super Size option, and issued a statement calling Super Size Me “a super-sized distortion of the quality, choice, and variety available at McDonald’s.”  I think that these are issues that students should be asked to look at as well.  What kind of editing decisions would a filmmaker make when trying to sway an audience one way or another?  Is it even possible for any type of media to report anything without being influenced by those in power? 

Not only can Super Size Me be used as a vehicle to show how one person can really make a difference, but also as an example to look into deeper societal issues and question the information that we are presented with every day of our lives.  Plus students will actually be entertained through all of this – not a bad combination.

References:  Big Mac Counterattack by David Edelstein