W4: Super Size Me review

In Super Size Me, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock undergoes a month-long experiment, in which he is required to eat three meals at McDonalds a day and to abstain from exercise, on-foot commuting and alternative sources of nutrition. Through documentation of this experiment, as well as interviews from industry insiders and research regarding rising rates of obesity in the United States, Spurlock hopes to call attention to the powerful role that fast food companies, particularly McDonald’s, have played in “supersizing” Americans. I believe that the film is effective as an awareness-raising feature length PSA, but fails as a serious critical look at the fast food industry, thanks to its absurd and largely irrelevant central experiment, as well as its flawed methodology.

From the get-go, the film’s focus on Spurlock’s experiment feels like a frivolous charade. The specifics of the project—three meals from McDonald’s a day, roughly 5000 calories per day, no exercise, etc.—are reflective only of a mythical American super-slob; the lone element of the experiment representative of the statistically-determined “average American” is the number of steps taken by Spurlock per day. While it could serve as a glimpse at the short-term effects of exaggerated overeating, the experiment says little about the reality of improper eating—it is a bastardized, mainstream variation of what a serious long-term study of the effects of eating fast food might look like, without any of the tedious credibility and relevance. Of course, it’s still a wildly amusing premise; Spurlock’s sense of humor carries throughout the experiment, interrupted only by occasional segments of vomit-inducing soap opera exchanges between Spurlock and his girlfriend.

The segments of Super Size Me unrelated to Spurlock’s experiment, however, are on point. Spurlock’s scrutiny of the fast food industry’s despicable strategies for marketing to children is particularly memorable. In one scene, several children are unable to recognize both George Washington and Jesus Christ, but are instantly familiar with Ronald McDonald—the power of this scene extends far beyond the power of marketing and makes an almost poetic statement on the whole of post-modernity. The wide variety of sources interviewed in the film—from silver-tongued lobbyists and medical professionals to cafeteria workers and schoolchildren—allows the film to focus in on the multi-faceted nature of America’s obesity problem. These interviews are both enlightening and provocative. There is a noticeable sting to one lunch lady’s admittance that she rarely does more than reheat food for schoolchildren on a daily basis.

Sadly, Spurlock’s interviews of “ordinary people” on the street are thuggish at best; We see continuous talking head commentary from the same six or seven interviewees, all of whom happen to be either blithely (and conveniently) unaware or—and who would have expected this—members of the lower class. As viewers, we are implored to suspend our disbelief that while in New York City, the filmmaker was unable to find one interview subject on the street that did not fall under his pre-established “average American” label—represented, apparently, by obese people already standing outside of a McDonalds or the uneducated poor.

That being said, I still enjoyed Super Size Me. It was funny, informative, and occasionally provocative. While I question a number of Spurlock’s techniques and choices, I believe any attempt to raise awareness on pressing cultural issues such as this, powered by hyperbole or otherwise, is admirable.