W5: Bluh

My grandmother remembers the early days of fast food with fondness. She used to bring her (vast and horrifying) family to White Castle—then something of a respectable restaurant—to feed the whole family a decent, cheap meal. At that time, fast food was a novelty item enjoyed only on occasion.  The image she paints for me, though tinged with nostalgia, fits in line with the American 50s: families, blessed with an economic soaring skyward with reckless abandon and disposable income, appreciated fast dining as a luxury. I can’t help but wonder how she might feel after downing a slider today. Would the tiny hamburger contain vestigial flavors of a time when food was meant to be inhaled, and not sold?

The sea change of fast food in the United States from a pseudo-luxury item to a sloppy, thoughtless meal could be marketed as a capitalist love story.  As the industry grew, competition and demand increased. In true corporate fashion, food chains confronted the dropping salaries of working families over the years by presenting them with a cheaper corner-cutting product made by increasingly unskilled hands. The quaintness of the diner and drive-in fast food restaurant evaporated into the air above the new fast food model, which provided us with affordable slop injected into our arteries within seconds. Viewers of this phenomenon might see this as a romantic, truly American boon meant to be enjoyed by all members of the economic spectrum, or, alternatively, as a metaphorical stomp on the stomachs of Americans with a golden boot. Granted, the former perspective would require the viewer to already have a fondness for the ever-growing wage gap of the United States.

Of course, thanks to the extreme nature of this wage gap’s expansion, the notion that the fast food industry still panders to the lower class is nonsense. Anyone who has genuine experience with dire financial straits—not including the “I’m just a poor college student eating ramen” crowd—is well aware that fast food is hardly a viable option for feeding a working class family compared to cooking your own meals. Perhaps that’s the most American thing about fast food: like so much of our culture’s regrettable elements, it is propelled by an increasingly unaware, self-defeating middle class.