June 12, 2009
The movie Food Inc. if you couldn't have already guessed from the title is about the food industry as a whole, and what it does to the health of humans and the health of the environment. I've always been particularly weary of watching documentaries because most of the time it's a one-sided argument pushing an agenda or an opinion and often times they don't give you enough contradictory material to refute their premise. Or the movie wouldn't have sold in the first place right?
”Food Inc.: But no wait seriously this isn't true at all.”
But this isn't a Micheal Moore documentary so I guess I can drop my guard. I'm certain there won't be any crazy antics or outlandish fact connections through top-notch absurd editing.
Before I give my verdict, I'd like to explain what the movie is all about and as always:
{SPOILERS AHEAD}
The movie starts off with a stab right at the marketing division of every major meat organization in America. Most marketing teams showcase their product as wholesome and agrarian and All-American, but on the contrary they are massive industrial farming plants full of disease, crowded with sickly animals, and heavy with the assembly line efficiency mentality to create a cheaper product quicker all under our noses. Thanks Henry Ford.
The chicken companies such as Perdue and Tyson bully farmers into a never ending debt cycle to create large swaths of “farmer owned” chicken houses, where the contract with the corporation is akin to the word of god. The chicken houses are dark, dusty, full of feces, steroid infused crippled chickens on top of crippled chickens, with the daily dead discarded in a pile outside. Then it cuts to a video of the brutal wrangling of the chickens for the factory by cheaply paid migrant workers.
I'm not a PETA member, nor do I endorse PETA, in fact I pretty much hate everything about PETA but there are only so many times you can see a crippled chicken get kicked in the face with boots before you wonder...what the fuck?
The movie then moves on to the use of corn. How corn is the basis of everything, even ADM (if you remember from my last post about the Informant!) is name dropped.
But I'm not trying to give away most of the movie, but if you see where the chicken houses started you can only imagine that the rest of the movie is a joyride through corporate greed, government corruption, and finally the good guys of the movie, the original farmer refusing to give up or sell out. The original farmers, such as Joel Salatin of Shenandoah Valley, VA (close to where I used to live), seem to like they are reliving the old punk DIY ethics of fuck authority, fuck conformity, and fuck selling-out to “the man”. Joel Salatin was quite the star of the movie in my opinion, he seemed intelligent and well-versed in the issues surrounding his industry.
The movie also touches on somethings that are pretty close to home, Smithfield, while not in Tar Heel, NC is pretty big around Smithfield, VA, right down the road, I practically grew up later in life around this company promising myself I would never go “to the plant”. Hearing the horror stories, witnessing the poor work conditions and the poor wages, and smelling the awful odor belching from the building, no thanks. And how Smithfield uses immigrants to work for them, and when they need to cut wages and lay off staff they call the INS on them, which is beyond screwed up. It gives a face to the evil corporation that I lived around.
But I digress, the movie had great visuals which is key for me in a documentary, I liked that I had it presented in HD which helped with the gore factor of the entire thing, it was well shot, and the segues where normal. Yet, the movie throughout all of this never presents a solution to the problem, other than simply using our consumer power to vote, but then goes on to contradict itself by stating that people on a budget can afford the mass produced food as compared to “organic” or “farm fresh” foods. It's all about comfort, affordability, and ease of access that has the companies controlling the consumer mind. It does nothing more to restate the same things we've been hearing for years and years now, read the labels, buy organic, fast food is bad, blah blah blah. It's not working. Nobody seems to be listening. Try something else.
Watch if:
You want to see a great documentary and nothing more, this documentary is not going to offer a solution, it's going to tear at your heart strings, it's going to scare you, it's going to gross you out, and it's going to open your mind the fierce reality that is out there but as one of my friends who watched the movie stated, “It's really not going to change the way I eat because what I eat is affordable.”
This movie will make you think and will make it difficult for you to formulate an opposing opinion while not requiring the cutting room floor to cover up all its flaws and doesn't make any wild connections that aren't readily available at your fingertips on the internet, which in my opinion is the sign of a great documentary.
10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment