oh... grand. that's right... he ate McDonalds for 30 days, therefore he = authority on fast food.
According to most Americans, yes. You have to be photogenic and flashy to get any attention. Does anyone read the billions of studies about fast food issues? At best, they scan the 10-word blubs in the footnote of some magazine. At best. Then they throw it away and eat more shit food.
With his movie, people got moving. People stopped eating fast food. People made better choices. McDonald's changed their menu and added all their water and salad frilly stuff. 20 years of studies didn't do that, it took a flashy movie. All style, little substance.
I'm not arguing that his movie was a solid piece of expert research. It wasn't. It was a tap dance. Razzle dazzle. Give the audience some whiz bang and you've got them hooked.
Morgan doesn't give the American public credit, and maybe he shouldn't, but the fault does not lie with McD's... it lies within our consumer society and the ways we choose to consume..
That's the thing - these corporations effect HUGE influence over our lifestyles. You'd be amazed. People don't notice because we've grown up with it. We don't know the difference. Think about how many logos you see every day. From my desk on a cursory glance, I can see about 52 logos and brand names. Imagine how many you see in one day. Adbusters is a good magazine and covers a lot of this "mental pollution".
Also, read
No Logo by Naomi Klein. Eye-opening stuff, man. I'd continue, but it's all covered in No Logo.
I think the next big thing that's going to go completely unnoticed by the public is all these recent studies finding that all those "trace amounts" of common chemicals are really fucking us up. Perchlorate in drinking water causes brain and behavior changes in rats and has thyroid effects in people, DEHP in food packaging, toys, and building products causes birth defects in mice and early-puberty in girls, DBP in shampoos, pills, and plastic toys causes gene and hormone changes in mice and causes genital deformities in babies, BPA in plastic bottles and food-can linings changes brain behavior and causes sex organ problems in mice. But we all suck it down every day. WSJ has a decent article on it (today?) but it's still a quiet subject. Hopefully people are going to want to know why cancer rates and birth deformity rates have been rising the past few decades.
But all that's going to go unnoticed until someone puts the problem to snappy music and flashy dance.
