Okay, let’s accept that, although it’s a bit of a dubiuos assertion.
Doesn’t that just lead to the question of why people, knowing fully and completely that McDonalds food isn’t really food that you should eat for meals, continue to go there? Further, if it can be equated with tobacco and alcohol, shouldn’t it be regulated, and shouldn’t consumption by children be prohibited?
I think Spurlock did a nice job of exploring those very questions, talking about the oversaturation of McDonalds and other fast food locations, talking about the marketing to children through imagery and toys, talking about the processing and manipulation of the content of the food.
If you agree it’s bad and will kill you, why would you object to a movie that considers the fact that massive people continue to consume massive amounts of the stuff on a daily basis?
Because it’s cheap, it’s a complete meal, and healthier alternatives are expensive. IMHO, Spurlock should have focused the fact that many people can’t afford those healthier alternatives instead of saying “Processed food is bad, m’kay?”.
Spurlock did address the fact that the processed food was cheaper and that alternatives were hard to find for a lot of people. That’s part of the problem, it doesn’t excuse the purveyers. Why is it that none of the movie’s critics seem to have actually seen it?
McDonald’s thrice daily is bad for you.
Spurlock himself admits very few, if any people eat there thrice daily.
The point then is________?
Which leads to another logic error many seem to share. I’m no logic major but the
following seems flawed:
I need food to live.
McDonald’s sells food.
Therefore, McDonald’s food must be healthy for me to eat, or else why would they sell it? Why would a corporation not have my personal best interests at heart?
Haven’t people who have sued McDonald’s for weight gain or whatever been mocked on this very board? (I think). If the movie is to be believed and taken to heart, then every suit by a large person against them should be won- assuming the person hadn’t seen Supersize Me.
When I’m putting a pork and bacon sandwich with extra butter and mayo down my gullet, am I thinking ‘this must be good for me, or else why would Kroger sell all of the ingredients’?
But it’s not a “complete meal,” right? Don’t we agree that it is notably poor as a “meal”, and perhaps akin to Oreos and ice cream or alcohol and cigarettes? So, with the assertion that “everybody knows this,” (which I contend is a particularly dubious assertion) why would they go there?
As to the expense, surely it is still cheaper to buy food at the supermarket, right? And they make fine lunch boxes. Not as cool as the ones I had back in the day, but they are still functional.
Okay, wee bairn, three times per day of McDonalds is bad for you. How many is good for you? How many times per day should people be eating there.
I would also propose to you that the fact that people were mocked on the SDMB for holding a particular belief does not at all mean that there aren’t millions upon millions out there who continue to hold that belief.
As to your logic, it is well that you acknowledge you were not a logic major. But for the purposes of the debate, that is a very likely chain of reasoning for many people - McDonalds sells food, millions of people eat it, therefore what could be wrong with it? Part of the success of Super Size Me is drawing this conclusion out explicitly.
And when Kroger starts marketing mayo coated pork and bacon sandwiches as part of a healthy, active and energetic child’s diet and gives you a prize for eating it, and starts manipulating the content of the food so that it could be more appropriately described as pork* and bacon*, perhaps you’ll have a point.
It is to those who go there and can’t afford much else. Meat, grain, dairy, and vegetable.
Many people don’t have a the luxury of being able to shop at a nearby supermarket. They might have at one point but then their nearby market went out of business, after that they had the choice of either the burger joint around the corner or the nearest market across town. Those who can afford to go across town on a regular basis will do so but those who can’t are stuck with the burger joint. If that crosstown market is one of those upscale Fresh Fields things then you have even more people choosing the burger joint. If the person who has to make that choice is a low-income single parent, the more likely they’ll go with the burgers.
I don’t know how meaningful the profits from them but, yeah, people who live in depressed areas with no supermarket nearby are more likely to eat fast food.
This is a documentary. You are discussing the informational content of the film. If it were a drama film, and you were only discussing your opinion of it as art, the standard would be different. I still wouldn’t give it much credence if you hadn’t seen it, but it wouldn’t be worth more than an eyeroll. However, if you’re going to make absolute statements about what information was or wasn’t offered in a documentary, or discuss the conclusions or analytical process or whatever of a documentary, then, yeah, it behooves you know what the hell you’re talking about. You skim a few highlights and base your “analysis” of the film and its conclusions on those highlights, when it’s altogether possible that between the highlights the issues you raise were, in fact, touched on in the film. It’s also possible that, taken as a whole, the film reached different conclusions than the ones you reached from third-party highlights. I don’t care if your equation comes out with a different solution from mine, but I’m not gonna argue it with you if you haven’t even done the math. You gotta show your work.
If you want to talk about pacing, lighting, soundtrack, whatever–the movie as art–fine, opinion is opinion. But if you want to analyze the factual content of a documentary, then an IMDB blurb ain’t gonna cut it. The reason I ask if you and JohnT have even seen the movie is because it’s not worth my time, personally, discussing it with you if you haven’t.
You are discussing your impressions, your assumptions, not the movie itself. I’m not interested in discussing your impressions, because they exist only in your own private universe, and I have no experience of them. I do have experience of the movie, and I’m happy to discuss the movie itself, but not, as I said your ill-informed impressions and assumptions.
But I have seen it, as I belive JohnT has. You are saying you wouldn’t discuss a movie with someone who missed two minutes of a two hour movie?
Or is it that you can’t come up with a cogent intelligent argument to the points that have been made?
The arguments you’ve made have huge holes in them directly contradicted by the movie. (I’m trying to make a very clear distinction between having an interesting discussion with someone who’s reached different conclusions based on the *same *information, and “defending” my opinion against someone who is not working from the same set of information.) So, personal time-management-wise, I’m not all that enthusiastic about devoting a lot of energy to this discussion, no.
You’ve formed a prejudice to this movie based on a few ill-informed assumptions, and an incomplete grasp of the available facts–even of the actual subject at hand–and no, I’m not that interested in helping you work through those prejudices, especially since you’ve become so invested in them, over and above the actual movie itself. I don’t care how loudly you say you’ve watched the movie your conclusions, and your inability to “show your work,” make it pretty damn clear that you weren’t paying all that much attention. So yeah, I’d rather go clean my toilet or wash the cat, or teach a pig to sing, personal-productivity-wise.
Jesus Christ enough already. I get it, if you don’t agree with lissener you’re stoopid. He saw the movie. He doesn’t agree with you. Get over it. Didn’t you get suspended for this before? It’s not worth working yourself into a lather.
Look, you just *know *what this movie is about, based on the title, the marketing campaign, the “gist,” the blurbs–it’s obvious that it’s about McDonalds and eating french fries makes you fat–dUh! All those sources make it abundantly clear that that’s what this movie is about, so why should you even *bother *watching it?
Because, many people who have watched it, the whole thing, with the sound on, and the phone off, and the kids in bed, are telling you that, yeah, it’s about that stuff, but it’s also chock full of informational goodness in between. The actual movie itself addresses a great deal of other information that adds nuance and ambiguity and complexity, and addresses personal responsibility and process and bureaucracy and education and yadda yadda yadda. Just because the elements outlined in the third-party sources you’re quoting are, indeed, part of the film, doesn’t mean that that’s all there is to it.
Here’s the movie as an equation:
1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=21
Here’s what not paying attention as the equation is laid out for you looks like:
1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=17
So yeah, in a discussion like this–about the actual content of a documentary–starting out on the same page is a basic requirement for a productive conversation.
No lather. And while that’s the meme–“if you don’t agree with lissener you’re stoopid”–it’s not, in fact the case; there are very few people on this board who are as willing to have serious debates with people who disagree with them as I am. (If you want to waste some time, find me a cite where I express any such thing as the meme you propagate. Done with the lissener-as-subject-matter hijack.)
Not going to get drawn into your game. I’ve seen it before.
Of course the quote doesn’t specifically say, YOU ARE STUPID. Not literally anyway. It still means the same thing. You don’t agree with me so of course you didn’t see the same movie, didn’t pay attention or you just do get it.
And stop using the word meme. It’s not a meme. I’ve been here a while. It’s personal experience.
Now that you’ve made this thread about me, rather than the subject at hand, I’ll bow out. Feel free to let me know if you find any examples of the meme you repeat, without documentation. Of course I understand that that’s my reputation, but I’ve never communicated to anyone on this board that I equated their disagreement with anything other than a difference of opinion, and never with “stupidity,” in any way you want to express it. Never. Suggesting that someone should watch a movie before they criticize it is not an accusation of stupidity. You are the one who makes that equation, not me. The meme is yours, not mine.
You made it about you. I made a comment because I was sick of watching the trainwreck and you were the one with his hand on the lever. Go ahead and keep using the word meme. It’s all in our heads. We had a secret meeting and decided to gang up on you for no reason.
Dude, I have been discussing nothing but the movie. You were the first person to come in here and make the subject of your post lissener, not Supersize Me. A snowballing reputation from an initial mischaracterization is not a new phenomenon, and it’s not the same thing as a conspiracy, which I never suggested. You want to disagree with the content of my posts, that’s germaine to this discussion. You want to suggest that the content of my posts should be ignored or minimized because of who you think I am as a person, that’s bullshit hijackery. Classic ad hominem.
I’m happy to return to the actual topic at hand, which should stand or fail on its own merits and not on the personalities or–worse–reputations of the participants. If you’re not, and you want to make this thread a referendum on the personalities of the participants, have at it. It’s all yours.