Illustration by French

Words by Luke Friend

First published Stranger 14 - April 2007

For every protest, when the usually silent decide to make themselves heard, there is a both a catalyst and then a target. In recent times, the streets have been marched on, to halt wars and overturn taxes and reverse globalisation. A swell of anger, confusion and resentment against the establishment channelled, for the sake of clarity, neatly toward a government or a symbol or a face. Every protest needs it. You’ve got to have a target to adorn the banners, a name to chant, after all. Thatcher. Blair. Bush. Deaf to the common man. Perfect targets. But not quite as perfect as McDonald’s.

 
No matter what country, when the streets were taken and the masses awoke from their apathetic slumber to question the onslaught of uniformity and globalisation, you could be sure of one thing. Open your morning newspaper and there was a photograph of a dustbin, or whatever large object was at hand, smashing a restaurant window; the golden arches – that most universal of symbols – hanging limp where it once glowed proud. Hoods up. Bandanas on. Not a ‘Happy Meal’ in sight. Ronald McDonald, more recognisable than Thatcher, Blair and Bush put together, getting his smiling, painted face kicked in.

When Eric Schlosser wrote his book Fast Food Nation in 2001, it was not a call to arms but instead a far-reaching exposé of an industry that had become, to many, the embodiment of what’s wrong with the world today. Mass production and maximum profit at the cost of our health, our environment and our sanity. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, Ronald McDonald, lured us all in, while behind the plastic façade lay a world of exploitation and questionable practices. Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, skilfully gave those working in and affected by the industry an identity and a voice. Less a work of muckraking sensationalism, Fast Food Nation took us into the slaughterhouses and the farms and the lives of the people who work there, held up the proverbial camera and simply pressed play.  

Fast Food Nation

The book has since sold nearly 1.5 million copies worldwide and Schlosser has become forever linked with the industry he laid bare. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book has become a movie. Directed by Richard Linklater, of Dazed and Confused fame, and with a script co-written by Schlosser himself, Fast Food Nation – the movie – takes the essence of the book to create a fictional narrative driven by the stories of an immigrant worker, a fast food executive and a restaurant employee turned activist.   

The film reaches the UK in May and Schlosser’s hopes for the screen version are the same as for when he wrote the book. “I hope it just shows people how the system works,” he says. “Most people have no idea where their food is coming from… and what it’s doing to the land and the animals and most importantly for me, what it’s doing to the people -– in this case, the people who process and are involved in bringing you your food.”    

Armed with a cast of Hollywood heavyweights from Bruce Willis to Ethan Hawke (who all provided their services for greatly reduced  fees) the film has the potential to reach a far greater audience than the book, but assessing its real impact will provide just as difficult. Hating on McDonald’s, or any of the other burger bigwigs, is not a new practice. When there are over 30,000 McDonald’s franchises across the world, an omnipresent slice of American authority regardless of the currency you pay for your Big Mac with, it is perhaps no surprise that they then are attacked – in Australia, India, Russia, France and Poland to name but a few. A perfect target. When you decide to hurl that dustbin, you just can’t miss.

Fast Food Nation

But Fast Food Nation, both book and film, are not some anarchist manual. Their importance is measured not by destruction  of property but by genuine progress both in the industry and in the habits of the consumer. “I’m deludedly optimistic,” Schlosser has said previously. “I certainly would not have bothered writing the book if I didn’t believe that there’s enormous potential for change”.   

His optimism is shared by Linklater, who believes that the power for change still, ultimately, lies with us – the consumer. “If consumers demanded it, and just demanded more healthy food — it’s that simple — the market would provide it for them,” Linklater says. “I’d be really happy if people saw my film and learn to be healthier. It’s a good time to eat healthier. The products are out there.”     If the book has one clear success, it is that of educating the reader about the food they eat. You only need to take a walk through the aisles of your supermarket to see the changes, all driven by an increased awareness of the customer. Even fast food menus have been forced to clean up their act, or at least provide something resembling a healthier option.

But the power of both film and book, driven by Schlosser’s meticulous search for every angle, really lies in the hidden truths behind the industry. While we all may now be better armed when we buy the food we eat – and the book has undoubtedly acted as a catalyst for some of this greater understanding – what this food does to our health isn’t even half of the story.

Fast Food Nation

The meatpacking industry, where Fast Food Nation’s most gruesome and harrowing elements are set, is still a horror show for all those forced to work there. Badly paid, dangerous and corrupt, it is an industry that goes largely unregulated, still very reminiscant of the world that Upton Sinclair unearthed in his 1906 novel The Jungle – a book which greatly influenced Schlosser to write Fast Food Nation.    Whether it can affect change of this industry remains to be seen but it won’t be through lack of trying. Schlosser and Linklater deliberately pulled no punches when they created the slaughterhouse scenes, aiming to shock the audience into action, or at least into caring. “This film is really about showing you what’s happening and trying to make people think and ideally make them feel too,” Schlosser says.

After publication of The Jungle, so appalled were the public that they were eating contaminated meat, that the 1906 Pure Food and Drug act came into being. “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” Sinclair is famously noted as saying. Thanks to Eric Schlosser and Richard Linklater, some 100 years later we’re having another go at hitting the heart.