blog_Clémence Villaines_Morgan Spurlock vs McDonald’s and co : round 2

We all know the crazy bet that Morgan Spurlock took in 2004 in Super Size Me, a documentary film. We saw Spurlock eating for a whole month only at the very famous American fast food restaurant McDonald’s. The film aims to denounce the harmful effects of fast food on body and health — of which one of the obvious consequences is obesity — widely observed among Americans. Morgan Spurlock come back in 2017 with Super Size Me 2 : Holy Chicken!, which could be a continuation of his first documentary. After having answered the question in an obvious way : "Are fast-foods bad for your health?" — the answer is yes without any surprise — what else does he have to demonstrate, without reusing his previous concept?

In his new documentary, Morgan Spurlock has begun to examine if the fast food industry has changed since his first film in 2004. It turns out that everything looks much healthier than before, in name and appearance. And for good reason, the release of Super Size Me has brought to the forefront the damaging consequences on our bodies of regular consumption of fast-food and in particular at MacDonald's because it is the market leader. These findings were bad for the brand image of the company — which took care to change it — and many others have followed his lead. For that, the big fast-food chains have decided to make their products healthier for our body. This, is what we thought we saw. Morgan Spurlock has given us the real story. In reality, everything is just glitter and tricks. Companies have mostly focused on pretending that this is the case, using a variety of schemes — all very creative — leaving out the consequences of such a diet. And us, consumers, couldn't see anything.

To try to understand the problem, Morgan Spurlock is incorporated him self into the equation. For this, he has decided to open his own fried chicken fast-food : Holy Chicken. He began by buying a hangar in Alabama to raise the chickens himself. This step revealed that 99% of American chicken farms are owned by a group of 5 companies called Big Chicken, which controls the entire industry. Independent farmers are subject to a "tournament" pricing formula — vicious and unfair — that feeds the spirit of competition and from which it is difficult to escape. For the "free-range" designation — in the case of the Spurlock farm — an area of about four square feet was enough. We were far from the images of happy chickens running around on the fields, communicated by the fast-food chains.

Grilled chicken is healthier than fried chicken. When we asked the consumers, they are most attracted to fried chicken — more tempting than grilled chicken. For his fast-food menu, Spurlock wondered how to look as healthy as possible while still appealing to the consumer. For this, he will make a grilled AND fried chicken, to offer his customers the best of both worlds. For the communication, he investigated the methods of fast-food chains to seduce consumers with terms that refer to something healthy. We can find words like "fresh", "natural", "no additives"… and the famous "crispy" to replace the scary word "fried". We can add to that recyclable packaging, kale or artisanal slaw and the whole world thinks it is eating healthy. Morgan Spurlock had covered his restaurant with these deceptive and attractive words, among a green and white paint. Moreover, the restaurant's slogan "Too good to be true" is quite explicit.

Super Size Me 2 is more about media literacy than intensive farming methods or anything else. It shows us how the consumer can be influenced, deceived and tricked by advertising. The Holy Chicken restaurant initiated by Morgan Spurlock exposes to its customers a transparency on all the logistics and the manufacturing around the sandwich which is proposed to them, even if it can be repellent. However, customers knew they were being cheated, but that didn't seem to be a barrier. They didn't seem disgusted at seeing the most horrific parts of the process, yet the consumer reaction was supposed to be the point of the documentary.