Maintenance Phase: "Super Size Me"

February 15, 2022 8:56 AM

Aubrey thought she could swear less in this week's episode. She was wrong. Support the show!(https://www.patreon.com/maintenancephase)
posted by bq (11 comments total)

This was a fun episode. I had no idea about so many things and it just kept unfolding into a cascade of horrors.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:22 PM on February 15, 2022

Somehow I missed seeing Super Size Me and I’m not sorry.

I thought the Morgan Me Too Self-Own was even weird than Michael and Aubrey acknowledged

And finally….

https://y.yarn.co/20469b59-30b6-454b-9e7f-f26f4f55aedb_text.gif
posted by bq at 8:16 PM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Really good episode. It was fascinating, as they pointed out, that although the purported theme of the documentary was that McDonald's food is poisoning people, the actual theme, and takeaway most people had, was "fat people should have more personal responsibility".

Also horrible yet hilarious that all of the fast food restaurants "removed" their supersize sizes, but really just reshuffled things around. And the "king size" to "sharing size" - LOL

I was born in the 80s so basically this podcast is just gradually deconstructing my childhood and young adulthood!
posted by rogerroger at 8:41 PM on February 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

Very good episode, I remember seeing this in the theater and liking it but being really frustrated at the level of analysis. I was very into serious documentaries at the time, and had recently read Fast Food Nation, so I was primed for a more rigorous approach (probably not a reasonable expectation, but whatever). Anyway, I'm sure I didn't appreciate the problems that Michael pointed out, except even then I thought the usage of background footage of fat people walking around town was disgusting and cliched.

As an aside, I am just now recognizing the show's Apple and Pear logo, that's an allusion to a body-shape metaphor, right?
posted by skewed at 6:25 AM on February 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

I was in my early twenties when I saw the movie, and definitely read it as an anti-corporate stance without clocking much of the anti-fatness stuff, even as a fat person. It's probably small-fat privilege since I'm big but not quite as big as the people who get filmed from behind and have their heads chopped off. I also remember that it didn't make a bit of difference to my eating habits, despite the "scared straight" aspect of it all.
posted by PussKillian at 7:07 AM on February 16, 2022

Also horrible yet hilarious that all of the fast food restaurants "removed" their supersize sizes, but really just reshuffled things around. And the "king size" to "sharing size" - LOL

Exactly. The lasting legacy of that documentary is that fast food places started being a little more careful with their branding.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:54 AM on February 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

This movie was so obviously bullshit when it came out, it really pissed me off that so many on the left just swallowed it because it checked off some of the dearly held boxes.

Wicked corporations? Check.
Fast food? Check.
Eating healthy? Check.
(Dare I say) Fat people? Check.

Even though all the claims Spurlock made were weak or misleading at best, there were way too many progressives nodding away in agreement. I'm glad the show acknowledges this.

As time went on, the movie's claims seemed to sound more and more bullshitty, and Spurlock's big splash (and reputation) fell by the wayside. In some ways, it seems like such a simpler, more innocent time, when we could afford to enjoy such low-cal documentary making that affirms all our priors.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:17 PM on February 16, 2022

I think that I'd had the same general impression of the film, which I've never seen, and kind of conflated it with the Fast Food Nation book (which got its own fictionalized movie adaptation, a couple of years after this film). I generally agree that Big Fast Food is pretty awful, but Spurlock's exaggerations are almost comical.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:34 AM on February 17, 2022

I never saw it, though I had also read "Fast Food Nation" at the time, like skewed.

I just always assumed the central tenet -- roughly, "fast food isn't good for humans" -- was a good working assumption, but I never appreciated the class issues around food. Later I learned more, but never went back to the movie.

My kids do, indeed, see this movie in school, so I will ask them what the framing is. The middle school phys.ed. teacher is a trumpy troll, so I doubt there is any nuance offered, but the high school teacher might be better.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:49 AM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

wenestvedt, I'd love to hear what your kids report back.
posted by rogerroger at 9:58 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I am just now recognizing the show's Apple and Pear logo, that's an allusion to a body-shape metaphor, right?

Mind. Blown.
posted by Night_owl at 8:33 AM on February 9, 2023 [1 favorite]