TOW #28 Food Inc. Documentary

   Beginning with the rise of the fast food restaurant in the 1950's, the way we produce and market food has changed dramatically in the past half-century. Food Inc. is a documentary directed by Robert Kenner about the food industry of the United States. The film, targeted at the general American consumer public, presents a look at the story behind the products that sit on our supermarket shelves. It reveals the methods that are used by the big food corporations and the adverse affects these often have on public and environmental health, including how the companies treat their workers and the animals, as well as the increasingly mechanized and biologically engineered ways of raising and processing animals and plants.
   The main purpose of the documentary is to inform consumers of the unpublicized ways that their food is produced and to encourage them to take make choices to prompt food companies to make safer and healthier decisions. Throughout the documentary, the giant food corporations are characterized as powerful, profit-hungry, bullies. As stories are told during the film, the actions of the corporations are described in plain white font that appears on the screen over simple background music. This makes the corporations seem like giant, faceless, impersonal organizations, and makes their actions seem more dramatic by presenting them in an understated way. Often throughout the film the phrase "[This corporation] declined to be interviewed for this film," appeared after the discussion of questionable methods and practices. The repetition of this statement emphasizes how the corporations are trying to keep information from the public and makes them look like the guilty ones. The power of the corporations is further demonstrated by the images of government officials influential in the food production are such as head of the FDA, who are then shown to have been lobbyists for or in other ways connected to the food companies themselves.
   This characterization of the giant food corporations is contrasted with the presentation of regular people who reflect the ideals of traditional farmers and the average consumer. During the film, a number of farmers and growers are interviewed, many of whom resist the practices that have become standard in the larger corporations. They are filmed on their own land, in their own barns or houses, talking to the camera in between nature shots, contrasting starkly to the footage of the machinery and labs of the corporations. The documentary also focuses on a woman whose son died from food poisoning, using the story to get the audience motivated to take action because of the threat current production methods potentially poses to their own families. The documentary begins with a lot of shots of grocery stores and their aisles of products, connecting the information the audience is about to receive to their daily life, and it ends with the insistence that consumers have the power to make choices about what they eat and buy, encouraging the audience to use its power to influence the corporations and change the system.