Kerrie Gill
Writing 3020
Rhetorical Analysis
Draft 2
Super Size Me
Many of today’s documentaries are created in an attempt to speak to the public about current or controversial issues. One of these is the popular movie by Morgan Spurlock called Super Size Me. This movie utilizes humor in the form of Burkean’s Burlesque and Grotesque frames to send one solid message to its viewers: eating McDonald’s will make you obese.Throughout the course of this paper I will attempt to analyze the different strategies and techniques used in relation to humor and persuasion.
Morgan Spurlock wrote and directed the 2004 documentary Super Size Me. It recorded his experiences with McDonald’s over a 30-day period. Spurlock’s “McDiet” was strictly derived from the McDonald’s menu, eating all 3 meals there and supersizing them when the option was available. In the documentary, Spurlock consumes about 5,000 calories a day, and limits himself to walking under two and a half miles each day for his exercise.
In order to gain the trust of his viewers, Spurlock made sure to keep himself under the care of doctors. Exercise physiologists and a dietician monitored him and professionally documented his health prior to the experiment, during, and after it was completed.
Not only was there factual evidence supporting Spurlock’s evident weight gain and decrease in overall health, but the movie was also littered with other facts. Some of these include McDonald’s feeds more than 46 million people a day – more than the entire population of Spain. Sixty percent of all Americans are either overweight or obese. Supporting facts are a successful tactic to gain the approval of the audience and convince them to fell the same way about the topic at hand. (Mahalo) The majority of negative reviews on the documentary reference the fact that Spurlock did not provide a food log to prove that he did indeed ingest 5,000 calories a day. Other reviewers commented that the movie changed their life, and they would like to see Spurlock take it a step further by answering questions such as why isn’t the system working and how can we be healthy? “What makes our lives easy isn’t always good for us…it’s not healthy to put our children and ourselves at this risk” (Spurlock)
Super Size Me has the potential to backfire with certain members of its audience. Overall, the entire documentary doesn’t hide the fact that it disapproves of obesity because it’s an unhealthy and therefor disgusting trait among human beings. Viewers of this documentary can’t help but take it personally when they see the footage of severely overweight McDonald’s patrons leaving the fast food chain, greasy fry and burger bag in hand. There are also members of the audience who can easily say that they have an Egg McMuffin with hash browns every morning for breakfast and have yet to transform into the whale of an American Spurlock insists their future beholds. Also, many naysayers point out the fact that they would never indulge in McDonald’s 3 times a day, and thus the documentary is unrealistic. Those who do partake in the occasional, or possibly daily Mickey Dee’s meal may very well be skinny. But what Spurlock wants to draw attention to is that skinny doesn’t necessarily mean healthy. According to current FDA health standards, a healthy lifestyle consists of 3 square meals a day, and an average of a 2,000 calorie-per-day intake. His ultimate goal is to convey to the viewer that even though you are only eating at McDonald’s once a day or any lesser consistency, that one meal is not serving them well.
Even though these two groups may incur backfire after viewing the documentary, there is no reason to say that it prevents Spurlock from reaching his goals. It seems that this documentary is just a verification of something that most American’s already knew: McDonald’s is unhealthy. One of the most popular comments is, “of course McDonald’s is bad for you, but no one eats it 3 times a day.”
Spurlock’s goals were to tell America that McDonalds is unhealthy and the FDA is doing nothing to set standards in the fast food industry. With the evolution to multi-task and cut time short in places like eating, sleeping, and exercising, we can’t afford to have our only options available to us poisoning our bodies with saturated fats, preservatives, and grade F meat like taco bell is known to use.