Richard Linklater's 'Fast Food Nation' - Week 1

Select one character and examine the personal choices they made throughout the movie.

Don's opening scene shows him in a business meeting. The viewer knows he has made a choice to pursue a career in the fast food industry, already implicating him to be money driven and perhaps loose moralled. We also see that he has chosen to have a high achieving career and a comfortable life.

The first choice we see Don make is with regard to the flavours he is smelling. He is evidently in his comfort zone but a not quite real world is already portrayed. He discusses the flavours as if they are real food, and he is tasting it rather than smelling, commenting "tastes like it's right off the grill!" Already, he is deceiving people by creating something which is unnatural and unreal. His confidence in this situation to make the choice contrasts with later on when he is in reality and out of this bubble at headquarters. This is emphasised when he finds simple tasks such as opening a gate on a ranch or climbing a fence an awkward struggle - the real world is not one where he feels at ease. He has chosen not to visit a ranch since he was a child!

When Don pays a visit to his boss's office, his boss thanks him for "stopping by". This casual, polite, formality gives the implication that Don is respected and he had a choice to visit his boss, when in fact it was his job to. This questions how much power Don has with his choices within the company and how much of what is done is sugarcoated and beyond his control. It also highlights the choice he makes of involving himself with producing fast food with faecal matter in, casting his morals under scrutiny.

At home, Don is reading his children a bedtime story and decides it is time for them to go to sleep. They protest, but he is insistant. He uses his authority to deny them more of his time that evening, although he did choose to spend time with them in the first place, suggesting good intentions and fulfilling his parenting role. However, a notable choice he makes in this scene is chosing to partake in a business trip and disappoint his son by missing his history exhibition. Don sees the faecal problem with the burgers as a "marketing issue" and prioritises this over supporting his son, again calling into question his morals and priorities. Seeing the problem as a marketing issue also implies he is either naive or deciding to turn a blind eye to the morbid reality of the burgers. Later on in the movie, he is on the phone to his wife. When one of his sons interupts the conversation, Don angrily orders his wife to make the child wait, as his matter is important. Again, we have a demonstration of his selfish priorities.

Several times throughout the movie, Don is pictured in a hotel room either watching pornography or with his laptop open. This signifies his choice to experience loneliness and surround himself with technology and work rather than his family, and to surround himself in his own reality.

During the process of investigating the faecal matter in the meat, Don is pictured several times consuming Big One burgers. In continuing to do this, he demonstrates denial/lack of care that he is in fact probably eating faeces. As he continues to research the factory, his continual consumption of the meat also shows his lack of care for the welfare of the workers, the fact that there are untrained workers on the killing floor and the gut table, the quality of the meat, and the welface of the cattle. He chooses to stay on the side of the fence where everything is clean, fake, and tasty, rather than the actual reality of the filthy meat and suffering. He does not have to deal with the harsh side of reality, so he blocks it out. Don represents this corrupt product with a smile and pride, announcing his position to Amber as vice president of marketing at Mickeys.

When Don visits the UMP Plant, he seems comfortable in this world of mass production and branding. After his visit, he comments that it is "spotless", "clean" and "white." This conflicts with some other characters' opinions, such as Coco, who commented "I never want to set foot in that place again." When he discovers he was not shown the killing area and is reliably informed that is is not clean and spotless but rather quite grotesque and dirty, he still chooses to lie, represent the factory and portray it in a good light. The fakeness and mass producion combined with facts such as the forty degrees below zero which all the burgers go through again emphasise the fake world he is investing in. As the movie continues, he is less and less ill informed, but continues to stand by his choices.

Don's choice to work for Mickey's contrasts with some other characters' choice to work there due to his reasoning. Coco, for example, chooses not to enter into employment at the factory until her husband suffers an accident and she is desperate enough to have no choice. Prior to this, she chooses to earn less money than the UMP Plant would pay, and work as a chambermaid. Don's choice to work there could perhaps be based on reasons such as financial greed, an easy option or a selfish desire to further his career, as he is clearly not in a position where he has been forced into the role.

Perhaps the most important decision Don makes in the movie is to support Harry when reporting to Jack, and deny any illegal activty at the plant. He potentially had the power to change aspects of the production of the burgers but his weakness prevailed. He chose to continue allowing people to lose limbs, animals to suffer, faecal matter in the meat, and general corruption and contamination. When he leaves the hotel at the end of the movie and walks out of the door, he is turning his back on the problem, choosing to leave it behind and return to his comfortable life. However, his uneasiness at the meeting at the end demonstrates how he will now have to live with the knowledge of the choices he has made.

The relationship between good and evil seems to be paralleled with the relationship between reality and denial throughout the movie. The screen is often divided by light and darkness, with the characters entering the dark as they take a step towards the fast food industry. This is most evident when Don decides to stand by the factory, and his face slowly backs into the dark from the light, highlighting his bad decision. It is also demonstrated in a scene where the door into the factory is dark and the other side light, and in the beginning when the Mexicans attend a meeting, they enter into a dark doorway from a dimly lit alley.

Overall, the movie highlights issues of morality, ignorance, reality and this fake fast food world, the choices we make and their effects. A strong metaphor for me was when Amber and her friends made a hole in the fence and attempted to free the cows. Whether or not the cows knew the hole was there, their ignorance in the dark, maybe habit, maybe fear of the unknown, prevented them from chosing freedom, or from having the choice. Perhaps this is a metaphor for society being in the dark and making bad choices, and maybe it reflects Don's decision to keep the world in the dark even though he has been guided in the right direction and provided knowledge with which he could do good if he so chose.