THIS SUMMER, moviegoers will have their usual fill of the crass and culturally worthless Hollywood fare. By the grace of economics, most mainstream cineplex menus will not be serving up "Super Size Me," an independent film documentary that is sillier, shallower and more sophomoric than anything Tinseltown could ever dream up.
Director Morgan Spurlock is no Michael Moore, but his Sundance Film Festival award suggests some future crowning at Cannes -- an orgy of social elitism and snobbery disguised as a celebration of artistic merit and political insight. But that's getting ahead of myself.
Since last month, "Super Size Me" has been polluting select, highfaluting theaters with its hardcore gastronomic pornography masquerading as social-scientific commentary. In the documentary, Spurlock sets out to unleash his animosity against individual autonomy by placing the burden of America's obesity problem on the shoulders of Ronald McDonald. Purporting to prove that the fast-food franchise is to blame, Spurlock goes on a 30-day junk-food binge. Predictably, he gains 25 pounds and gets dangerously sick.
The alarmist lesson Spurlock would have us take from his enactment of a five-year-old's fantasy is that eating junk food is the paramount evil of our time. But instead of holding the consumers accountable, Spurlock blames the purveyors of such poisons. Besides suffering from serious scientific flaws, Spurlock's stunt ignores important social factors contributing to obesity, such as the breakdown of individual responsibility and the traditional family that his radical left-wing comrades have done everything to promote.
Just as anyone with any common sense knows that junk food is unhealthy (that's why they call it "junk food" -- duh!), everyone with any real-world experience knows about cumulative effects and saturation points. A trickle of water will empty into the storm drains; a downpour will cause a flood. One beer consumed in half an hour will be fine; but as college students are well aware from experience, five beers consumed in two and a half hours will usually cause inebriation (even though the beer/time ratio is the same in both cases).
Similarly, the effects of eating one Big Mac on a given day are not the same as binging exclusively on Big Macs for an entire month. While the human body has no trouble metabolizing reasonable amounts of beer and burgers, those who are stupid enough like Spurlock to overdo it rightfully suffer the consequences.
Spurlock concedes in his documentary that the average American does not binge on Mickey D's like he did. He nonetheless condemns the entire fast-food business for the stupidity of a few who regularly choose Whoppers over Weight Watchers. But even if we were to protect the imbecile population from the evil junk food restaurants, sooner or later they would find some other way to impair their health. Unless we strapped them down in straightjackets and tube-fed them, they would kill themselves with their own bare hands if given the chance. Rather than imprison them from their own imbecility, it would be more humane to let them eat themselves to death and enjoy it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
As for everyone else of functional intelligence, Spurlock's vicious assault on the fast food business insults our freedom of choice. Who is Spurlock to pass judgment against those who exercise the informed choice of having the occasional Sausage and Egg McMuffin, Chicken McNuggets or a McFlurry?
America's obesity problem lies not in the fast food sellers, but in the consumers. Gone are the days when families sat around the dinner table for a healthy home-cooked meal. Today, too many single parents unable to share household duties sit their kids before the "boob tube" with a Happy Meal and call it "dinner." Gone are the days when people took responsibility for their own actions. Today, too many people eat like pigs and call it an "epidemic," as if reckless behavior were contagious. If crusading radical left-wingers like Morgan Spurlock want to play the blame game, they should look within; by destroying the traditional household, family values and individual accountability, the radical left's Kulturkampf created the pathologies they now denounce.
The sudden, fickle choice of evils the radical left chooses to attack or embrace is almost Orwellian. Yesterday, it was cigarettes. Today it's fast food. At the same time, the radical left fights tooth-and-nail to protect abortion on demand and needle exchanges. Why is it that those who call themselves "pro-choice" also want to deny the rest of us the choice to smoke or eat junk food? Do they think their values are superior? And why don't filmmakers like Spurlock go on a heroin binge or an abortion binge and see what happens?
The most pressing problem in America today is not obesity, but the moral zealotry of elitists like Morgan Spurlock who think they know better than everyone else. If you ask me, they can stick their super-sized egos in their hemp pipes and smoke it; I'll have my Big Mac, thank you.
Eric Wang is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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