The company you hold says a lot about you. But what about the companies we shop? Does this too reflect upon us? The meals we buy, the shirts we wear, all the way to the tomatoes we eat, have all been engineered to fit into our lives, and many of us could not picture living without. Have multinational corporations like McDonald's sold us hamburgers and a side of “bum deal”? All the while invading popular culture with catchy marketing and infiltrating ideals. Our health, our morals, and our pocket books take a hit every day. And yet, day-by-day, these gigantic corporations spend billions trying to sell us what we didn't know we needed. And now we are hooked. I have a compartment in my car set aside specifically for extra condiments; sauces, plastic silverware, straws; my fast food contraband. My parents didn't live this way. But I do. My child does. We all do, now. This isn't just about food. I'm not just talking about the way we eat or the way we shop. This is about what we are feeding our souls and the future leaders of this world. We have essentially become caged animals being fed by the hand that bites us.
Biting into our retirement, spending our savings on Latté's and Happy Meals. I'm McJaded. I'm running toward risks I didn't even know existed. Trouble is, corporations like McDonald's can only exist by selling what is bought by consumers in massive amounts. We have all sat idle in our cars waiting for our uniformly wrapped dinners to be served to us. Folded up in tidy little packages, successfully engineered to taste exactly the same in a Portland drive through, as it does in Duluth. Is it McDonald's who's to blame? Or is this a problem of don't ask don't care? Maybe a bit of both, resulting in a crafty recipe wrought with consumer ambivalence, cardboard happiness, and apathy. Add in high profit margins and moral promiscuity, and one can easily see
we have a monster of unyielding power on our hands. A monster created for the people, by the people, with one agenda; get money.
Cultural Behemoth
We live in a culture of big and bigger. A society where mass consumption is celebrated as ritual, and cultural acceptance of this devouring is commonplace. It's no wonder corporations like McDonald's have thrived here. I want to know when it is that too much of a good thing begins to go rancid on our conscious. Is it when countless eye-opening studies bring to light the concrete results of excess, and the resulting toll on our physical selves? Or is it first our emotional self that is awakened to this harsh reality of overindulgence and disregard? The taxing of our health by the fast food and fast paced society we live in has been widely discussed and ridiculed for years. This is nothing new. Smoking for instance, has condemned the health of its prey for decades. But the faithfully addicted remain devout to the reality they choose. And the reality of choice is a slippery slope in deed. My world and yours, has been super sized by a corporation whose unsavory practices of selling crap to busy, hungry people, has jaded some of us, and infuriated others. On which side of the fence you wind up determines I suppose, whether you drive through asking no questions at all, or demand that Ronald has some splaining to do.
McLibel Trial
There were in fact, two such famous questioners of McDonald's and their insalubrious activities. When Helen Steel and Dave Morris, activists with London Greenpeace, began passing out leaflets titled “What Wrong With McDonald's- Everything they don't want you to know” they turned up the heat on themselves. But when McDonald's decided to sue them for Libel, Ronald unknowingly turned up the heat on himself. Helen and Dave represented themselves in what turned out to be the longest running libel trial in Brittan's history. McDonald's sued them for the four elements in the leaflet that they perceived to be libelous: “exploiting children with advertising, promoting an unhealthy diet, exploiting their staff and being responsible for environmental damage and ill treatment of animals.” There were over 60 witnesses that testified on behalf of the side of the defendants. One such witness, Howard Lyman, a former agribusiness man, testified to his involvement in the mass slaughtering of animals. “We ended up eliminating the birds killing the trees, turned the soil into something that looked like we had imported it from mars”(1997). Lyman discusses his part in the ranching business that supplies multinationals like McDonald's. He implicates himself in the direct involvement of the deforestation of the rainforest's, which was one of the main arguments that Helen and Dave pioneered to bring public. Cattle ranchers know their part in the process, just as I'm sure, we consumers do. Lyman has since gone vegan. He no longer raises animal to die for the consumption of others. Helen and Dave, years later, won the libel suit. The McThis-and-that of corporations such as McDonald's, characterized by greed and consumer apathy, was challenged by these two regular citizens that refused to back down and sit idly by while mass profits were being made in the name of deceit.
Marketing and Pop Culture
While Helen and Dave were telling McDonald's they had become economically consumed with marketing to children and teens, hip hop marketing executive and the “McKinsey of pop culture” Steve Stoute, was at work creating uniforms for McDonald's' employees that would meld the urban style of America's youth, with the functionality needed of a uniform. Now vice president of U.S. marketing for General Motors, Stoute markets to the young urban trendsetter for companies like Chevrolet and Crest. Stoute coined the phrase, “I'm lovin' it” for McDonald's and helped open the companies eyes to a proposed urban uniformity. “They have a million-plus young people working for them who come to the job every day ashamed of what they are wearing…the uniforms are ugly” Stoute says. With this marketing mogul at the helm, suggested designers, FUBU, American Apparel, and Tommy Hilfiger will drape these young service workers in style. Stoute asserts, “If workers were actually proud of what they were wearing, it could be a huge opportunity to promote the brand”. Marketing to teens, by teens is certainly a shrewd move, but is it kosher?
Billboard Statement Art
So far, I'm not lovin' it. This gigantic multinational company deliberately markets to children with the knowledge that parents will have little leverage with their tantrum-throwing children, if they don't give in to the all-powerful Happy Meal. And the major executives are being paid the big bucks to not only solicit your money, by way of your children, they are now luring their young workers in with hip uniforms that translate into strategic after hours marketing. So, yes, the hip-hop urban market has been infiltrated by the all-supreme corporation. It was all just a matter of time before the gold mine of the pop culture element was tapped. But before that, there was Ronald. His dated image is still culturally relevant, and satirical images of him are popping up everywhere from blog spots to billboards. Ronald is encountering as much negative press as Lindsey Lohan's drinking escapades. Some of these parodies have taken on a cult-like progression by one movement, The Billboard Liberation Front. The Front, “improves” billboards with relevant parodies of pop culture icons and the like. One of their most ambitious endeavors took the stage, so to speak, in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in 2005 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of McDonald's. Ron English, a celebrated and controversial billboard artist was in tow for the creation of the animatronic design entitled “To Serve Man”(Billboard Liberation Front) depicting Ronald McDonald force-feeding a portly child hamburgers, while an Alien predator schemes from above. The BLF, in an immediate press release following the launching of the piece, stated that “ After 50 years of eating more and more Big Macs, French Fries, and McNugget's designed to enhance our servability, we are finally ready! Untold billions of meals consumed by billions of people throughout the world, have sufficiently enlarged the girth and tenderness of the average McDonald's' patron (i.e. you) to reveal The True Meaning of life on Earth!” (2005). Sounds a little far fetched, and indeed it is. But the feeling that McDonald's is taking over the world, I know, is felt by many more than just myself. The Billboard Liberation Front, which shares this ideology with many, has brazenly attempted at a socio-cultural protest, which very clearly illustrates a feeling of collective disenchantment. “No matter how much authority we think we exert over our own lives, even the most trivial elements of our existence are governed by superstructures we cannot perceive to produce preprogrammed results- as much as we strive to be unique, each of us just might be a “Depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism”, as quoted anonymously in a press relaeawse by the Bill Board Liberation Front directly following the unleashing of this artistic protes . Dave Itzkoff, writer for The New York Times book review, describes Douglas Coupland's latest novel, jpod and his disillusioned take on our world shaped by capitalism and technology. These “superstructures” that are being parodied on billboards and written into books, confirm to us just how popular being unpopular can be. If this is true, McDonald's must be the prom queen of Fast Food High. One of the most abhorred corporate giants of the anti globalization movement, McDonald's, is the beneficiary of a substantial amount of negative press, which rivals that of the marketing they spend billions on. All while the corridors of our arteries narrow, and the waistlines of our children, broaden.
McDonald's Defends Rumors
A blog called “Open for Discussion”, McDonald's Corporate Responsibility Blog, endeavors to reveal the “virtuous” plan of corporate responsibility through the eyes of Vice President, Bob Langert. In McDonald's most recent post, JC Gonzalez-Mendez, Vice President of the North American Supply Chain, combated the allegation of e-mail generated rumors that questioned the beef purchasing practices of McDonald's. He dismissed all of the claims as being false and went on to say, “Our customers can trust us to provide them with freshly prepared beef made with real, high quality ingredients.” He went on further to add,” We source from the most trusted industry suppliers and serve 100% USDA-inspected beef.” Since when has molding the truth to the masses become “responsible”? Certainly politicians and the like have been shaping version of the truth since man could stand erect. These “versions”, are the very same models that cipher from us our incomes and our rights. Why should these corporations that are so intimately linked to the governmental standards allow such behavior, be any different.
Ok, so the beef is claimed to be 100% USDA- inspected. Well, might that be because the FDA does not require preservatives, antibiotics, or other genetic modifications to appear on the labels? Making JC Gonzalez , McDonald's' puppet, not a liar, but just that, a puppet. The truth cannot be molded, but fallacies are quite palpable. An article that appeared in the Temple News out of Temple University entitled, “Fatty Food? Nope. Frankenfood? Maybe.” reports on a pair of teenagers that sued McDonald's for making them fat. Judge Robert Sweet dismissed the case, citing that the boy's new full well that the fare served at McDonald's was fattening and unhealthful. He did however label the food “Frankenfood - that is foods that were modified so many times that they became something entirely unknown in the history of nature.” And what about the mystery preservative TBHQ? I can only imagine what this tastes like alone. This, an ingredient contained in some of the menu items at McDonald's that you and I, the layman, have probably not heard of before. Turns out, TBHQ is a form of butane that is either sprayed directly on the nugget, or the box it's sold in. Nuggets are prepared with no more than .02% of this antioxidant, which is derived from petroleum. But hey, as long as the USDA certifies and regulates the use of these types of preservatives, we should be safe right? I'm not so sure.
USSR and the Golden Arches
McDonald's presence is felt throughout the world. You can have a big Mac pretty much anywhere these days, even communist Russia. Global menus are reflecting American tastes buds and some would even go so far as to say their economic ideals. McDonald's represents the idea of capitalism and the inherent freedom it provides to the “haves”, and how it uses the “have-nots' to grow ever larger. George Cohen, Senior Chairman of McDonald's Russia and Senior Chairman of the Executive Committee of McDonald's Restaurants of Canada, endeavored to bring the golden arches to Russia, and succeeded. Mikhail Gorbachev, in his forward to Cohen's book, To Russia with Fries, writes “ At the height of the period of stagnation, when the free spirit of the market was totally non-existent, George enthusiastically pursued the idea of starting a business here, and he succeeded, despite having to fight his way through a bureaucratic jungle.” Cohen opened the first McDonald's in Russia in 1990 and thus brought popular American fare to its people. Gorbachev goes on to say, “The merry clowns, the Big Mac signs, the colourful, unique decorations and ideal cleanliness in and around the restaurant, the welcome smiles and helpful service- all of this compliments the hamburgers whose great popularity is well deserved.” As a country that stands for the very antithesis of what has made McDonald's so wildly successful, the president, Gorbachev himself, seems like a commercial spokesperson in some sort of commercial. This great American dream, which McDonald's has served to the poor and destitute, has made Russia one of their fastest growing markets, with inexpensive land being one of the main contributing factors. If a Canadian businessman like George Cohen can seek and succeed to open this kind of restaurant, the very symbol known worldwide to be associated with capitalism, and prove profitable, what does this say for the future of McDonald's? The world may be going green to save all of our you-know-what's, but it is McDonald's that is truly seeing the green.
And the Jury Say's?
I think when the curtain comes up at the end of the show, McDonald's should not receive top billing in this drama. There are a plethora of characters responsible for our current state of discontent. I've never eaten a large fry and a Big Mac and felt very good about it afterwards. The popular influence that has made McDonald's and labels like “gigantic” and “unhealthful” synonymous, is part marketing genius, and equal parts public acceptance. No one has arranged my burger to look like an eggplant sandwich. There have been no doctors parading around as a large order of fries, trying to persuade my dollar into McDonald's' registers. We have bought what McDonald's is selling for decades. There is a point when individual choice of the products and services we consume, can and will offset what profits these larger-than-life companies will see. When we come together collectively to show these corporations that we do not want to be associated with poor health and gluttony as a culture, we are essentially putting them out of business. Putting them out of the reach of the popular culture.
The problem with McDonald's isn't that they have forced us to do anything. The problem is, some would argue they have underhandedly made bazillions on our bad decisions. I believe the more poignant question here is, when you know the milk has gone bad, do you then serve it to your guests anyway? McDonald's, unlike you and I, know what preservatives they are labeling as food, but continue to pocket the grand profits anyway. Our weaknesses, have made them rich, all the while knowing full well they are selling us low quality, unhealthful food. Our taste for high fat, low fiber fare has parlayed itself into profits made by McDonald's, which you and I couldn't begin to fathom. The billions spent on marketing directly to our children, and the mistreatment and degradation of animals on the fast track to the drive through window, are all cause for alarm. These elements are all part of McDonald's strategic mission to impregnate our minds with visions of milkshakes and hamburgers. And until their millions of patrons around the globe, organize a concerted effort to say no to these super-sized values and bargain-priced sustenance, McDonald's will continue to serve billions in the most far reaching places on earth. What makes someone or something popular, is decided by the masses. The popular culture of this global economy has said yes to convenience, but no to the effects we see as a result. Something is wrong here. If McDonald's is “Miss Popularity”, it's because “Billions Served” have crowned it as such.
