ERIC SCHLOSSER was in Australia in September for a publicity tour to launch Fast Food Nation. Green Left Weekly's BELINDA SELKE interviewed him about the film.
The film doesn't follow a traditional narrative structure. Why did you choose to do it this way?
The film from the very beginning is trying to provide a portrait of one town and one moment in time. So by choosing to do it as a portrait of a town it doesn't lend itself to a traditional narrative about one hero. In some ways the film is set up to make you think that the film is about the great heroic character coming in and beating the corporations. But in reality, there are very many well-intentioned corporate executives who are upset about what their companies are doing but just don't do anything about it. That's the rule as opposed to the exception of the one who stands up and fights for change.
In the film, each of the characters must make a difficult choice [i.e. Sylvia decides to trade sex for a job at the slaughterhouse]. How do you think the film's portrayal of choice differs from the idea of "choice" employed by your conservative opponents?
We could argue about how much free choice is actually involved in some of those situations. Women are put into that position everyday and not just in the meat-packing industry. One could argue if that was really a choice or if in fact it was a necessity of survival.
In showing people's individual choices I think that ultimately the film tries to give a sense of the system, this powerful system in which people are caught up in and at the end of the film is still triumphant. The band of activists haven't won, the whistleblower hasn't ended it. We very much did not want to make a film that got the audience off the hook: in which the hero is triumphant and the bad guy has been defeated.
So I don't agree with those conservative arguments that its all about personal choice. Your choices are dictated by the context in which they are available to you. The choice between starving and sleeping with your superviser is not real choice.
Why did the film focus on workers rather than consumers?
In many ways the film is paying homage to The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The Jungle was about the exploitation of immigrant and meat-packer workers and really used the slaughterhouse as a metaphor for the corruption of US society. So with that as a partial inspiration, it just seemed like the exploitation of migrants was at the heart of the story. All these other characters are there, but that's where everything is leading to, as the real core. [The consumer] just never emerged — someone should do that film!
You have been accused by the industry of printing "misinformation". Why haven't you been accused of "lying" or sued for libel?
I think you can take the same set of facts and have two different people come to very different conclusions. So I'm not going to argue that what I write is the gospel truth that cannot be contradicted. But in making my work transparent I try to show how I came to these conclusions. The reason I haven't been sued for libel, I would guess, is because they wouldn't win the case, and if they sue me they allow me to engage in a discovery process by which I can get access to interviewing their executives under oath and looking at their documents. But I have no doubt that they would like all kinds of bad things to happen to me.
Your opposition to the fast-food industry seems to focus on the issue of monopolisation. You have said that you would like to see a return to lots of small food companies competing. How do you envision this might come about?
A very old fashioned idea that has fallen quite out of favour in the United States called anti-trust enforcement. It came about in the late 19th-early 20th century and the idea behind it is that it is the role of the government to prevent concentrations of economic power. And what's interesting about conservatives in the United States is that they seem so obsessed with abuses of government power and excess government and yet they have taken much less interest in the abuses of corporate power.
There is a great tradition in the United States of opposition to unchecked corporate and economic power but ever since the Regan administration that tradition has been completely sidelined. We now have a handful of corporations controlling the US economy.
What do you hope the film, and the growing opposition to the fast-food industry, might achieve in terms of government regulation?
I don't see the film concretely leading to any specific legislation. Rick [Linklater] is an artist and if the film is good it's a work of art and doesn't have a political program attached to it. As an activist I can tell you that self-regulation is never going to work with these corporations. I applaud anything that they do which is ethical and conscientious but expecting McDonalds to solve the obesity epidemic is like expecting the oil companies to solve global warming. So I would ban all marketing of unhealthy food to children immediately, I might even ban all marketing to children. I could accept some marketing if it was shown that these products were not harmful. I would kick all junk food and soda out of schools. I would absolutely have very tough food safety laws, very tough animal welfare laws. The government needs to interpose itself in between consumers and these companies on behalf of consumers.
[Belinda Selke is writing a history of food politics in Australia. She can be contacted at <bselke@uow.edu.au>]