Morgan Spurlock Watch

Whiskey for 30 Days

Here's a parody of Spurlock's Super Size Me that's fairly clever.

The odd thing is, Spurlock has already desended into self-parody, and made a straight-faced TV show based on the same premise. The final episode of 30 Days featured a woman who "binged" on alcohol every day for thirty days. The episode was of course complete with the usual anti-capitalist jabs at the marketing and advertising practices of the liquor industry.

The parody film makes the important point that this of course isn't how manufacturers intend for their product to be used. Just about anything taken in in excess probably isn't going to be great for your health. And even the most aggressive of marketing campaigns don't recommend you consume one company's food or beverage product to the exclusion of everything else.

In any case, marketing and advertising are more about influencing brand loyalty than about influencing behavior. Few people decide to start drinking because of a beer commercial. Lots of people who have already decided to drink will switch brands (or, more likely, move to higher-priced brands) because of a beer or liquor ad.

Les Sayer

Sayer is a biology professor who replicated Spurlock's thirty-day experiment to teach his students about how the documentary medium can be abused to further a political agenda. The difference between Sayer and Spurlock: Sayer didn't deliberately double his daily calorie intake, nor did he stop exercising. He ate three meals per day at McDonalds, diversified what he ate, and was able to keep his calorie count between 2,000 and 3,000. Over 30 days, he lost 17 pounds. His blood pressure dropped. And his cholesterol basically remained the same. He suffered none of the effects Spurlock shows in Super Size Me.

Wiki

Someone kindly listed this site on Morgan Spurlock's Wikipedia entry.

I clicked over, however, and saw that the body of Spurlock's entry didn't contain a single sentence laying out the position of Super Size Me critics. So I added the following, which I think is a pretty fair assessment of their criticisms:

Spurlock's critics contend that his movie was a dishonest depiction of how fast food -- or any food, really -- fits in with a regular diet. Spurlock deliberately ate 5,000 calories per day, more than twice what's recommended. It isn't difficult, in fact, to eat a McDonalds diet for each meal at under 2,000 calories per day (including a double cheeseburger and fries for dinner). Spurlock also intentionally avoided any physical activity during his McDonalds diet. That such a drastic diet-exercise regimine would cause deleterious effects on his health, critics say, is self-evident. Five thousand calories per day of any food will cause immediate, noticeable weight gain in all but the most serious and rigorous of athletes.

We'll see if it stays up.

More Source Abuse

In Super Size Me, Spurlock interviews Jacob Sullum of Reason Magazine. Here's how Sullum describes the interview:

The movie pays virtually no attention to the individualist critique of the war on fat, instead depicting it as a struggle between public-spirited activists and greedy corporations. When Spurlock interviewed me for the movie, I tried to interest him in the paternalism angle. At one point I suggested that it may soon be socially acceptable to publicly hector fat people for their unhealthy habits, just as it is acceptable to hector smokers. The appropriate response in either case, I suggested, is: "Fuck you. Mind your own business." He ended up using that bit of the interview, mainly to establish the background of rising concern about rising weight.

Sullum later viewed Super Size Me at a D.C. film festival, and left with this impression:

I suspect that idea would be alien to most of the audience at the D.C. film festival, which seemed to consist almost entirely of people who buy organic food, take a dim view of SUVs, and think recycling is self-evidently virtuous. Aside from a lone skeptic who was booed back to his seat, Spurlock's sharpest critics were people who loved the movie but wished he had paid more attention to the trash generated by fast food packaging or the connection between socioeconomic status and obesity. Watching Spurlock bask in the praise of all these like-minded people, who were congratulating themselves by congratulating him, left me feeling rather like he did after forcing down his first supersize cheeseburger meal.

Pretty clear where Sullum comes down on the movie's message, isn't it?

Bizarrely, here's how Spurlock characterizes Sullum's take on the obesity issue, in an interview with the L.A. Weekly:

L.A. Weekly: In the film, Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine asks whether it will eventually be socially acceptable to hector fat people the way smokers are hectored now. What do you think about that?

Spurlock: I think that would be terrible. But I think he's just raising the question of where we draw the line between corporate responsibility and personal responsibility. What can I control, and what is so heavily pounded into me through marketing and advertising and the lack of better food in my neighborhood or in my school? Where is that fine line? There are things that have to change.

Either Spurlock is completely ignorant of and oblivious to the idea of personal responsibility, or he deliberately mischaracterized Sullum's position. Neither says much about his credibility. Sullum is a consistent, principled civil libertarian. Here's what he writes about one of Spurlock's favorite themes, that parents are overwhelmed by the marketing and advertsing "pounded" into their children:

Please. If parents don't have the wherewithal to say no when their kids ask for something they saw on TV, their problems go far beyond the risk of chubby offspring.

And here's what Sullum says about the way Spurlock characterized him in that L.A. Weekly interview:

I was startled to see how Spurlock . . . explained my comment.

[...]

Actually, I was saying that how much people weigh is their own business, and that meddling do-gooders -- the heroes of Super Size Me -- ought to be put in their place.

This seems to be a common problem with Spurlock. He regularly attributes claims and opinions to sources that, when checked, take the exact opposite position Spurlock attributes to them.

See here for a similar example from his book.