With every new scene in the movie, we come up with a perception that Linklater simply covers his genuine message with an allegory of fast food nation. While watching it, we understand that it is unbelievably hard to get away from vicious circle. We are going to see how the companies decide what we eat, how people lose the parts of their bodies working on an assembly line, how the circumstances affect ordinary people in the plant, how they try to find the purpose of their life and to maintain their existence with relatively normal income.
On the one hand, we are able to assume that these people have their dreams. The sales manager does not want to move again. For this reason, he should work for the company. Amber wants to go to the college and keeps working in the café. Fortunately, she is the one who could leave the vicious circle. However, we are not able to say the same about poor Mexicans. They have to work on the assembly line where everything serves as a tool to increase sales and attract customers to splash out. On the other hand, we should admit that Richard Linklater was eager to show us that we resemble a stupid herd of cows that eat all the time and do not want to change their lives, even when the fence is gone. While making this assumption, we could also refer to the slogan of the movie “Are we what we eat?” The director uses this parallel in order to highlight the idea of “pennies a pound” – all people are greedy. Their whole life is focused on the power of money.
In fact, we are able to notice how vividly the director dismember capitalism in his movie. He takes the knife and goes to the kill floor in order to show the guts of the beautiful picture that the customers usually see in the ads. He highlights that this picture consists of exploitation of illegal immigrants and low-cost labor, a specially created monitoring system of consumers’ demand, cheap chemicals that creates stimulating scents, and plants that are working twenty-four hours a day to supply everyone with “The Big One.”
In this film, we are not going to find a protagonist. Every character has its own role because the story shows the things that each of us can see every day. If to be honest, the things that come into existence because of our own actions. For example, have you ever wondered where the meat is taken for your hamburger? What are the living conditions of the cows that give their flesh to us? How do people kill these cows in the plants? Who are those people? Why should you listen to the same lines every time you enter the corporation of evil? Do you have an opportunity to see the real picture with your own eyes and make a good choice whether you are going to continue your participation in the mass massacre of lively creatures and moral norms or start taking responsibility for what we actually commit and stop it (David, 1952)? Apart from these questions, there is much more to reflect on after watching a film.
In order to perceive the film accurately, we need to understand the tone which Linklater uses. He connects several dramatic stories in order to ironically point at the values of capitalistic American society where everyone could get cheap clothes, cheap food, equal rights, good salaries etc. He gives it a new name, Fast Food Nation, which means that we are going to ask more and more after every artificial hamburger. To my mind, the main topic of the film is an understanding that we create our products by ourselves. Our life depends on our own actions and we those who are standing on the assembly line.
References
David, N. S. (1952) ed. The Voice of the Vegetarian (Yiddish). New York: Walden Press.
