There’s literally a section in the documentary where his doc is like ‘You’re getting liver damage from this diet. I don’t believe it. I’ve only ever seen this from alcoholics.’
There’s literally a section in the documentary where his doc is like ‘You’re getting liver damage from this diet. I don’t believe it. I’ve only ever seen this from alcoholics.’
Tells you something about the impact it had that people would still try to discredit it all those years later! What’s OP’s point, eh? McD every day is gonna be healthy if you don’t drink. Get outta here!
No, I think their point was more the fact that it’s heralded by people as a great study but is massively flawed and with obvious outcomes. There wasn’t really anything stringent done in the documentary. Any impact it had was purely from shit people already knew. He had no controlled experiments and was an active alcoholic during it.
My point, personally, is that people who reference Supersize Me in any capacity as a valid documentary or study is someone who is either uneducated or a fool. There’s little difference in holding this documentary to your chest and referring to it or in doing the same thing to Joe Rogan or Bill Maher’s Religulous. It’s low-effort garbage that’s not made for intellectual consumption but is still used for it anyway.
That’s kinda problematic.
That’s my point.
Media and documentaries are not scientific studies! But they get people talking. And they get scientific studies funded because you can point to the movie’s success and say “look, this is an important subject”. And they get politicians regulating because they can see the people care. Whether the movie was actually influential or a product of the zeitgeist I’m not sure.
I’m going to give you an argument describing why i think you’re correct but also why you’re getting pushback. I’m basing this off the greek discursive appeal structures i’ve been reading about lately, because its fun to try to apply them here.
Firstly, if people say its a great ‘scientific study’ where you hear it, correct them. Its sad but thats often all we can reasonably do. If they refer to it as a great study in humanity, then maybe it is. After all Supersize Me was about the mostly unconsidered and wildly successful upselling technique that had passed into the culture of the time. So, what does that say about us?
Pathos
Supersize Me is an exercise mostly based on an appeal to Pathos. An argument based around an emotional appeal.
My stab at the key emotional switch employed would be turning the blasé attitude around the then common, comfortable upselling practice “would you like that supersized?”, to a feeling of angst when those words are spoken. I think Supersize Me was largely successful in that appeal.
Emotional switch: Blasé->Angst.
I found Michael Moore’s documentary styles also relied heavily on Pathos. So maybe the style was de rigeur at the time.
The big question is, did these documentary makers pass from persuasion into manipulation? This is the same as the question your asking when refering to his undisclosed alcoholism during filming. Which is why i think you’re argument that the documentary wasn’t fairly done is right. Theres a manipulation at its heart.
But that doesn’t defeat the very real effects that emotional switch from blasé->angst about the practice had.
So a successful but manipulative documentary?
Logos
The argument i read in your comments assumes the documentary should primarily appeal to logos. Or a persuasion tactic based in logic. No controlled experiments for example.
While there are probably plenty of examples of this throughout the documentary, I wouldn’t say this is the primary appeal he relies on.
The obvious conclusions of the poor diet is a good example of an appeal to logos. But not very persuasive on its own, because no one needed to watch it to draw the conclusion that poor diets equal poor health. At least most didn’t.
Another thought,
Its a documentary, its not necessarily an exercise in absolute honesty. Few documentaries can claim such an authoritative place.
I think its maybe why Louis Theroux has belatedly become so highly respected. Not because he was authoritative in the beginning, but so much of what he presented has since been borne out. Maybe his documentary series matched the changing realisations of the times, so have had a kind of Kairos?
So in other words, the documentary was so successful in decrying the rampant hyperconsumption that was accepted in its time, that such rampant is no longer considered acceptable or normal. And on that basis, you consider it to be facile, obvious… “problematic”?
No shit its conclusions were already obvious to educated people. They were never the target demographic. Literally nobody references Supersize Me as a “study”. It isn’t, and it hasn’t ever claimed to be. It’s a shock story to grab the attention of the least well-informed segment of the population. That you’re trying to call it out for not succeeding at being something it never claimed to be, and even more so for succeeding at the thing it did try to be, is not a problem with the documentary.
Whenver you come up with similarly hot takes, the comments always end up being filled with a you offering litany of obtuse bad reasoning.
No. It was based off of a lie and people don’t mention that. But sure, invent whatever you want.
I was literally shown it in school as a teenager while the entire time it was referred to as a study. I’ve also had numerous conversations with people who call it a study. Moreover, my post claimed that people TREAT it as a study. So, yes. People do claim it to be but I never even claimed that they did. You are not an infinite font of knowledge, you don’t know everything.
You’ve made one comment on one of my posts. A post where I said I didn’t like chocolate plugs being introduced at the bottom of ice-cream cones that otherwise have no chocolate there-in. Both you and everyone else in that thread had a fucking meltdown at the concept of an ice-cream cone that had no chocolate anywhere else other than the plug. They exist. I live in Canada. While the meme was talking about Cornettos specifically, I was just generally talking about ice-cream cones. You, however, refused to accept this as possibility. Instead, you acted like your own failed understanding of what was being said as the reality of what was being said. Much like in the comment I’m replying to now, you projected fucking hard and got angry at me over it. It’s boring and a waste of my time.
Your failed grasp at what is being said does not equate to reality. Reply to this or don’t. I don’t care. I’ll never see it.
It wasn’t a study. It was a stunt. The stunt worked. People ate less fast food, and laws were passed restricting the companies ability to market to children.
Not to mention that McD’s discontinued the Super Size option.
I’m not saying it was a study, I’m saying people refer to it as one or treat it as one with alarming regularity.
Some people are stupid and they will believe anything that they see on TV. With how this documentary was framed as well, a lot of people just went about their lives assuming it was something that was reviewed and unflawed. There is a reason it was such a big deal when it came out he was an alcoholic during filming. About half of the documentary becomes completely worthless because we now know he was seriously lying during filming about what he was consuming. Which suddenly calls the entire thing into question because if he’s willing to slide on something as major as that, then what is the value of the rest of it?
Wasn’t exactly hard to discredit.