1. Supersize Me essay: By Karen Pang
Supersize Me is styled in part as a direct cinema documentary, which means all of the people filmed
wouldn’t be speaking from a script, making their responses genuine. The purpose of this
documentary is to highlight to Americans (target audience) the increase of obesity in people due to
fast food. Morgan will be taking on a 30 days experiment, which requires him to have fast food from
McDonalds’ three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also he would be restricted to a
limited walks to achieve before needing to take a taxi, for the result to be accurate he would be
monitored by three professional doctors whist on this diet.
There were many negative elements shown of America, for example they interviewed a first grader’s
gym teacher in an appropriate mise-en-scene background of a basketball court, he was framed
nicely in a Rule of Third on the left hand side with room space. He says worryingly that ‘these
children only have 45 minutes of exercise a week,’ which is below the average amount children
should/need to have. Another statement which strongly supports this is ‘We’re good at sick care but
bad at health care,’ the American society doesn’t do enough to prevent sickness this is similar to
another issue raised there wasn’t enough awareness of the calories in McDonald’s meals. When
Morgan went around a handful of McDonalds to find a leaflet or the calories board, most of them
are hidden behind board advertisements or aren’t even displayed, as one of the staff had to go
down to the basement to get it and show him. This was all presented in a style of Mockumentary,
kind of humours and not serious like. As there was light paced music, making it seems almost fun
watching them trying to find these boards and leaflet. But if the McDonald’s company wants to
highlight this point why is it so ‘hard’ to find this health risk information.
The second negative point is that secondary schools don’t have fresh food. A female chef was
interviewed again not scripted. Just their own genuine opinions and facts, all of this is for it to be
realistic, she was interviewed in her working uniform. The background was the kitchen to add to the
authenticity, and the large storage room full of unopened boxes. She said, ‘the only equipment I
need is a ‘pen knife’ to open all these boxes which contains processed food. All she needs to do is re-
heat it and serve at a similar price as fresh food. And these schools are filled with food/snack and
soda machines. The companies that provide this processed food are fast food brand companies
trying to advertise themselves in whatever way possible. Another statement that support this,
’people care about money before the health of students.’ Is this the reality we live in? Maybe it is, as
there are ’86 McDonalds’ in Manhattan alone. This was shown in a graphic animated picture of
Manhattan with sign posts signalling where these fast food shops are located.
However, there are ‘some’ positive representations of America. The young offenders’ school have a
healthy diet, where all their food is freshly made. This was all shown during the interview with the
person in charge of this area who gave a tour from the kitchen, to the canteen, to the classrooms,
mostly on filmed on a tripod, as it’s a very steady filming. Their feedback was that the students are
calmer and they find it easier to concentrate whist in class. He said, ‘I’ll never change this diet plan,’
as it provides a lot more benefit.
Morgan’s girlfriend a vegan is an important character of this documentary, as it shows there is
another diet, not just fast food. There were many close up shots of the food she eats, which are
mostly greens with veg mixture. This I find shows a huge contrast, the food she has compared to
Morgan’s diet on burgers and supersize chips and coke. Another positive point, is that they have

2. many health clubs. And they did whist filming try to make this fast food show unbiased, which is
extremely difficult; McDonald’s didn’t agree to be interviewed to share their side of the story which
puts them in a guilty position.
The whole documentary was clearly chapter with captions and related graphic pictures. Using
videodiaries, for example the time Morgan got up one morning and felt very ill, hard to breath etc
and another when he felt low and the solution was to have a McDonalds. This was major
information as it showed Morgan is at the stage where he is addicted to the food. The result were
that after he had a McDonalds he felt much happier, better than ever. When they were trying to
empathies the point why adults were trying have McDonalds.
They used many Archival Footage of old adverts, cartoon, and musical from McDonalds. The experts
being interviewed in a private office said, ‘they try to get that warm fuzzy feeling they had when
they were kids’, is this the reason why they give in top fast food so easily? It isn’t so hard to believe
due to nearly all the children recognize the picture of the clown.
And it’s a very realistic documentary of some of the things they captured on a hand held camera,
once when Morgan was having his first Supersize meal he vomited out of the car window, the
camera man had a good shot of his vomit and when Morgan accidentally dropped his Supersize coke
on the floor. Many zoom ins’ on food, showing exactly how big they food really are, Morgan said,
‘this burger actually looks like the one from the picture.’ The music they used are quite humours for
example one of the lines of the song, ‘I hope you get fat ‘furthermore, there were some happy
sounding song was in the background of a very serious surgery. Note: they had many straight cuts, as
it’s conventional filming for documentaries.
In conclusion, you could say there have been some changes after the film was aired. McDonalds
removed the Supersize option from the menu however; they claim it had nothing to do with the film.
The results collected from this experiment were also surprising to doctors regarding what fast food
can do to a person, for example the effect was that it had nearly enteral killed the liver.
Some schools they interviewed had removed the snack machines and replaced them with juice,
water and healthy snacks.
The film ended on a positive note a positive ending was reached.