For my junior theme, I am planning on investigating the
social hierarchies of fast food corporations and tying them back to the slave
industry. In an effort to jumpstart my thinking, I decided to watch a movie
called Fast Food Nation, a movie about a mock McDonalds company called
Mickey’s, which supposedly was using bad meat in their most famous burger, “The
Big One.” The movie investigated the lives of a wealthy white marketing manager
in the company, teenagers working in the restaurants themselves, and illegal
immigrants working in the meat processing plant for Mickey’s. Here’s a preview
of the movie to give a better idea of what the movie is all about:
After
actually watching the movie, I was horrified at some of the things that went
on, even if this was just a made up story. But, it was all based on real
statistics, real facts, and real stories coming from fast food restaurants
(hint: McDonalds possibly?). The movie depicts some of the things the
immigrants had to go through, such as getting raped or having sex to get a job
in the first place, horrible work conditions, one many actually had his leg
severed off in the meat mincer, another man got a concussion and other
injuries, which unfortunately needed to eventually get paid off by his family
who already had no money.
On the other side of things, the
marketing manager was given a false taste of reality when he came in. He asked
to get a tour of the meat processing plant, and was only shown parts of the
plant, or at least the better parts. He was told there was fecal matter in the
meat by an expert, but when he went in to the actual plant, he was given no
reason to believe such a fact. Luckily, he was able to find another man who
actually told him the truth about was going on in there. However, had he not
found that man, he would never of known a thing about that plant.
I then began to wonder if this is
how all fast food corporations work today. Are there immigrant workers in the
meat processing plants of all fast food companies? Do the workers work under as
poor of conditions as depicted in the movie? I believe there is a hierarchy in
these fast food industries. They had to develop from somewhere, and they seem
to mirror the slave industry very closely…
To be continued…
I think the fast food industry is really interesting too Anna. I also wonder if this is actually how fast food companies work, but I don't think I really want to know either. Although I hardly (if ever) eat at fast food restaurants, do I really want to know what's in the food as long as it's good?
ReplyDeleteAnd in response to your question about hierarchy, there absolutely is one. I may not know a whole lot about the industry, but I'm quite certain that many companies lure illegal immigrants into working at these plants. The company managers/bosses know the immigrants need money so they force them to work in terrible conditions because the immigrants can't afford to quite otherwise. I'm pretty confident in saying that with out the use of illegal immigrants, the fast food industry would not nearly be as successful. The companies are designed to trap workers at the bottom, and drive sales through the roof and into the pockets of the CEO. Kind of sounds like the sweatshops in China and India, huh? Maybe we're just being ignorant to the fact that a similar process is happening on our soil: "The Land of the Free".