Rob Lyons
posted 13 September 2007

Richard Linklater's film, Fast Food Nation is a fiction based around the themes of Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, an exploration of the problems caused by the fast food industry in America. In the same spirit, what follows is a fiction based on a pre-cinema meal.

A Sunday evening in spring in South London. Two thirtysomething men are sitting down to eat before seeing a film.

Gordon: So, did you read the book? I must admit, it passed me by.

Bob: Yeah. It's not that Schlosser doesn't have a point - there are undoubtedly people not being paid well. Hygiene standards are probably less than perfect. Hey, remember when we went to see Gangs of New York and I had to leg it out because I had food poisoning from eating that KFC?

Gordon: Ha! Everyone thought you were shocked by the film.

Bob: Put me right off KFC for, oh, a month. But it kept calling to me. You really can't beat a Variety Meal... Yeah, so I'm sure that's all true. Fast food isn't haute cuisine and killing cows ain't an entirely pristine business. And you know that immigrants end up with all the shitty jobs. I mean, that's true everywhere. Who works in these service sector jobs, anyway?

Gordon: Students and immigrants generally.

Bob: Exactly. And those are the public jobs, the ones you see. Who's cleaning the hospitals and the streets? Immigrants, or women needing to get a bit of extra cash doing it part-time. You don't need to be able to speak much English and they're flexible with the hours. They're crappy jobs but there isn't exactly a queue of people wanting to do them.

Gordon: Is anybody actually saying that's a good thing? No. People should be paid a decent wage.

Bob: Are you actually going to drown those fries in ketchup? Would you like some fried potato with that sugary, tomato goo?

Gordon: Ketchup is a vegetable. Reagan said so. Or something. Well, it's the nearest thing to a vegetable that you're gonna get in this place.

Bob: Especially since you've removed the token slice of gherkin from your burger.

Gordon: Doesn't everybody?

Bob: I think Schlosser thinks he's being really shocking. What's really shocking is that there are all these reviewers who also think that it is really shocking. Like, he makes a big deal that there are traces of shit in the beef, or that people get food poisoning. I think that Schlosser thinks we're morons. When McDonalds say 'it's 100 per cent pure beef', I assume it's not necessarily pure sirloin steak. It's gonna be cheap cuts. And if it's not cheap cuts, why bother? Do they think we'll notice? Actually, isn't using up cheap meat the whole idea of a burger, or anything involving mince?

Gordon: Actually, Mickey D's burgers are a bit boring. They should put some of the fat back. They're dry and bland at the moment. I mean, it's a burger for christ's sake. The ones you get from Iceland, you know, four for a pound, they're actually surprisingly tasty.

Bob: Exactly! We know it's crap. Actually, it's not particularly crap. Cheeseburger, fries and a drink. That's not a bad meal, actually. If you had it with orange juice, it'd be pretty good. Just don't super size it. If you eat enough food, you're going to get fat, doesn't matter what it is.

Gordon: Hang on, I think you're confusing this with a fictionalised review of Super Size Me.

Bob: Sorry. And then the reviewers go, 'Ooh, it's the most shocking portrayal of the dark underbelly of our industrialised food culture' blah blah blah. We're under the spell of the machines, they're driving our lives, we are simply dumb automatons.

Gordon: Do they think organic food is gonna feed the world? Do they think that someone's going to provide me with a hot, tasty meal of artisan food for three quid before I see a film? All balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and all that? I don't think so. Hurrah for industrialised, mass-produced rubbish! They assume that if we were only enlightened, we might see that this food is crap. We don't need them to tell us its not the best thing we could eat. But it's still really nice.

Bob: Actually, quite a lot of it's not great. If you get a fresh, well-made burger it can really hit the spot. If you get a stale one that was made by some demotivated 16-year-old who's best hope in life is to become supervisor, it's going to be disappointing.

Gordon: Well, that one was made by Gordon fucking Ramsay cos it really hit the spot.

Bob: How could you possibly tell? Everything must surely just taste of ketchup to you?

Gordon: The nice people at Heinz have produced these little sachets of exquisite, uniform, unchanging red sauce so that I never need to run the risk of having an unsatisfactory burger, because it will always just taste of the red sauce if you whack enough of it on.

Bob: You are a raconteur and no mistake.

Gordon: Merci beaucoup.

Bob: And Schlosser never gets to the $64,000 question: why don't they serve the breakfast stuff all day?

Gordon: Everybody loves that stuff. A sausage and egg McMuffin would go down a treat right now.

Bob: Do you know what they call a sausage and egg McMuffin in Paris?

Gordon: No...

Bob: No, neither do I. But I do know why the French only have one egg for breakfast.

Gordon: Because one egg is un oeuf? I think you'll find that is a very old joke.

Bob: Okay, I'm done. I'm replete with saturated fat, salt and sugar and ready for whatever a two-hour diatribe about fast food can throw at me.

Gordon: Let's do it.

The two men walk across the road into the cinema, watch a film littered with Hollywood liberals pointing out that fast food isn't all that great, working in a fast food restaurant kinda sucks, and being an illegal immigrant in America is pretty much the smelly end of the stick. They leave, unmoved.