Supersize me analysis

Supersize me

The documentary I will be analysing and discussing is called Supersize Me. This particular documentary is performative because the filmmaker is making himself the vocal point of this documentary. Performative is considered the most honest kind of documentary, for we see them on their daily life talking about what they've done and exactly how they're feeling at the time. Performative documentaries are often mistaken with reflexive documentaries because the filmmaker sits in front of the camera, but it is not. The documentary America’s Most Hated Family mad by Louis Theroux is a reflexive documentary but he does not always get in front of the camera, he mainly interviews the family and gets their view on things, whereas in Supersize me Morgan Spurlock gives his own opinion on things and also talks to the camera as though it is his diary. Having the filmmaker also being the ‘guinea pig’ can be very complicating but also, as said before, very honest, as we can see him getting others point of view but we know its primary sources for he goes to find this information out himself on the camera.

Supersize me is a documentary about a man named Morgan Spurlock doing an experiment a based on the famous worldwide fast food restaurant; McDonald’s. He understands that McDonald’s isn’t good for us and that in America, obesity is a very big issue. He decides to make a documentary about doing an experiment of himself eating only McDonald’s for thirty days, no exceptions.
The documentary begins with a group of children singing a popular cheesy song “Pizza hut, Pizza hut, Kentucky fried chicken and a Pizza hut...... McDonald’s!!!!...” They cleverly used this clip of the children singing as it undermines the restaurants and shows how the children’s minds have been tainted to believe that McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants are perfectly okay and even fun to be at. They are taught to believe this even before they’re taught simple things in school such as punctuation.
Supersize Me mainly shows real footage. He tends to speak directly to the camera and if he is either speaking to somebody else or showing a clip of something, he normally uses voiceovers which give the audience a sense of comfort and trust. If we hear him speak about what he’s doing then get a load of other people to give facts and opinions, most viewers tend to get bored and not actually believe everything that is being said nevertheless, hearing Morgan speak for himself, being such a normal person that is just like any of us, we can relate and people generally think more about it when seeing somebody that’s not so different to them do an experiment like this. There are also technicalities of realism within the documentary as they things like natural lighting throughout, use of natural sounds such as traffic and other outdoor noise etc.
He also uses footage such as advertisements of McDonald’s when it was first established to its recent days which shows the progression of the restaurant and how much the company have grown. Within the documentary, Morgan visits the doctors to see how his health is coming along since starting this experiment and the doctor give primary information as he informs both Morgan and the viewers that if he continues eating this amount, he could actually die. This again give the documentary a sense of realism. Morgan then goes to visit people that are in fact greatly overweight, obese even, and he asks them how they got to that weight and they then inform Morgan that McDonald’s (as well as other fast food) will make you overweight and eating as much as Morgan was, will not make you overweight, but will make you obese.