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Supersizing America: Fatness and Post‐9/11 Cultural Anxieties
Author(s) -
BAILEY COURTNEY
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the journal of popular culture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.238
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1540-5931
pISSN - 0022-3840
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2010.00752.x
Subject(s) - the arts , citation , media studies , library science , history , sociology , advertising , art , visual arts , computer science , business
A T THE 2004 SUMMIT ON OBESITY, SPONSORED BY TIME AND ABC NEWS, US Surgeon General Richard Carmona made the following observation: ‘‘As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years . . . it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the threat from within.’’ Although Carmona’s analogy may seem hyperbolic, it nonetheless suggests that similar anxieties underlie both the ‘‘war on obesity’’ and the ‘‘war on terrorism.’’ The film Super Size Me, also released in 2004, provides a particularly interesting articulation of these anxieties, which revolve around American expansion and American vulnerability in a post-9/11 world. Super Size Me follows filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s month-long experiment in fast food consumption and charts the gradual deterioration of his physical health. Made for US$60,000, the film brought in US$11 million at the domestic box office, making it one of the highest grossing documentaries in US history. Along with the requisite DVD release, the film has also spawned a book by Spurlock, two TV series, and a counterdocumentary called Downsize Me.