Friday, June 28, 2024

So you've been entertained by drag all your life, why is it a problem now? Part II

 Now, to be fair, I don’t want to come off as completely anti-drag.  As I said I’m still being entertained by certain drag performers, and they can be very entertaining.  I did attempt to watch some drag performances before writing this blog.   It consisted of about 5-10 minutes of RuPaul Drag Race All-Stars and, well, let’s just say a few minutes of some of those drag stars going into lewd sexual territory with their performance was enough to turn me off.  RuPaul is a much classier drag queen than what I was seeing on screen of the next generation of drag queen stars.    I also attempted to research the history of drag with it being either an acronym for those aforementioned Shakespearian young actors dressing as a girl to play opposite their fellow actors and complaining about the way their floor length costumes would drag on the ground.   [i]  Part of the reason why Shakespeare had to have a boy play a girl in his plays was because ironically Elizabethan women were meant to just be at home raising the kids.  If a real Elizabethan woman decided to be Juliet to Romeo in Shakespeare’s day she would have been considered a hussy for kissing a man not her husband. I vehemently disagree with Elizabethan era gender role assumptions but that was the attitude back 500 years ago.

 Drag has always been tied to theater performances and not necessarily to real life.   So, in some ways I can understand how drag can be used to question gender norms especially since a lot of gender norms seem somewhat arbitrarily pushed onto people as they are born and can change over time and from culture to culture.  For example, boys in the 19th and early 20th century wore pink and girls wore blue [ii]  if you were rich enough to buy multiple colored clothing for your baby to begin with.   Most parents back then kept both baby boys and girls in white dresses which make sense as it is easier to change a dirty diaper from underneath a dress.  I know as I write this post, I am wearing a pair of pants. I may have been accused of cross dressing in the 1800’s because only men wore pants then.   In the culture of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzanian women have short hair and male warriors have luscious long braided locks.  [iii]   Heck, in a somewhat obligatory reference to my favorite show ‘The Chosen” for my blogpost I realize most of the actors are wearing tunics of various sizes and lengths which was the style of 1st century AD Palestine even though some other Asian cultures like the Persians may have worn pants[iv]   since the 6th century BC.  When you think about it a tunic is simply a masculine style dress in the same vein as a Scotsman’s kilt is a masculine version of the skirt. So, maybe it’s a good thing from time to time to question those gender norms. 

However, even though I am entertained by watching some drag performances, part of me is wondering if I should be entertained by drag performances.

Here is an interesting thought experiment to illustrate my point. Say, for example, Facebook was a thing back in the 1960’s or 1970’s or even maybe as early as the 1980’s and someone created a meme using the following images.  Please note, do not re-create what I am proposing!  There is a reason I’m about to use a hundred words or so to paint this meme and I still need Facebook to promote my blog.  You’re more than welcome to Google these images on your own and good luck Googling anything after that. 

Image #1-a poster promoting Clarence “Tom” Ashley performing country & western songs.

Image #2-a screen shot of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland performing in “Babes in Arms”

Image #3- a screen shot of Al Jolson from “The Jazz Singer.”

Image #4-a screen shot of Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds performing “Abraham” from the movie “Holiday Inn.”

Image #5- Lawrence Olivier from Shakespeare’s “Othello”

Image #6- Fred Astaire impersonating Bojangles in “Swing Time”

Image #7- Walter Long from D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”

Image #8- Brer Bear, Fox, and Rabbit from Disney’s “Song of the South”

And in the center this statement “You’ve been entertained by minstrel shows your whole life.  Don’t pretend you have a problem with them now.”  

Because, duh, starting in the 1960’s we realized blackface minstrel shows are a huge problem!  Blackface minstrel shows perpetuates a horrific stereotype of African Americans as dumb happy savages and was/is incredibly cruel and insulting to the numerous African American performers then and now like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Richard Pryor, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, Diane Carroll, Cicely Tyson etc. as well as the rest of the African American race.   I would much rather watch Lawrence Fishburne as Othello than the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time in blackface. The last white actor to sort of wear blackface was Robert Downey Jr. in 2008’s “Tropic Thunder” which the filmmakers did call out on screen was wrong but that was part of the gag.  Yes, I have watched some of those movies where the stars went blackface.  I may be one of the last human beings on the planet to have seen Disney’s “Song of the South”, a film the NAACP protested when it 1st debuted in theaters in [v]  1946 but was still part of the Disney re-release rotation to movie theaters in 1986 when I saw it.  I was entertained as a kid by “Song of the South” and other minstrel show performances in movies and TV shows, but now I feel I need to put on a hairshirt and flagellate myself for laughing along with Brer Rabbit in his laughing place that made many an African American feel miserable. 

So, the more I’ve analyzed this drag performance meme, and drag in general, the more I realized something.    A drag performance is often a chauvinist minstrel show on the same level as those white entertainers who performed in blackface for the minstrel circuit in the late 19th and early 20th century.    Think about it, most men who perform in drag are not going to base their appearance on how I look at 5:30 on a Tuesday morning, my puffy eyes reflecting the 3-5 hours of sleep I shorted myself the night before, my graying dishwater blonde hair very disheveled and gnarly, and my lips looking like they belong on a Peanuts character  rather than on the face of a seductive model in a girlie magazine.  I look this way as I wake up at 5:30 am because in a gesture of love and devotion I make my husband’s lunch before he leaves for work around 6:30 am and I still need to wash up the dinner dishes from the previous night I was too tired to wash before washing myself up, putting on a layer of office appropriate makeup, and leaving for my job after making my lunch and some coffee around 8 am.  Yet, as I stare at myself in the mirror in the early morning hours, I know I am a woman, a real woman with the need to try and fit in with society’s ever changing and often contradictory definition of what a woman is.  A drag artist, on the other hand, goes all glamor in their dresses with over-the-top makeup, false eyelashes, high heels, falsetto voices and bouffant wigs to portray an image of Barbie doll womanhood Barbie herself lamented was impossible for women to live up to in her billion-dollar blockbuster Warner Brothers movie.  On the other side of the drag spectrum some drag performers make every woman look like some slutty grotesque clownish bitch.   I am never that over the top in my glamor as a woman and I hope even when my body is hurting from that time of the month, and I really want to be a bitch I try my best to hold it in. The only time in my life I may go over the top glamor is on a formal occasion like a wedding, or an awards/corporate formal banquet or other significant event and I think this is true of most women nowadays.   

 As much as some conservatives have an irrational fear of a drag performer turning their children trans, I could also see a drag performance being insulting to a transgender woman who at least wants to be a woman with their own puffy eyes and disheveled long hair and Peanuts mouth at 5:30 on a Tuesday morning.   I can even see how drag may be insulting to some gay men who may not want to see a stereotype of them being flagrantly effeminate over the top high heeled sexual fops when just like that gay pride flag homosexuals also come in a rainbow range of personality types.  The closest drag performance as an unglamourous woman might be famous 1980’s Drag star Divine and his performance as Edna Turnblad in the original 1988 “Hairspray” during the at home segments.  However, even Divine was portraying more of a stereotype of a disheveled distraught housewife than what an actual disheveled distraught 1960’s housewife would have looked like.

Let’s look at an image from that drag meme-Robin Williams as “Mrs. Doubtfire” to see what I mean about a drag performance as a chauvinist minstrel show.   I am a huge Robin Williams fan.  You would think I would love Williams’ performance as Mrs. Doubtfire since it’s one of his most iconic movie characters.    Truth is, I’ve never been able to get through an entire viewing of  ”Mrs. Doubtfire” until this blog when I forced myself to watch it to the end.   Robin Williams plays Mrs. Doubtfire as a stereotypical image of what a British nanny would be like instead of the chocolate covered fingerprint stains on their comfortable pants and shoes, I’m sure most nannies (British or otherwise) wear nowadays.   Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire also shows the stereotypical male clueless moments about traditional female chores like cooking where he burns the food and then nearly burns himself. (The irony being that many women chefs are still fighting for equality and respect in a male dominated restaurant industry).  There’s also shoe on other foot moment where a male sexual harasser becomes the victim of sexual harassment as they gain unwanted attention from a man while they are in drag.   There’s the complaint about the shoes and pantihose whose sole purpose is to make a woman more attractive even if it ends up making their bodies very uncomfortable.   No woman really wants to wear pantihose and high heels on a routine basis.  But we feel we have to wear these uncomfortable things because we are judged not by our thoughts and actions but on how attractive we are.     Ultimately, I guess I was mostly turned off watching my beloved Mork from Ork being nasty to my mother’s beloved Remington Steele while they both vie for the love of America’s beloved Gidget as opposed to Williams going effeminate as Mrs. Doubtfire.   So no, I wasn’t that entertained by Robin Williams in drag.

Because this is what I realize many a drag performance is about.   In some ways drag acknowledges some of the impossible standards that women have to face when men change their comfortable loafers for high heels, but at the end of the day a drag artist can remove their makeup and big hair wigs and relax going “Thank god I’m a man” and don’t have to worry about those petty female things on a day-to-day basis.       

There are also times when drag doesn’t work or cannot work.  I know there are also drag kings where women dress as men.   However, a woman’s biology prevents her from coming across as a man.  Her voice will always be higher pitched than a man’s unless she’s managed to down a few dozen East German vitamins[vi] .   Most female drag performers play young boys like how Broadway’s “Peter Pan” is always played by a woman because boys have not undergone puberty and have the higher pitched voice.  Only Julie Andrews as a true female soprano could hit the high notes in “Victor/Victoria”. Even cross dressing has its limits, which is something the members of Monty Python also agreed to.    A classic example is their famous “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK” song/skit.    The joke wouldn’t have worked if Cleese or Idle wore a dress & bra looking like their dear mama playing the lumberjack’s best girl.   The other Pythons realized they needed the skills of an actual actress hence the need of the 7th Python-Carol Cleveland.   She appeared in 33 of the original 45 episodes and per another Netflix documentary[vii] I watched on Monty Python, they fought to keep her because they knew she was the only one who got their absurdist sense of humor such as her overly dramatic reaction to finding out how effeminate her beloved macho lumberjack was.        

 I have not studied philosophy to any type of degree where I can answer a philosophical argument of what is a woman per that Matt Walsh’s documentary of the same name.  I’ll leave that up to Simone de Beauvoir and her book “The Second Sex.”    It’s right up there with whether falling trees make noises in deserted forests.  I’m not a legal expert like supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, for all of the grief that senator must have gotten when he asked her during her US Senate confirmation “What is a Woman”, he knew it was highly probable some harry oaf of an XY Homo Sapin whose urethra and gonads are prominently displayed on the outside of their body would sue a local police department for violating their civil rights when they were arrested for being naked in a locker room primarily meant for XX Homo Sapiens whose urethras and gonads are kept on the inside of their body and whose mammary glands have swelled up as a result of naturally produced estrogen/progesterone around the age of 12 when that harry oaf of an XY Homo Sapin promptly declared “I am a woman” as the police arrested them.     I just know, to use the words of a song I heard as a child a woman is supposed to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, remind our man how much of a man he is and still find enough energy to clean the bacon grease out of the frying pan we fried the bacon we brought home hours before and that is stressful!   I know that I will on some level always be belittled and denied any level of agency or intelligence because I am a woman.  I just know it’s hard to be a woman nowadays and I don’t need some man in drag to belittle that reality by making fun of the concept of womanhood, even if it is very entertaining.   

 

 

 


[vii] Netflix Monty Python Almost the Truth Copyright 2009

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024

So you’ve been entertained by drag all your life, why is it a problem now? Part I

Awhile back a Facebook friend reposted a GIF explaining how we have been entertained by people cross dressing aka transvestitism aka drag all our lives. So why is there such a public uproar now in certain predominantly Republican leaning states like Tennessee that theoretically bans such cross-dressing performances now and are persecuting those who represent the T in LGBTQ+.

To be clear, laws like the ones in Tennessee only forbid “Adult cabaret performance in the presence of minors”.   Nashville, Knoxville, or Memphis TN could host the next RuPaul Drag Race contest if RuPaul & staff make sure everyone who attends/participates in the contest is above the age of 21.  Still, why if someone wanted to have a drag queen reading hour for children at a local library would Republicans consider this to be a problem?

I know as I child I was entertained by certain cross-dressing performers.  ABC often aired the old Bugs Bunny Loony Toons cartoons and Bugs frequently crossed dressed.  As I was researching this blog post I found out Bugs cross-dressed a total of 40 times in the cartoons.[i]    And yes, I was entertained by this.   I watched the TV show that gave Tom Hanks his big break “Bosom Buddies” when it 1st aired on ABC.[i]  The show featured Hanks & co-star Peter Scolari dressing in drag to be able to live in a cheap women’s only apartment building, which I guess was still a thing in the early 1980’s.  I was disappointed when it was cancelled.   I also watched Monty Python skits where Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, and Michael Palin kept up the Royal Shakespeare Company’s tradition of men playing women’s roles despite the fact Royal Shakespearian actresses have been bringing women’s roles to life since 1660.[ii] And yes, I laughed.   One of my favorite bands growing up was Culture Club which of course featured famous transvestite Boy George.  I didn’t care that Boy George look more like a girl than a boy.   The songs were catchy good, and I enjoyed listening to them. Lately I’ve been watching Randy Rainbow’s YouTube channel and he frequently cross-dresses in his political parody videos.  I especially love the “Grumpy Trumpy Felon from Jamacia in Queens”[ii] with his homage parody of the Andrew sisters.  I could watch that video a dozen times or more.  So yes, I like it when Mr. Rainbow goes drag. 

 But what has changed?   Why suddenly is there a panic that somehow if a child encounters a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed like a man it will lead to a damaging and exaggerated claim of that child being molested in the future?  

Because this is the 2020’s and the world has changed and remained the same at the same time.

I’m a Gen X er and like a lot of Gen Xers growing up I watched some of the groundbreaking PBS children shows like “Mister Rogers Neighborhood.”  I loved Mr. Rogers and his songs that explained the feelings I may be feeling.  However, because I was only four years old, I naturally didn’t have the verbiage/understanding to express those feelings in a positive way. Mr. Rogers took his role of children’s educator seriously and often consulted early childhood experts to make sure each one of his young viewers did indeed feel special and loved.    I’m still a fan of Mr. Rogers and naturally gravitate towards more mature ways to partake of Mr. Rogers' wisdom such as watching a documentary exploring the origins and significance of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” on Netflix[iii].      

There was one moment in that Netflix Mr. Rogers’ documentary that caught my attention because I remember watching that particular Mr. Rogers’ episode as a child.   According to the documentary “Won’t you be my Neighbor” Rogers wanted to retire his famous Neighborhood of Make Believe and explore other more mature topics on television.    So, he introduced his young viewers to the concept of a re-run.    He walked his TV neighbors to a shed with hundreds of videotapes of his previous shows and explained essentially, he wasn’t making any more episodes, but don’t worry, there were plenty of TV shows that will air for a long time to come.     Then Fred Rodgers tried to produce a PBS show for grownups that was doing OK but not really a success.    While Fred Rogers was trying to appeal to TV viewers old enough to vote, the first superhero, super-action-adventure summer blockbuster film came out which of course was “Superman” whose comic book origins naturally had an element attractive to children. “Superman” was a major success due in no small part to the acting talents of Christopher Reeve.  Mr. Reeve had some training as a pilot and was able to contort his body on the wires in such an aerodynamic way you could believe a man can fly.     Because children have a hard time distinguishing between reality and make-believe at a young age, children thought all they had to do was tie something around their neck that acted like Superman’s cape, jump from a height and they could fly as well, leading to tragic accidents.   Per this Mr. Rogers Netflix documentary, and perhaps because Fred Rogers didn’t quite catch on with the adults as he had hoped, Mr. Rogers felt compelled to make more episodes of his kid’s TV show to make sure kids knew they couldn’t fly and that the movie Superman was make-believe, not real.          

OK, so what does Mister Rogers coming back to tell kids Superman is make-believe have to do with a rising tide of transgender phobia?

Because here’s also another fact I’ve experienced as a Gen X er.  

I had dinner at McDonalds today.   The McDonalds I got my chicken nuggets, fries and milkshake is near a grocery store I should have stopped at to get myself something a lot healthier and probably cheaper than extruded fried chicken parts, fried potatoes and an artificially flavored milkshake that may not contain any actual milk.    Why did I choose the unhealthier option?  Because back also in the 1970’s McDonalds started to target the children’s demographic aka the demographic I was a part of with Ronald McDonald & his plagiarized H. R. Pufnstuf[iv] costume creatures like Grimace, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese et al on TV.  The McDonalds’ children’s ad campaign culminated with those cartoony oversized puppets & trademarked red, white & gold colored clown appearing all over the child friendly Happy Meal box with cookies and a toy prize to play with in 1979.    It probably didn’t help that my mother is not a good cook and I’m pretty sure McDonalds is adding some type of addictive additive in the French fry oil that allows it to act like cocaine on my brain which of course was obviously still developing as a child back in the late 1970’s  & early 1980’s.     McDonalds in other words “Groomed” me to be a loyal McD  customer and now I’m prone to want it as an adult knowing full well the McDonalds French fries are just as bad for me as cigarettes and yet I can’t stop eating them!

OK, so kids are gullible.  What has this to do with someone in drag reading Mother Goose rhymes to them?

Well, it’s because kids are immature that sometimes an adult has to step in and force kids into decisions kids don’t like/won’t accept yet parents know it’s best for the kids like forcing them to eat soggy broccoli or cold peas over fast food French fries.   Idealistically, parents would want their children to consume the broccoli on their own but that probably won’t happen until their children are in their 40’s and have to reduce their cholesterol before their next checkup.   

So now that I’ve meandered completely off topic let me get back on topic.   Part of the problem may be that it’s becoming increasingly easier for someone (child or adult) to realize God may have made a mistake (except does God make mistakes?) when it comes to their birth gender and they can transition into the opposite gender if they wish.  This phenomenon was highlighted by Matt Walsh / Daily Wire’s “What is a Woman” documentary.  I went with a bootleg copy of the documentary because as much as I am a classical liberal and am broadminded enough to not take up my own side in an argument, I’m not willing to fork over $9-14 bucks a month for the privilege of entertaining an opinion/argument I may disagree with.   Matt Walsh struck me as a conservative version of documentarian Michael Moore with “What is a Woman” at times wandering into absurdist’ territory (seriously, humans believing they are a completely different species is part of LBGTQ+ now?).    However, the one thing that may have rung true in that “What is a Woman”  documentary is the notion the sudden rise in transgenderism may be a sign it’s a social contagion. [v]    This is where I rely on the reporting of someone else like the journalists who write for The Atlantic magazine.  Their July/August 2018 issue had as its cover-story how to deal with transgender youths.   Transgenderism, of course has become a buzzword and was/is gaining a lot of popularity with notable Olympic Gold Medal winning athlete/reality TV star Bruce Jenner transitioning into Caitlyn Jenner and other transgender reality TV shows such as TLC “I Am Jazz” gaining popularity in the late 2010’s. Heck there were 9.7 million TicTok reasons[iii]  why Anheuser-Busch was willing to give a couple hundred cases of Bud Light to transgender icon Dylan Mulvaney [iv]. So naturally more and more people are thinking about changing their gender or wondering if they are the right gender to begin with.  This gender identity question poses a problem for children that the Atlantic featured as an interview/YouTube video.  The Atlantic magazine spoke with a woman, who thought she was a transgender man only to realize mid-transition she was in fact a cisgender woman[vi].   She was lucky enough that she wasn’t far along enough in the treatments to allow her to return to her birth gender when the treatments stopped.  However, the article went on to explain that not everyone who undergoes transgender treatment/surgeries is able to reverse course if they change their minds later on.   Additionally, a 2023 article from The Atlantic magazine also stated that some doctors in the European Union are also reconsidering transitioning operations/treatments for children because the science is still vague/unproven. [vii]   Furthermore, while most European countries are still providing transitional care to those who young people who wish it, they are growing concerned at the rates that the need for transgender reassignment drugs/surgeries is growing.   

So yes, maybe Matt Walsh & some his Daily Wire colleagues are right to express concerns about pressuring a child to change their gender because of this social phenomenon where it’s ok or even cool to change your gender especially if the child isn’t showing the classic signs of gender dysmorphia disorder.   They just have this vague feeling they’re not right and feelings can be wrong.

 

I’m reminded of a story my grandmother frequently told to me growing up.   My maternal grandmother back in the 1920’s was known as a tomboy.   With my grandmother having five brothers it may have been understood why she preferred to do boy stuff and play with boys rather than do girly stuff.  One day my great grandfather sat my grandmother down and told her she could no longer play with the boys because she was a girl. My great grandfather naturally worried the boys would play too rough with her and not realize it.   If transgenderism was a thing in the 1920’s the way it is in the 2020’s someone would have told my grandmother she wasn’t a girl, she was a boy, pressured my great grandfather to put her on puberty blockers & testosterone and I wouldn’t exist because my mother couldn’t exit because some surgeon would have removed my grandmother’s ovaries, uterus, and mammary glands when my grandmother was still a child and didn’t know who or what she was.

Speaking of puberty blockers and other hormone treatments there are side effects of the hormone treatments like any other treatments.   Some of the side effects I’ve read for testosterone include higher blood pressure, an increased chance in blood cancer or heart attack or stroke due to higher lipids in the blood as well as liver disease.   Estrogen has similar side effects and can cause deep vein thrombosis as well.   Biological males wishing to transition to females may also take Progesterone and that may increase a chance for breast cancer for them.[i]   If parents put their transgender children on puberty blockers like GnRH it can affect their overall bone density and may make them the poster child for a Life Alert commercial around age 35.[ii]   You add in the general risks of undergoing general anesthesia to remove perfectly healthy sex organs and part of me can’t help but to wonder even if a child has a genuine case of gender dysmorphia disorder is the cure worse than the disease?   Think about it this way, if someone is suffering from anorexia, a similar body perception disease, no doctor in their right mind is going to recommend gastric-bypass surgery & prescribe weight loss pills to them just because the anorexic’s  brain is telling them their body is as grossly obese and ugly as mine.  The doctor would be sued for millions of medical malpractice dollars by the family of their anorexic patient after the anorexic dropped dead of starvation.  Why is gender dysmorphic disorder, a similar brain perception verses biological scientific literal body of truth, different in that respect?

Besides, there’s another reason why it may not be OK to be entertained by drag shows anymore.


[i] https://transline.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229373208-What-are-commonly-used-medications-for-transition-

[ii] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075


[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cross-dressing_characters_in_animated_series

[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ues8ycOxXKM

[iii] Netflix, “Won’t you be my neighbor” Copyright 2018

[iv] https://generalist.academy/2021/07/02/mcdonalds-vs-h-r-pufnstuf/

[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contagion

[vi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6V0p3_bd6w

[vii] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/04/gender-affirming-care-debate-europe-dutch-protocol/673890/

 


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Monday, June 3, 2024

RIP Morgan Spurlock, father of the stupid clickbait-y challenge video concept.

I heard a bit of minor sad celebrity news on May 24, 2024.  When I heard of it, I thought of an Eddy Burback video.[i]

On May 24, 2024, documentary film director/producer Morgan Spurlock, famous for his gonzo premise documentaries, passed away.

But why upon hearing Morgan Spurlock’s death would I think of a guy who traveled to 18 Rainforest Café restaurants in 21 days?

Maybe because Morgan Spurlock is to the YouTuber clickbait-y mega challenge video what Julia Child was to the entire cooking video media industry, a pioneer everyone who came after owes a big debt of gratitude.   

For those of you not familiar with Morgan Spurlock, he was one those documentarians I can best describe as from the Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9-11) school of film documentary.   A traditional documentary film maker is absent from the film and lets the scenes featured in the documentary tell the story with maybe an occasional disembodied distinguishing sounding narrator providing some general narrative for the audience to follow.  Spurlock, on the other hand, made it a point for him to be the focal point of the documentary in addition to the subject matter.   His famous exposé into McDonalds “Supersize Me” chronicled how eating supersized portions of fatty fried food 3 times a day affected his health and implied how similar fast-food chains and their fast food was definitely having similar affects to their patrons as well.    Variety, in their obituary[ii]  talked about how “’Supersize Me’ captured the zeitgeist when it was released in 2004”.   I’m not sure if Spurlock was capturing a zeitgeist as much as he just managed to make a movie version of a reality TV show that were starting to proliferate on TV at that time.

The reason why I’m saying Morgan Spurlock was the father of the clickbait-y mega challenge video is because the idea of binging something on a massive scale like McDonalds for a month, is something that I believe has become part of the modern YouTube popular algorithm.  Not entirely mind you with nearly 30,000 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis, which means there’s probably over 208 million videos as I publish this blog[iii] (including yes “Supersize Me” which you can watch for free)[iv]  but a significant portion if it.  And let’s face it, if we weren’t watching these clickbait-y mega challenge videos YouTubers wouldn’t make them.   It’s obvious why the #1 YouTuber right now-Mr. Beast, takes the mega challenge clickbait-y video to the max and like Spurlock puts himself inside of these strange mega challenges as well. [v]  We watch to see if they can make it through the challenge.  And unlike, say, Mr. Beast who modus operandi appears to be an extreme game show contest on a weekly basis, many of the YouTubers who create these mega challenge videos are doing it just for the joy of trying to do an insane thing on camera that isn’t reminiscent of some Jackass slapstick comedy stunt.  

 I believe most of the people who watched “Supersize Me” when it came out in 2004 knew McDonalds was as healthy as a cigarette and Spurlock was preaching a message that was a duh obvious message.   I think most people in the late 90’s and early 00’s thought of McDonalds as a place you take kids to get their Happy Meal fix and their parents to reluctantly chow down on subpar quarter pounders with cheese or whatever burger McDonalds was trying to market to grownups at that time(see endnote iv) as they watch their kids burn off those Happy Meal calories pretty quickly in the McDonald’s Playplace ball pits and slides.  Most of the time if adults want better tasting food especially fast- food options, there are plenty of other places they could go with foods that are almost as cheap and quick like Wendys where Wendys at least make sure their quarter pound hamburgers are topped with an antioxidant rich tomato slice.    

Furthermore, if Morgan Spurlock went with a standard documentary about how the food industry targets us and maybe in particular children (There was a lawsuit claiming McDonalds was responsible for some obese children in 2002[vi]) it still could have won some film fest awards and maybe even nominated for an Oscar [vii].    It wouldn’t have made $22 million dollars which was an unheard-of amount of money back then and now for a documentary, but still, going the standard route still would have given Spurlock some prestige.

However, I believe most people went to see “Supersize Me” in the theaters to experience a bit of schadenfreude with Spurlock.   The beginning of “Supersize Me” emphasizes how Spurlock was eating a vegan diet and was healthy at the start of the challenge.  Meanwhile we in the audience experienced a twisted pleasure watching a health nut become sick on the food that he probably poo poo’ed the rest of us for eating all the time especially in places where a McDonalds restaurant may be the only food source available for blocks or miles.  It also came to light that Spurlock rigged his McD experiment when he lied about how his liver became fatty (he was an alcoholic) and scientists haven’t been able to replicate Spurlock’s results. [viii]  McDonald’s criticism of the film and us is right. Most people are not eating fast food on a daily basis if they can help it although I know the CDC said 1 in 3 adults eat fast food every day[ix]. Spurlock himself could have chosen healthier options from McDonalds like maybe drinking a 44 oz supersized Diet Coke instead of regular Coke or going for a Happy Meal portion which Dick and Maurece McDonald would have recognize as the standard portion they were serving up to adults at their San Bernadino hamburger stand back in the 1950’s. [x]   I think McDonalds had some salad options back then[xi] too.  Spurlock wanted to show us through himself how bad things can get if we eat a non-stop fast-food diet.  The audience, on the other hand, watched a movie to see a skinny guy get fat on the food many of us love so much and let the message of how we all need to eat heathier fall on fatty deaf ears. 

 

 

 Another reason why “Supersize me” is a popular documentary is part of the same reason why ESPN televises the Nathan Famous Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest on July 4th.    I think most of us, even if tempted to try and take advantage of all you can eat hot dogs, or never-ending pasta or shrimp or bottomless fries, rarely if ever eat more than one or two or maybe if we stretch our stomachs a little more three portions of the foods we are trying to binge on before we become bloated and disgusted with ourselves for eating to the point where we are ready to explode if we dare to refresh our breath with a wafer thin after dinner mint.    I’m not sure nowadays if I could eat one Nathan’s hot dog (or let’s be real, a Vienna beef Chicago style dog) and keep it in my system for 10 minutes let alone the 62[xii] Joey Chestnut downed in 10 minutes flat in 2023.  We like to cheer on those who attempt to do what we know we physically cannot do.   It’s probably why we pay professional athletes millions of dollars to throw a ball or hit a ball or dunk a ball we ourselves haven’t been able to throw, or dunk, or hit since our childhood if we could have been able to throw, or dunk or hit the ball to begin with in our childhood years.    Professional team owners know we’ll pay millions of dollars to watch their players do something we ourselves view as impossible and get joy when someone else accomplishes it.   

Let’s also not forget, McDonalds started to supersize their fries and drinks in the 1980’s when everything had to be bigger and more outrageous to get someone’s attention.  McDonalds was not only competing against the usual burger rivals like Burger King and Wendys, but they were also competing against the themed restaurants that were popping up like The Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Johnny Rockets, and, yes, The Rainforest Café who all had some type of gourmet hamburger on the menu.    Moreover you had the casual dining experience growing like Chili’s , TGIFridays, Ruby Tuesdays, and especially Red Robin gourmet hamburgers with their bottomless fries that clearly are miles above the taste (and price) of McDonald’s Big Mac.  McDonalds had to go large on those items were small in price to them like the Cokes and fries to draw in the crowds.   And while supersize portions look great on TV, in the real world, they may not always taste so great.  I know myself whenever I get a large fry from McDonalds about half of them are edible and the other half are awful.  So, it was nice to see a guy suffer on the kind of food I find myself predominantly choosing when it feels like I have no other realistic choice. 

     

 

Which brings me to that Eddy Burback visiting 18 Rainforest Café’s in 21 days which was added to YouTube on June 30th, 2022, and to date has 9.7 views as of writing this blog.  For those of you not familiar with Eddy Burback and his YouTube channel, I would describe his channel as vlogger version of my random thoughts blog.  One moment he’s talking with his brother about Nintendo WII Sports Resort, another minute he is going on about how awards shows should be like the Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards where the winner is slimed.  I really loved his takedown of pompous Bill Maher[xiii] . However,  I know part of the reason why the algorithm recommended Burback and the 18 Rainforest Cafés in a 21 day span to me is because YouTube knows I love to watch Disney Food Blog for my vicarious Walt Disney World trip without having to come up with the $5k-$10K I’d need to do a standard Walt Disney World trip for me and my husband.  Rainforest Café, for those of you who have never dined there, gives you a jungle audio-animatronic experience that appeals to your kids or to the kid in you, but has a greater variety of food and drinks than a Chuck-E-Cheese pizza and wings place.  The idea to travel all 18 Rainforest Cafés came from Burback’s friend and fellow YouTuber Ted Nivison[xiv]  who thought it would be a great idea to relive a great experience from his childhood that was disappearing like most actual rainforests on this planet thanks to the predominance of another rainforest named company and the way they are destroying the  Rainforest Café native habitat.[xv]  Like Spurlock. Burback was not having a good time eating there and the food quality varied from boring to awful depending upon the individual Rainforest Café along with the pathetic factor of the malls that housed the café.  Burback’s suffering reaction to the various experiences he had is what made it watchable for me.  Nivision’s take on the Rainforest Café was a joy-filled trip down memory lane combined with the typical adventures of a road trip.   Burback felt he was being tortured which makes sense because who wants to have their adult conversation constantly interrupted with phony fake thunder or pay too much for basic boring food chain restaurant food. 

Now, I did not feel the same sense of schadenfreude watching Burback suffer the way I had when Spurlock suffered at the hands of McDonalds.   I indeed felt a lot of sympathy for Burbeck’s situation. I think that’s because Burback made it clear from the beginning going to 18 Rainforest Cafés was a stupid idea.   I believe 9.7 million people watched (and that video inspired a sequel where Burback traveled to all 21 Margaritaville in the US that also has about 8.9 million views  [xvi] ) because we know he was doing something stupid and were caught up in the sheer joy of the stupid nature of the video.  Burback isn’t layering the Rainforest Café video with some overarching highfalutin narrative about how e-commerce and greedy monopolists[xvii]  are pushing these types of themed restaurants to the point of extinction thanks to inflation and lack of competition in the food industry and elsewhere. 

Now, there are other YouTubers who may take a mega challenge and turn it for good.  I like YouTuber Ryan Trahan[xviii] tries to confirm 1-star reviews of various places knowing many of the places we go to aren’t that bad.   Others are content like the Good Mythical Morning to rank and rate various foods which can be helpful.[xix]   But I think what makes the Burback Rainforest Café video stick out in my mind is the parallel of eating a lot of bad for you foods, not feeling good and being somewhat entertained if you could call vicarious empathy for a stupid situation entertainment. 

Burback knew eating food at 18 different Rainforest Cafes was stupid, he had no clue how this stupid idea would play out, but let’s just hop aboard that 2002 Tacoma truck and enjoy the journey he wasn’t.   

 
 

 

 

 


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