Here’s the follow-up to this morning’s post on “voluntary” food rationing in the UK, a kerfuffle about Pixar’s Wall-E and its depiction of the overweight:
And the thing is, look. Obviously not everyone who is overweight is a food-crazed slob. Obviously some are victims of shitty genes or whatever. And, really, I don’t think Pixar was targeting the genetically obese. Researchers have suggested that those unlucky folks aren’t the way they are because of overeating anyway. What Pixar is targeting is a culture, immediately an American one, that has the highest obesity rate in the world, by a lot. As we are all painfully aware by now, fast food is slowly burying us in piles of grease and processed, sickly gray meat. I was at a Burger King last weekend while driving back to New York and there was a hamburger, I kid you not, that had the contents of a loaded baked potato smeared on top of it. We’re talking mashed potaters ‘n bacon piled on top of a hamburger that ALREADY HAD ONION RINGS ON IT. If that’s not a sign of end times, I don’t know what is. (Not to mention the environmental impact of such insane consumption. The ecological footprint of keeping one mooing meat sack alive is pretty astounding.)
So yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what Pixar was teasing at, not people who diet and exercise and do as much as they can but still carry some extra pounds. They’re shaking their heads at the people who pull up to the drive thru in their SUVs and buy six Gordita Supremes and scarf them down, sitting in their idling car on the side of the road. It’s a fairly new, millennial problem, and one that doesn’t seem to be getting better. So I don’t blame Pixar for depicting a disgraced humanity as lazy blobs. But Pixar isn’t saying “look at the fatties,” I don’t think. They’re saying “look at the liquid cupcakes in their hands.”
Amongst, you know, lots of other insightful, hand-wringy stuff.
So, “the thing is, look.” Obviously the same sort of non-genetically overweight people who pull over at the side of the highway to scarf down six gorditas as they idle their vehicle are the same ones who are driving SUVs. Because, obviously, they are the only vehicles that have enough ass-room to accommodate them and their enormous cow-eating carbon footprints.
In other words, shut the fuck up, lardass. It’s not like Gawker is the readerly equivalent of liquid cupcakes, is it?
“We’re talking mashed potaters ‘n bacon piled on top of a hamburger that ALREADY HAD ONION RINGS ON IT. If that’s not a sign of end times, I don’t know what is.”
That made me hungry for Primantis:
http://www.primantibros.com/history/
Those proggs who missed the point of PIXAR’s rather heavy-handed (no pun intended) jab at consumerism to make their own grievance are really right out of Life of Brian (which was in fact a jab at Leftist splinter groups in the UK).
Yeah, but it’s wrong to let someone die just because they’re a “progressive”.
For some reason, I keep thinking of signs all over Wisconsin that read “HOME OF THE BUTTERBURGER”.
I wonder how many of those who fret over the American diet would realize that gluttony isn’t just over-eating, but also being overly concerned with what you eat? The folks shopping for their shade grown, fair trade coffee, their free-range, hormone-free chickens, and their rBST-free milk at the boutique grocery store are just as much gluttons as the guy who downs a couple of Extra Value Meals from McDonald’s.
“They’re shaking their heads at the people”
The Community Organizers™ are concerned.
PIXAR’s jab at mass consumerism was the backdrop of the movie, not its theme. Maybe the Proggs missed the fact that Buy ‘n’ Large wasn’t just a big corporation, it was THE corporation, which was also THE government, and it had total control over people’s lives. It was more like Big Brother than anything else.
And the choice that was presented to the overweight humans wasn’t TO CONSUME OR NOT TO CONSUME, it was whether they’d rather be taken care of cradle to grave or would they rather take a risk and return to earth, where life would be hard but they’d be much healthier both body and soul. It was a combination of the Noah’s Ark story and the Adam and Eve story: stay in the garden where all is nice and pretty, or bite the apple and take your chances.
That would be Culver’s, I think.
What Pixar is targeting is a culture, immediately an American one, that has the highest obesity rate in the world, by a lot.
This is actually not true anymore. Samoa now has a higher obesity rate than the US.
Oh, noes! You mean other countries are closing the obesity gap?
“What Pixar is targeting is a culture, immediately an American one, that has the highest obesity rate in the world, by a lot.”
So there’s no “poverty” in the US?
Yeah, well, in Samoa I think they have more cause to use the “Genetics” card than Americans… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Samoan that wasn’t pretty thick.
“What Pixar is targeting is a culture, immediately an American one, that has the highest obesity rate in the world, by a lot.”
So if we go back to the 18th century we can solve this problem. But what to do with horse poop? Bio Fuels: Yes We Can!
“Comment by DoDoGuRu on 7/12 @ 6:43 pm #
Yeah, well, in Samoa I think they have more cause to use the “Genetics†card than Americans”
Why?
Why?
Because as far as I can tell, Samoans really are genetically bigger. Like I said, I haven’t seen one who isn’t at least thick.
That graham cracker, chocolate and marshmallow treat is a staple of their diet, dre.
“Because as far as I can tell, Samoans really are genetically bigger. Like I said, I haven’t seen one who isn’t at least thick.”
Yo Darwinist out there: maybe in plenitude humans are naturally fat?
maybe in plenitude humans are naturally fat
That’s what I’m thinking–“teh obesity crisis!!11!” is just a stage in human evolution. I don’t understand why “progressives” hate evolution all of a sudden.
This movie and its critics are getting a lot of play in the “fatosphere”/fat acceptance blogs. (Curiously, the pro-fat crowd is all excited about O! promising “universal” health care; I don’t know if they’re completely ignorant that fat people are routinely refused basic treatment in “universal” systems–can’t waste antibiotics on the fatties!–or if they just don’t care that they’re going to be left out. Maybe O! will magically make everyone thin on January 21.) They play the same game as the anti-fat, anti-choice, anti-cheeseburger bigots in the MSM: there are “good fatties” who eat only organic fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and “bad fatties”, loosely defined as fat people who eat a typical American diet.
Maybe tying food to “zomg! the global warming!” is a way to get back at thin people who eat the typical American diet; they can’t be made to feel bad about themselves the way fat people can, but if you tell them they’re killing polar bears with that Whopper…
I used to think I was fat at 130lbs. Then I hit menopause and 130 was a dim memory. We can’t all be young and healthy and skinny and beautiful forever you know. Damn the luck.
Shit, I guess I need to go see this movie. I wonder I can get away with sneaking in my six Super Gorditas in my purse?
You can’t be: fat, smoke, burn “fossil” fuels, state the facts of the “religion” called Islam, et al. You can be Liberally STUPID.
Look at the liquid cupcakes in their heads.
Mmmmmmmm…
Wait… Is PETA cool with just calling a cow a “mooing meatsack?”
Because they are special animals created by Gaia not to just be “eaten” by obese Republicans.
There’s rawhide chew toys for my beagle, and that wallet I had in 5th grade.
You people show some respect to PETA.
And yes, I said, “you people.”
I’m racist like that. Somehow.
Black Holes.
Boogeyboogeyboogey.
I haven’t seen Wall-E yet… and I will because I love all the Pixar stuff. Ratatouille is got robbed when it was nominated for animated film instead of just Best Film. It should have won.
Anywho … I got to thinking about that “fat” in space thing, and I recall a sci-fi book I read long ago “A spectre haunts Texas” (IIRC) in which a man born and raised in a space colony has to visit earth (he has to wear an exoskeleton because he can’t function under normal gravity). Seems in near weightless colony there are “thins” “fats” and “musculars” … all normal variations of human evolution in a weightless environment.
Just a random thought. Carry on.
I’m fulminating, here.
“Seems in near weightless colony there are “thins†“fats†and “musculars†… all normal variations of human evolution in a weightless environment.”
I’ve said that to my asshole trainer at 24Hr Fitness I don’t know how many times. Smug prick refuses to believe my condo is Zero G.
I’m going to print your comment and show it to him. You have a degree from somewhere, right? I’ll want to point that out if possible.
Oh and plus, plus.. I live in Texas. And that book had Texas in the title. That has to help my case I think.
I dunno. I’ll work it out when I’m sober.
(mumbles) I am so not hitting the fucking squat rack Monday…
Did anyone read “The Machine Stops” I think it was a short story by E.M. Forster – might be someone else and I am too lazy to google it. This movie appears to have a similar plot in that everyone becomes dependent on cradle-to-grave cosseting.
I do have degrees. In Renaissance English and Italian Poetry. So tell him to go feck off.
“I do have degrees. In Renaissance English and Italian Poetry.”
…(Sigh)…Ok. Did any of the “English/ Italian Greats” you studied for the 9 hours you weren’t piss drunk in college work with “kettle bells?”
Cuz that could help.
This bastard is killing me.
Aw, shit. I work kettle-bells while reading Ariosto drunk. It’s who I am; it’s what I do.
Some how I think the obesity “crisis” has something to do with all the food advertising Americans are subject to.
I doubt Pixar will demand theaters stop selling popcorn, candy, and soda to better make their point however.
And I suppose you pull off those kettle bell sets during the “Cantus Interruptus”?
Yeah, bitch. I majored in Google.
It was much cheaper. But your degrees probably pulled ass though.
Smart ass.
I don’t mean rude or disrespectful.
More like hot blondes with reading glasses.
I’ve heard Dan has lots of pussies.
Yes. I’m a lot like some bizarre fertility symbol, that way.
alright, alright. I”m having kitteh anxiety here. 2nd night away from home. also, I’m full of tasty food thanks to my parents. surprised the waiter at Carraba’s because I was cranky and confused about how to pronounce “Pasta Weesie” I said, “I don’t recall there being a ‘W’ in Italian” Mom said according to their ads it’s named after their mom or aunt or something… short for Louise.
“Yes. I’m a lot like some bizarre fertility symbol, that way.”
With all the unprompted name/ symbol changes, I’ve often wondered who “Prince” was trying to keep up with.
This blog puts so many things to bed.
“Renaissance English and Italian Poetry.”
Dan, if I order up some busted British teeth and a swanky gondola, will you go out with me?
I make great haggis alfredo.
Okay, but there’d better be some first-class amontillado.
Ok, I had to Google “amontillado”… but I knew what it was immediately.
I’m an accomplished drunk damnit.
If I’d just “given myself a minute” it would have come to me (Shut up, Dan).
But I freaked out and reflexivly navigated to “You Porn,” and now I forget what the hell we were talking about.
See ya’ll tomorrow.
Oh, you Poe boys.
Amontillado always leaves me feeling like I’ve been hitting my head against the wall all night…
I gots degrees: 90°, 180º, 270°, and 360°.
Right angles. Get it? Get it?
For the love of God, Jeff.
Man, what an asshole. I believe you, mainly because my condo is at a constant -1G. At least, I think that’s why people throw up the moment they walk in.