Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation

1. Describe the three main stories in this film. How are they related?

The first story in the movie Fast Food Nation deals with illegal immigrants coming from Mexico to the U.S. to find a new life and to make money. They under go extreme conditions and safety measures in order to live the "American Dream" just to make more money than they ever could in Mexico. The majority of the jobs that they can work is in a meat packing plant called UMP and they are treated like second class citizens because it is well known by the lead supervisor Mike that they are illegal aliens and they will do anything not to lose their jobs. He often sexually harasses the women at the plant, and treats everyone like dirt. The assembly lines are ran at too much of a fast pace for the employees to keep up with, and this in turn causes unsafe conditions with the meat becoming contaminated with e-coli due to fecal contamination. There are instances where some employees are seriously hurt, one man lost his arm, and one of the scenes in the movie shows a man getting caught in between a grinder of some kind, and he loses his leg.

The second story is about Don Anderson who is a Vice President of the burger chain Mickey's. He is sent to investigate the rumor of fecal contamination that has been found in the "Big One" hamburgers. He meets Amber that is an employee at Mickey's and is impressed with how professional and pleasant she is. However the scene in the kitchen is different, where it shows the cook fixing Don's hamburger with all the fixings and then decides to spit in it before wrapping it up and placing it nicely into it's box. I'm sure this kind of thing happens a lot more than what we think it does, as well as dropping things onto the floor and picking them back up and cooking them like nothing is wrong with doing that.

The third story is about Amber who is the pleasant employee that Don meets at Mickey's. She is a good kid that is just trying to make some money to help her mother pay the bills as well as save money to go to college and have a decent career when she is older. After hanging out with some free radical people that she meets at a party, she finds out what the Mickey franchise is all about and what is going on behind closed doors at the meat packing plant that they receive their meat from. Amber tells her boss that she cannot work there anymore because of what she has learned, and she