FOOD INC
A Rhetorical Analysis
Pathos
An appeal to emotions; any strategy that attempts to create an identification between the speaker and the audience; recognition of the audiences values and beliefs.
“The reality is not a farm, its a factory” (3:04).
The narrator in the opening scene of Food, Inc makes a pathetic appeal to counter the audiences belief that the food in supermarkets comes from a traditional cattle farm. He says, “The image that’s used to sell food is...the image of agrarian America”(0:59). This scene in the film shatters the audience’s notion of majestic, amber waves of grain, and emphasizes the dark business that is the food industry. Ominous clouds and bellowing smokestacks add to the gloomy atmosphere, and the men in suits are symbolic of corruption; a major theme throughout the documentary. From the very first minute, the audience is made aware of the “pastoral fantasy” (1:27) that food producers have created.
“These chickens never see sunlight”
(11:24).
This gruesome scene inside a Perdue grower’s chicken house on a 300,000 chicken farm is an example of a direct appeal to pathos. The audience can identify with this scene because chicken is such a staple in the American diet. Most people do not even consider where their chicken (or eggs) came from, or how it was raised, but the audience cannot help but feel an emotional connection to the thousands of gridlocked chickens, struggling escape an inevitable fate. This image is especially powerful because it depicts the horrific scale of the chicken farm; as the seemingly endless line of chickens disappears into the darkness.
“It took us almost...3 years and hiring a private attorney to actually find out that we matched a meat recall” (31:37).
Quite possibly the most effective use of pathos in the documentary is the story of Kevin Kowalcyk, a 3-year-old boy who died of E. coli 0157:H7 in 2001. It is so poignant because it is told by his mother, who is fighting to get the court system to pass “Kevin’s Law,” which would give the USDA the right to shut down plants that violate health standards. The loss of a loved one is something that most people in the audience can identify with, but the gravity of watching a “beautiful child go from being perfectly healthy to dead in 12 days”(31:23 Barbara Kowalcyk) makes this a heart wrenching tragedy. Kevin’s story is the most compelling call to action in Food, Inc because it puts a face to the thousands of lives taken by E. coli each year.
One of the more difficult scenes to watch in Food, Inc is when the chickens get too big to stand. Amidst the snapping legs of chickens teetering on oversized breasts are ruthless men; kicking the dead and snatching at the moribund. Perdue grower, Carole Morison, then says: “It doesn’t matter if the chickens get sick. All of the chickens can go to the plant for processing”(15:12). This entire scene, followed by a shot of the chickens hanging on a conveyor belt, was a pathetic masterpiece. But of all the animal brutality in the documentary, perhaps the most striking scene is in the pig slaughterhouse. The squeals of hundreds of pigs being killed is a truly disturbing sound, and the filmmakers accomplish their goal of evoking in the audience a feeling of disgust towards the men responsible..
“It took us almost...3 years and hiring a private attorney to actually find out that we matched a meat recall” (31:37).
