I love Little Tokyo in Downtown Los Angeles. It’s just like Tokyo, only much much smaller. After a delicious bowl of veggie ramen at Mr. Ramen I walked through the quaint strip of Japanese gift shops and stopped at one that caught my eye. I don’t remember the name, but it was probably something like Japan Market or Unique Japanese Gifts or Tokyo Gift Center Unique!
Walking in the first thing I see is this giant display of anime bears. Kawaii, ne? (cute, right?) and it is unless you haunt the dark places of the internet like I do occasionally. These harmless cute cartoon bears bared a striking resemblance to the internet meme Pedobear. (For those who don’t know, he’s basically a creepy cartoon bear that inappropriately lurks on little children. It’s used alot on the Digg.com comments and originated on the /b/ message boards)
Now, seeing them next to each other I can see there are noticeable differences. First, Pedobear has longer hair and a creepy open mouth. He also has clawed feet, but the two are pretty close. So with this image of a child molesting cartoon bear in my head, I walked to the back of the store why I found something even more inappropriate.
This is an official Sanrio Hello Kitty tote bag. It’s like the ones you’d get at Whole Foods as a reusable grocery bag, only smaller. The caption reads, “My room is full of fun things! Come over! Let’s play together!” Who is Hello Kitty talking to? Obviously the intended audience for Sanrio products are little girls. Is Hello Kitty also trying to lure small children back to her house for impure purposes? I don’t see any “fun things” depicted in the art, so is it all just a trick? What is she going to do with them when they get there, paint them nude on her easel? What the heck is she holding in her hand? Is she wearing bondage gear?
The bottom line here is, dear readers, that while Japanese anime cartoon characters might look cute and innocent, we really should think twice about which ones we let near our children. This kind of smut might fly over in Japan, but not over here in America!
For the last fifteen years there is a secret about myself that I try to hide for as long as I can when I meet someone new. At first I’ll just politely refuse their crab dip. Eventually, they may catch on that my plate is filled with only cheese, fruit and crackers or I make the mistake of asking what’s in something and the truth comes out: that I am a vegetarian.
The reason I dread this moment is because of the inevitable follow up question, why? Why when I was only fifteen years old did I choose to give up the main course for the rest of my life? I admit meat is tasty, convenient and cheap. So why would a lazy teenager with no money choose to make his life more difficult? The only I answer I really have is that it just felt wrong for some reason.
Thankfully, with the new movie Food Inc. by director Robert Kenner I now have a better answer. The way most food is raised in this country (especially meat) IS wrong, and the handful of multinational corporations that run it all pay good money to make sure that we don’t know about it.
The documentary does its best to answer a simple question, where does our food actually come from? We all have a picture in our heads of some beautiful farm somewhere with rolling green hills and a sunrise coming over a bright red barn. We picture that because it’s printed right on the label of the food we get at the grocery store! In actuality, most of our meats and produce come from giant factory farms that are not only bad for the environment, but bad for the farmers, the workers (many times illegal immigrants), and of course the animals who are force fed hormones and antibiotics that make them grow larger and quicker than their bodies can handle. These are the conditions that create the Ecoli outbreaks and food recalls we hear about every year.
Food Inc. is informative, entertaining, and easy to swallow. This is not some liberal propaganda documentary with a preaching Michael Moore type character walking up to the headquarters of the Monsanto Corporation demanding to speak to its CEO. It’s about shining a light on the dark places that the food we take for granted actually comes from.
I have to mention that even though Food Inc. is a slick, well shot and produced film it’s not the first to tackle these subjects. The film is really a conglameration and repackaing of the messages brought forth in The Future of Food, King Corn, and Fast Food Nation (the book’s author is actually one of the main interviewees in the film). I’m OK with that so long as it helps get the message out. I would highly recommend any of those films for people wanting to know a little bit more.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Who should see this movie: Everyone, especially your mom.
Update: It seems as though Chipotle fully endorses this movie, and you know I fully endorse Chipotle…
