Utopia As Presented By The Mc Donald's Corporation

Utopia as Presented by McDonald's

The McDonald's Corporation spends over two billion dollars a year in advertising. They employ over one million minimum wage earners, who have reported discrimination and lack of rights, understaffing, few breaks and illegal hours, poor safety conditions and kitchens flooded with sewage, and the sale of food that has been dropped on the floor. McDonald's is the largest slaughterer of cows of in the world, and uses the beef to produce food that many nutritionists argue is the type of high fat, low fiber diet linked to serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Diseases such as these are responsible for nearly three-quarters of premature deaths in the western world (McInformation Network). Despite these facts though, Americans still swarm to McDonald's and smile at the corporation's television commercials. The reality is that the advertising McDonald's does manipulates society into perceiving McDonald's as a symbol of, and contributor to, an ideal lifestyle.

The commercials that McDonald's televises are about life and community in the American culture. They are a perfected version of the ideal American lifestyle that society desires to achieve. This paper will examine three such commercials that McDonald's has successfully used in the United States. The first commercial deals with a community of people that support and brag about an ambitious young man working his way up the work force ladder of McDonald's. A boy who began on the street corner now has the potential to own a corporation someday thanks to the promotion that McDonald's gave him. The age old vision of America as a "land of opportunity," is presented as an attainable reality, and McDonald's is shown as the sole presenter of that opportunity. The second commercial centers on a favorite American sport, football, showing happy children and cheering parents teaming together as a community to create the perfect season. McDonald's comes forth as the backbone of this season by sponsoring it, using McDonald's colors on all the uniforms, and providing a haven for the players and their families after the games. Finally, the third commercial goes into the home of a loving and responsible father, and his baby, who despite his youth is portrayed as smart enough to know that McDonald's is a desirable commodity that will provide for one's wants. The intelligent looking and adorable child rejects a typical meal of baby food and demands instead the food of McDonald's. These three McDonald's commercials depict the essence of the idealized American community, and portray a utopian vision of life.

The first commercial opens with the yellow McDonald's double arch logo in the lower right corner, and the title "Grapevine." Light, bouncy music plays as an African American man, approximately age eighteen, uses a blue pay phone. He is shaven, with cropped hair, straight white teeth, smooth skin, and proportional features. He wears a blue and white horizontally striped polo with a nametag on left breast and McDonald's logo on the right, and a black cap saying "McDonald's" in red. The setting is outside of McDonald's with people in the background. The man speaks into the phone saying, "Yep, I'm part of the management team now, Mama." A woman, African American like all the other characters in the commercial, in her late thirties appears speaking into a yellow phone. She wears a predominately blue shirt with flowers, shirt tails out, her hair up in a bluish scarf, gold ring on left ring finger, and smiles broadly revealing a round face with smooth skin. She stands by a sink in a small sunlit kitchen and responds with, "Oh Baby, I'm so proud of you." The conversation continues; "It's only afternoons," and Mama replies, "But still it's a promotion." At this point the young man says, "I gotta get back to work," and the scene ends.

The next scene begins with Mama saying into the receiver, "Guess what Anna?" Anna, a woman roughly the same age, slim, with short hair, and wearing a yellow shirt, says nothing but drops her jaw as she listens to a red phone. The scene changes to Anna with a teenage boy who sits on a couch in a traditional living room and lifts up one ear of the headphones he wears while Anna says, "Calvin is the new manager at McDonald's." The boy wears a t-shirt with tank top over it, both in shades of blue, and comes up from his slouch as he grins and responds, "Straight up."

Now the same boy is on a street corner bouncing a basketball with two others whose faces aren't seen. "Calvin been on it at Mickey D's so they gave him his propers," he says. The music is faster now as are the scenes; the first scene switches to a beauty salon with a woman beneath a silver dome dryer, her hair in pink curlers, wearing a blue cape and gold bracelets. "He owns a McDonald's and just got his property," she nods, "Yep he did," and the next scene appears. Now a man in his thirties in blue coveralls and black shirt and cap, surprisingly clean, under the hood of a car says, "For real?" Next, a teenage girl in front of a school simply says, "Calvin?" She wears a denim jacket over a flowered shirt, and is of clear complexion and happy expression. A person in a yellow jacket walks behind her. A shot in the school hall follows, with a man aged forty-five to fifty saying, "Calvin that used to hang out on the corner?" He is balding, with big glasses, a brown suit and tie, holding folders, standing by yellow lockers, and lit by sunlight.

The final scene shows Calvin dressed in a blue shirt with McDonald's logo, slacks, and red and black tie. He has no cap, and walks inside a clean, sunlit McDonald's with the golden arches on double glass doors. A woman in her seventies with silver hair walks beside him saying, "So, you own McDonald's?" She wears a grey and pink tailored suit with a pink sweater over her shoulders, a black pillbox hat, and pearl jewelry. Calvin smiles, chuckles, and shakes his head, "No, not yet." The woman smiles and raises her hand gently towards his face as the McDonald's logo appears in lower left corner and the words "What you want is what you get" appear beside it. The music fades and scene ends.

The second commercial begins with piano music as the McDonald's logo from the first commercial appears in the lower right corner, with no title. A Caucasian male in his mid forties wearing a blue cap, grey sweatshirt over a red shirt, and jeans is walking and talking. He is fit, with clear skin. Behind him