Super-Size Me creator earns integrity award for his grassroots activism

 

Ben Kruger-Robbins

The Daily Free Press
April 4, 2008

 

 

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock accepted the Fred Rogers Award of Integrity from the Judge Baker Children's Center in Roxbury last night for his documentary Super-Size Me, which called attention to corporations' targeting and deception of children.

The audience, largely comprised of members of the sixth annual Summit for the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, applauded the efforts.

Spurlock accepted his statue emotionally, but with a degree of joking pride.

"Broccoli posse represent," he said, in reference to his and his wife's vegan diet. "This is the greatest honor I could ever possibly receive."

Spurlock said grassroots movements are on the right track to disenfranchise corporations that promote "harmful imagery," but need expansion.

"Kids can't tell the difference between entertainment and ads," Spurlock said. "When they start to idolize Paris Hilton and Ronald McDonald, the messages become dangerous."

He went on, comparing some corporations to drug dealers.

"Watch the commercial -- Ronald never eats the food," he said. "That's probably wise, you know, don't get high off your own supply."

Spurlock said there is tremendous power to use technology for good, citing digital video recorders and commercial-free HBO educational programming as steps in the right direction.

JBCC founder Susan Lynn called Spurlock an ethical voice in the media and said the award recognizes his achievements in filmmaking and his ability to give independent nonprofits a voice in the corporate world.

"It's hard to find someone in show-biz who is brave enough to make an anti-corporate stand," Lynn said. "He truly honors the memory of Fred Rogers in his mastery of effective troublemaking. His consistent combative responses to deceptive forces of Disney, Hasbro and McDonald's have helped create hope for our children again."

Lynn, a one-time guest on The Colbert Report, said television has made strides in its efforts against deceptive corporate practices and those in the entertainment industry can incite change in the advertising industry.

Lynn said they convinced the Federal Trade Commission to debunk the "Baby Einstein" theory that said allowing children to watch television results in expanded mental development.

"Disney wasn't laughing when they got their FTC notification but, as a result, ethical practice in television broadcasting expanded," she said.

Nancy Marsden, a former Los Angeles-based educator who works as an independent researcher of television product placement, said ads are necessary for economic growth but entire scripts should not be fashioned around material commodities.

"It used to be that product placement would find its way into scripts, which is really all right by my standards," she said. "The problem is the manipulative synergy of entire shows and movies crafted around companies and products."

Jennifer and Timothy O'Brien, a husband-and-wife documentary team making a film about child sexual exploitation, said the "commoditization of children" is a crime and governmental leaders and businesses are the "perpetrators."

"That's the direction advertising has gone . . . the degradation of our nation's youth for cold, hard cash," Jennifer O'Brian said.