Entry #7: Fresh

In class this week we watched the movie Fresh. Fresh is a movie shot the style of documentary portraying different aspects of the food industry, specifically the anti-industrial farming movement. The film highlights the benefits that alternative farming methods have over industrial farming. The film is very light in tone, the people talk to you as if you were a friend. The shots were taken in very authentic ways; the crews filmed the farmers as they were working in the field, talking on the phone, or over meals. To compare to these alternative farmers a industrial farmer is also interviewed and their position is used as the standard for those in industrial farming. When they are interviewed there is a slightly different mood than when the alternative farming farmers are interviewed. The industrial farmers have an air of despair around them, they are mellower than the other people interviewed and the colors in the frame are darker than those of the other farmers. The industrial farmers also have a little dog with them that looks absolutely ragged, mirroring the image the film producers are trying to portray of industrial farming.

Fresh is targeted to those who don’t really think about their food habits much; those who are not firmly entrenched into the industrial farming side or the alternative farming methods. It attempts to persuade their audience to support the alternative farmers by buying the products that they sell. Even if you only “spend 10 dollars a week” on these alternative farming products the impact is still significant according to Fresh. While the film has a clear bias in attempting to get people to buy the products that these alternative farmers sell they are relatively fair in their assessment of the food industry situation and attempt to present both sides. They do not however highlight some of the reasons people would farm in industrial way other than monetary reasons and there are advantages to industrial farming beyond monetary (though monetary is the main reason for it).

The only place I had a problem with the film is when the question of Genetically Modified Organisms came up. It was never directly addressed and only briefly mentioned by several of the alternative farmers. One of the farmers stated something along the lines of I like the modern technology in the farming industry but I would never use that genetically modified stuff. There is no real reason given as to why not to use the genetically modified organisms yet every person interviewed seems to just brush them away as if they are clearly a inferior choice that isn’t even worth considering.