pulling a fast one

Ecologist, The, June, 2001 by Iain Elliott

Targeting children

As in the US, the fast food companies have targeted their foreign advertising and promotion at a group of consumers with the fewest attachments to tradition: young children. `Kids are the same regarding the issues that affect the all-important stages of their development,' a top executive told the audience at a recent Kid Power conference, `and they apply to any kid in Berlin, Beijing, or Brooklyn'. The Kid Power conference, attended by marketing executives from multinational corporations such as Burger King, was held at the Disneyland outside of Paris. In Australia, where the number of fast food restaurants roughly tripled during the 1990s, a survey found that half of the nation's nine- and ten-year-olds thought that Ronald McDonald knew what kids should eat. At a primary school in Beijing, Yunxiang Yan found that all of the children recognised an image of Ronald McDonald. The children told Yan they liked `Uncle McDonald' because he was `funny, gentle, kind, and ... he understood children's hearts'. Coca-Cola is now the favourite drink among Chinese children, and McDonald's serves their favourite food. Simply eating at a McDonald's in Beijing seems to elevate a person's social status. The idea that you are what you eat has been enthusiastically promoted for years by Den Fujita, the eccentric billionaire who brought McDonald's to Japan three decades ago. `If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years,' Fujita once promised his countrymen, `we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blonde'.

The impact of fast food is readily apparent in Germany, which has become one of McDonald's most profitable overseas markets. Germany is not only the largest country in Europe, but also the most Americanised. Although the four Allied powers occupied it after World War II, the Americans exerted the greatest lasting influence, perhaps because their nationalism was so inclusive, and their nation so distant. Children in West German schools were required to study English, facilitating the spread of American pop culture. Young people who sought to distance themselves from the wartime behaviour of their parents found escape in American movies, music, and novels. `For a child growing up in the turmoil of [post-war] Berlin ... the Americans were angels,' Christa Maerker, a Berlin filmmaker, wrote in an essay on post-war Germany's infatuation with the US. `Anything from them was bigger and more wonderful than anything that preceded it.'

Open door

The US and Germany fought against each other twice in the 20th century, but the enmity between them has often seemed less visceral than other national rivalries. The recent take-over of prominent American corporations -- such as Chrysler, Random House and RCA Records -- by German companies provoked none of the public anger that was unleashed when Japanese firms bought much less significant American assets in the 1980s. Despite America's long standing `special relationship' with Great Britain, the underlying cultural ties between the US and Germany, though less obvious, are equally strong. Americans with German ancestors far outnumber those with English ancestors. Moreover, during the past century both American culture and German culture have shown an unusually strong passion for science, technology, engineering, empiricism, social order and efficiency. An electronic paper-towel dispenser in a Munich men's room is the spiritual kin of the gas-powered ketchup dispensers at the McDonald's in Colorado Springs.