Dollar Menu Idol

Argument:
McDonald’s is an organized religion with Ray Kroc as its founder and Ronald McDonald as its idol.

A still frame shows them staring earnestly, their mouths gapping with awe, at their leader. He stands before them with a microphone in one hand while the other is crooked in mid-gesture. They are his. This scene is played out several hundreds of times a day although not always in the same fashion. He stands before the congregation in a silly yellow suit and bright red hair with a smile drawn gaily across his pale white face and spreads his message to each member “Look for the Golden Arches.”

The scene described above is captured in a black and white photograph featured in Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Throughout the entirety of the book are notions hinting that fast food, specifically McDonald’s, has evolved into an organized religion with Ray Kroc its founder and Ronald McDonald as its idol. And in several ways Schlosser is correct.
A reader may begin to piece an idealistic image of Ray Kroc in their minds from such descriptions of the man as “A dreamer. A visionary. A man of ambition whose idea made him rich, even as it spread and enlarged to bring fulfillment to others who cherished their own dreams”(Furlong) and “Kroc was an inspiring, paternalistic figure…” (Schlosser, 85).

The reader could imagine a poor man who built up McDonald’s restaurant and those who helped him along the way profited from such descriptions. He would be a kind, grandfatherly man who always had time to listen to the worries of others. However, Schlosser offered no support of just how Kroc was “an inspiring, paternalistic figure.”

Schlosser only ever comes out once to directly connect Kroc and religious founders in chapter four of his book: “Like other charismatic leaders of new faiths, Kroc asked people to give up their former lives and devote themselves fully to McDonalds” (Schlosser, 85) and that “Most of all, Kroc wanted loyalty and utter devotion—and in return, he promised to make them rich” (Schlosser, 85). Unfortunately, Schlosser does not have very strong support for the statement. His only support comes from the same paragraph as the simile and tells the reader that prospective franchisees were offered restaurants far from their home and were not allowed to engage in other businesses. The reader is not offered statistical information or any real information about how Kroc displayed his want of “loyalty and utter devotion” (Schlosser, 85).

It is not only in the United States that this fast food religion manifests. In many countries such as Germany, McDonald’s is replacing historical and religious figures. There is a McDonald’s in Beijing featuring Ronald McDonald sitting in a position largely associated with Buddha, in many German towns “statues of Lenin have come down and Statues of Ronald McDonald have gone up” (Schlosser, 250). In fact, located in Bitterfeld, there is a “three-story-high, illuminated Ronald” that can “be seen from the autobahn for miles” (Schlosser, 250).

Schlosser is not alone in the argument of McDonald’s evolution from a cheap meal to an organized religion. In an excerpt from Marshall Fishwick’s “Ray and Ronald Girdle the Globe”, the reader is told that “Ray and Ronald did more than plant golden arches in scores of countries. They changed national lifestyles. ..If you are what you eat, you may well end up a devotee of fast food. Millions already are” (Schlosser, 24).

Perhaps the McDonald’s corporation started out wanting to combine religious aspects to their marketing campaign and later evolved into a religion in itself. After all, economists are now trying to explain religion in terms of supply and demand. An article in Business Week, “Economists Are Getting Religion,” authors Joseph Weber and Peter Coy discuss how economists are “studying how religion affects economic growth” (Webber and Coy). In fact, Robert J. Barro of Harvard University and his wife Rachel M. McCleary “found in a paper last year [2003] that high levels of religious belief can stimulate economic growth” (Webber and Coy). Therefore it would make sense that Ray Kroc would incorporate aspects of organized religion into McDonald’s.
Schlosser’s argument that fast food, specifically McDonald’s, evolved into an organized religion has many strong points, but those arguments have very little supporting evidence other than possibly coincidental similarities.

Works Cited
Fishwick, Marshall. "Ray and Ronald girdle the globe." Journal of American Culture (01911813)
18.1 (Spring95 1995): 13.

Furlong, William Barry. "Ray Kroc: Burger Master." Saturday Evening Post 253.2
(Mar. 1981): 64120.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Harper
Perennial, 2001.

Weber, Joseph, and Peter Coy.. "Economists Are Getting Religion." Business Week (06 Dec.
2004): 136-138.

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I don't have the hard copy of any essays from this class. But I never made above a D on anything in this man's class.