Fast Food and Teen Culture
Fast food influences our lives as well as our culture since the last few decades. Especially it affects the most on younger generation like high school students and teenagers. The relationship between fast food culture and teenagers is inseparable. In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, there are many similarities on how fast food culture interacts with teen's lives. The movie also reveals many negative sides of the fast food industry especially the employment of teenagers in fast food restaurants. According to Fast Time in Ridgemont High, fast food defines teen culture as fast paced, convenience, disrespectable, insecure, and superficial like employment and the relationship between males and females. Teen culture is how teenagers think and act in their everyday lives. A lot of times their lives are always somehow relate to the fast food industry, like their lunchtime and casual meeting place with friends can be occurred often at fast food restaurants. Furthermore, teenagers are also the main workforces of the fast food industry according to Schlosser's statement "Teenagers have long provided the fast food industry with the bulk of its w
orkforce (Schlosser 70). Also the movie itself has shown many scenes of teenagers working at the fast food restaurants. From this we can see that teen culture is deeply affected by the fast food industry. The character Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) plays an important role as he reflects how fast food employers treat their teenage workers. Brad works various jobs and most of them are inside in the fast food industry. First he works in All American burger and he is the employee of the month. Brad wants to be a "single successful guy" as he soon graduates from high school. In one scene when Brad is cleaning the restaurant's bathroom, he looks the mirror and tells himself that he will be successful. He feels confident about his future since he built a good reputation in the restaurant and he has been working in the restaurant for quite a long time. However, a moment later a customer complains about his food and asks Brad to refund his money. Brad tries to refuses to give him a refund because the customer has already eaten most of his meal. They have an argument and Brad's manager fires him because he threatens the customer that he will beat him up. Brad tries to explain that the reason he threatens the customer is because he insults him and calls him a moron. From this scene it is very similar to one example in Fast Food Nation as Schlosser states that many of the customers look down on fast food workers and feel entitled to treat them with disrespect (Schlosser 81). From this example we can see that fast food defines teen culture is disrespectable and have not much appreciation. It seems that fast food jobs are the only legitimate jobs for teens in most cases since fast food jobs require very low skills and no experience, which is a perfect for job for teenagers especially high school students because they are lack of experience and have no high education, plus they are old enough to meet the age requirement. However, there are also many problems exist in fast food jobs. Like Brad's first job at All Time American Burger, he feels very angry and disappointed after he gets fired because he feels betrayed by his employer even though he works very hard for his job. Still the manager fires him without any hesitation. Same as Schlosser's opinion about how easy an employee can get fired in fast food industry because fast food jobs are easy to be replaced by other people since every task is easy enough for anyone. As he states "Jobs that have been "de-skilled" can be filled cheaply. The need to retain any individual worker is greatly reduced by the ease with which he or she can be replaced" (Schlosser 70). Fast food employee has no security or future according to both the movie and Fast Food Nation. In addition, Stacy's relationship with Mike Damo
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Approximate Word count = 1876
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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