The burger suited a country that was young, informal and on the go. And it was only a matter of time before it got swept up into that other signature feature of the American way, the corporation. Photo / 123RF
The burger suited a country that was young, informal and on the go. And it was only a matter of time before it got swept up into that other signature feature of the American way, the corporation. Photo / 123RF
OPINION
What could be more American than a personal injury lawsuit against a hamburger chain? Let us begin with the hamburger.
Americans are not the first people to wrap meat in bread. The 4th Earl of Sandwich ordered his valet to provide him with beef between slices of toast sothat he could eat while gambling without getting grease on the cards. Thus the sandwich was born and the burger is essentially a sandwich. But it took America to make a fetish of it.
The burger suited a country that was young, informal and on the go. And it was only a matter of time before it got swept up into that other signature feature of the American way, the corporation.
The result was the hamburger chains that everyone knows, a cultural export up there with Hollywood, an edible expression of the US of A. It was food without the adult bits, without vegetables, crockery, cutlery, formality or meal times.
It was all fried, chips and meat, salt and fat, washed down by sugary fizz in a cup big enough to bathe the family dog. And afterwards no washing up. You just swept the mess you’d created into the maw with the flap on it and that was that. It was cheap, lazy, profligate, every teenager’s dream. So it went around the world like a virus.
“Give me a child till he’s 7″ was the motto of the Society of Jesus, and the burger corporations took note. They introduced decor and toys to lure the toddler in and, once in, those toddlers never left. They were catered for as teenagers and they were catered for as adults in their cars. They could buy a burger without leaving the driving seat. It was burgers for life.
There are probably as many personal injury lawyers in the States as there are burger joints. And just as those burger joints mean that no American need ever confront any food that is different, or un-American, so the personal injury lawyers ensure that, if something bad ever happens to that American, it is someone else’s fault. And that someone else can be sued.
Four people have come together to sue Burger King for an unspecified quantity of damages on the grounds that its advertising is misleading. Photo / AP
Burger chains have been among the sued. In the 1990s a woman at a drive-through – I know, I know, but I cannot bring myself to type thru’ – bought a cup of coffee, spilled it on her lap, sued and received damages of $2.9 million. Hence the “Caution: Contents May Be Hot” on burger chain coffee cups. It’s all part of the giant infantilisation that comes with American culture.
Now four people have come together to sue Burger King for an unspecified quantity of damages on the grounds that its advertising is misleading. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that certain advertisements exaggerate the size of their products, “… causing consumers to come to, or order from, Burger King and make purchases that they would not have otherwise made”.
Well now, you will have noticed the operative word in the above. It is consumer. The United States invented the term and it is hard to think of an uglier word because it is hard to think of an uglier concept. It identifies the human being only by input. What we say or do or build or achieve means nothing. What matters is only what we eat or drink or buy.
And now these consumers have spotted that advertising for burgers makes them look bigger and tastier than they actually are. At the same time, they might have noticed that advertisements for hard liquor suggest that it comes with good looks and gratified sexual desire, just as every roll of toilet paper comes with a labrador puppy.
But let us suppose they had not noticed. Let us suppose they ordered a burger in the expectation of being handed a great stack of a thing as per the advertisement, triple layered, professionally lit and gleaming, each element distinct and mouth-watering, only to receive a box containing a limp wad of a thing that bore as little resemblance to the advertised item as I do to Brad Pitt. What then? Surely there’s a lesson there, and a lesson as old as commerce. Caveat emptor is its name, buyer beware. It is part of an adult awareness of the way things go.
And having been fooled once, at a cost of a few dollars, the customer ought to be grateful to have been inoculated against the allure of appearance over substance, to have been given some insight into the difference between the idea and the reality that lies at the heart of everything from food to faith.
But not the burger-fed litigious American consumer. His first reaction is the infantile wail of “That’s not fair.” His second, equally infantile, to sue.
