Corn Becomes Us

King Corn is a documentary about people. Slovenly people. People whose cultural motives thrust their diet to homage of a single vegetable, the titular Corn. The presence of Corn in everything we eat is a shocking revelation when placed in context of Everything We Eat.

The Crew (two young men) trace their respective family lines to Small Town Iowa, where they plan to farm an acre of Corn. They begin this journey, incidentally, because they discover the element s of Corn in their hair. Their perspective, illustrated here, is that the food industry is skewed towards the overproduction of an inferior system. Their research, allowed, startles.

                Viewing the supply side of the equation, they spend nine months with their acre, growing and harvesting. This involves surprisingly little work. The Planting process revolves around buying bulk seed, then spreading it over the field via oversized fertilizer pods. They then have roughly two months off until they have to buy and spray fertilizer/pesticide. The process is impersonal. The Corn is inedible. It needs processing to become food-like. They connotation the film asserts is that corn is overproduces, heartless in treatment of the “family farm”, which is ceding to massive single-farm plots.

Following the corn, it becomes our food. The camera contrasts massive tubs of corn syrup to huge herds of corn-fed cows, unhealthy and pained. The trail injects itself into our beef, our drinks (commented by a doctor as “liquid candy”). As fast food restaurants slide by their car, the ubiquity of Corn sinks in.

“People who grew up in our generation are basically made of Corn.”

King Corn attacks our Corn-Following industry, something out of proportion and before us. The final scene of them playing in their empty acre (which they bought from their support farmer) in the middle of a new, Single-Farm plot, invites reflection. How far is enough?

1: How is Children of the Corn a prophetic title in reference to our generation?

2: What Kingdom perspective can we exercise in how We purchase and regulate out diet?