Twilight Greenaway

An Interview with Food, Inc. Director Robert Kenner

Food, Inc. director Robert Kenne spoke to CUESA recently about what he learned while making a hard-hitting film about the increasing corporate control of America’s food system.

CUESA: What do you think about the term “conventional agriculture”?  Does it reinforce the idea that when people are not buying sustainably produced food, they’re doing what’s "normal"?

Robert Kenner: If you call chemical-laden agriculture conventional, yes. But it’s important to realize that’s only been in existence for 40-50 years. For ten thousand years “conventional” was the opposite of what it is now. The world’s food has been fundamentally transformed in a way that these agribusinesses want to keep you from seeing. And that was the most shocking thing for me in making Food, Inc.

Read more in the CUESA E-Letter

Profile: Jane McGonigal

It’s noon and two dozen people have gathered in downtown San Francisco to participate in what amounts to a giant round of tag. The game, called Cruel 2 Be Kind, requires its players to make their way around a series of neighboring "privately owned public spaces"--plazas, rooftops, lobbies and fountains--made public only during lunch hour. Instead of simulating murder like they would in an online game or in “Assasins,” the reality-based game especially popular amongst urban hipsters, these teams of players are armed with a list of benevolent acts to inflict on whomever they encounter, until they meet and “kill” their target with kindness. Each participant stays connected to the game via their mobile phone.

“Some players will be slain by a serenade,” reads the game’s website. “Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer.”

Cruel 2 B Kind is the latest example of the work of Jane McGonigal, a doctor of Performance Studies, PhD ’06, and a woman who delights in turning our assumptions about the role of games in modern culture upside down.