King Corn
Documentary tells you things about corn you never even knew you didn't know

Yes, there are thousands and thousands of uses for corn, all of which I will tell you about right now! — Jan Hooks as Tina, Peewee's Big Adventure

If you've ever happened to be in Iowa in the summer, you've probably experienced the joy of tasting fresh —I mean really fresh — corn. Picked that afternoon, on the table a couple of hours later... Mmmm-Man! it's a tasty treat. On my most recent trip, I watched a pick-up truck pull into a parking lot with a couple of baskets of succulent silky ears of corn. The farmer was practically attacked; people raced to the truck and loaded up. He sold them all in about ten minutes. It puzzled me: the whole city was surrounded by corn. Why the feeding frenzy? Don't the Iowans get sick of corn?

After watching King Corn, I had my answer. The whole state may seem like it is made out of corn, but a whole lot of that corn is not meant for the table. Much of the corn they grow, it's not really food, but with the right processing it could be turned into food, or something like it.

King Corn is a surprisingly entertaining documentary about a starchy subject. Following their graduation, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis are looking for something to do before entering the workforce. After reading something about corn, they have a scientist perform tests on a lock of their hair; a spectrographic analysis delivers a surprising result. It would seem that the two men are made out of corn. A quick check of the grocery store aisles reveals that corn is in almost every product on the shelf. Corn is everywhere!

The men decide to take a ground-up look at the corn industry and lease an acre of land from a farmer in Iowa. The film follows the men as they apply for government subsidies, plant their corn, watch it grow, harvest it, and attempt to follow how their harvest enters the food chain. Whether as feed grain or corn syrup, the film will change the way you think about corn and our food supply. You will perhaps reflect that if you bought something at the theater snack bar, whether popcorn or soft drink, you are enjoying a tasty corn snack while watching a movie about corn. Mmmm, popcorn! The indispensable taste treat that keeps most theaters even halfway viable.

Never preachy or dogmatic, the film is humorous and charming in the methods it uses to make its point. With lots of time on their hands as the corn grows, Cheney and Ellis do away with the usual boring charts and graphs and use their downtime to create intricate visual aids using stop-motion animation that reminded me of an old Gumby cartoon. And it's not just a gimmick, the information sticks with you. The farmers and ranchers the men interview consistently surprise with their candor and insight; no one is caught flat in an ambush interview, there are no "gotcha" moments, and the story is never told in terms of good guys and bad guys. The film is not a call to action so much as it is a sort of bemused call for awareness.

I especially appreciated their respectful attitude toward Earl Butz, the former Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon who had the greatest hand in turning homegrown agriculture into monolithic entity that is King Corn. Cheney and Ellis track him down, an old man living in a retirement home. Butz was a real piece of work in other regards, too. But the men wear nice suits, greet him with respect, and listen politely while he defends his legacy. What he says is probably not going to change your opinion of the policies he set into motion, but set them he did, probably destroying classical farming forever in the process, and that's the way it is. Cheney and Ellis thank him for his time and leave, showing far greater restraint than I might have managed. Good for them.

In the end, what emerges is a picture of an industry at odds with all logic on several fronts. Economically, without government subsidies, it is not possible for farmers to turn a profit. That is the first way it is detached from reality. From a nutritional standpoint, the industry produces far and away more calories than Americans could possibly need in any given year, leading to obesity and other problems; it is out of all proportion. Socially, it has led to the destruction of the traditional family farm and farming communities who now find themselves almost as drones in a giant corn factory.

The whole situation is a colossal mess and King Corn will not offer any answers. It's sufficient, perhaps, to even raise the questions in a nation that has such a passing, disinterested knowledge of its own food supply.