Let´s stop Lockwoods of the world!

by Nahir Penelas

Have you ever seen a piece of cheese falling from the sky? Or even better, a delicious hamburger coming from the sky into your hand? Well, if you haven’t, you can find this amazing phenomenon in the film “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”. This film, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and distributed by Columbia Pictures in 2009, was based upon the book with the same name, written by Judi Barrett and published in 1978.

Flint Lockwood, a crazy young scientist, lives in Swallow Fall, the dark and boring city, producer of sardines, where the story is set. Tired of living in a city crammed with sardines, Flint creates the “FLDSMDFR”, a machine that produces food by a genetic alteration of hydrogen molecules. At the beginning everything seems perfect, but then, food over mutates and the citizens has to evacuate the city escaping from the attack of hot sauce waves and big corns, as Chernobyl citizens have escaped from dangerous radioactive particles.

Scientists tend to take decisions without being able to oversee the consequences they might bring. This human behavior towards nature will have fatal repercussions in the future. Describing a crazy and absurd situation, “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”, criticizes the manipulation scientists make over nature.

The “FLDSMDFR” turns water, the most pure substance that exists on earth, into toxic fatty food. The mayor of the city represents the worst consequence that implies an abusive consumption of junk food: obesity. We know that in the last decade junk food has invaded all our cities, contributing to the increase of people suffering obesity in the world. Companies, with the cooperation of scientist, have discovered that the combination of sugar, fat and salt have the same effect as drugs in the human brain. In order to raise the amount of sales, they have started making products with these ingredients. That is how hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, candies and sodas have become a legal drug that kills millions of people annually. The same science that might save humans lives is the one that creates the conditions for their death. Instead of a solution, Flint has created a problem: a machine that produces artificial, toxic and addictive food that does not feed but intoxicates his neighbors.

Spray on shoes and Rat birds are some of the failed inventions Flint has created before the “FLDSMDFR”, both with everlasting consequences. Once he wears the Spray on shoes, hoping to solve the epidemic of untied shoes, he realizes that he would never be able to take them out; now shoes are part of his skin. Rat birds, a crossbreed between rats and birds, an absurd and useless creation, turns into a plague that bothers the whole city. Scientist like Flint should reflect upon the consequences their actions might have, because some results are permanent, and there is no way back.

Even though Lockwood has suffered many failures, he insists on making a marvelous invention that would change the world, as many other scientists dream. When he creates the food replicator, he commits the same mistake he had done with the previous inventions: not to think in the consequences it might bring. “What happens if food over mutates” asked Sam, the weather broadcaster, “I don’t know. It´ll never happen” answered Flint.  But it happened: food over mutates and the city was under a big danger. Like many other disasters that have occurred in our world as a result of lack of prevention (as the Chernobyl disaster I have previously mentioned), the film shows the background that involves an episode like this one. There is a combination of an unconscious society, unscrupulous politicians and risky scientists, which allow manipulation of nature.

Through a funny and fantasy plot, “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” not only entertains us, but also helps us to notice the high number of artificial products we daily consume,  result of the manipulation that scientist make toward natural substance. Reflecting upon this reality, we might became conscious citizens, try to stop the over manipulation and mutation of organisms, and enjoy the world the way it is.