Vegan Bookclub

A review of the “Big Max” documentary

I am glad it was made, but my observation is that it has little direction, and that you are left with making your own conclusion with not that much vegan education thrown in.

There are a lot of people like Max, and having such a person can inspire other people just like him to ask themselves questions about what they are eating. This is throwing light on the dysfunctions, and people with these dysfunctions making them harder for society to avoid, and go into denial about. It is good to see that, but also it would be great to throw light on why these dynamics happen, and why people end up overweight in the first place, what the food industries do to get you hooked so that the viewers get a better sense of reality.

This is such a frightening window into the shame of our society. You have this individual in this documentary who is completely separated from themselves, their addictions, and self-abandonment is completely supported by their environment. This completely showcases the gaslighting, cognitive dissonance, and apathy of our society. He is a walking trauma bag, and everyone enjoys being around him because they are just like him internally, their emotional world is just as damaged. None of these people are aware of this, and this level of dysfunction is normal for them. The way others treat him is also completely internalised, the part of him that feels lonely is so buried away that he cannot even point out any negative emotions that he is feeling. Every human feels negative emotions, it is a complete disconnection from feeling to be unable to point them out within oneself. Those people around him are also struggling with feeling their negative emotions, that’s why they are all friends, that’s why it all “works out” so well for all of them.

Max needed deep healing, and psychological help to change food habits. They completely did not approach it from ethics, and the support, connection they got from this documentary, which is totally the main reason why someone would go vegan in these circumstances, most likely will be gone after it. The reason why someone goes overweight is because of deep psychological trauma, and issues. Fixing surface level symptoms like the diet doesn’t help, once the supportive environment is gone there is no reason to not revert to old habits. While I love all sorts of vegan activism, and methods this is too much off-hands for the viewer when most people viewing this won’t be vegan. It can be easy to brush off the impact, and the message of this documentary for non-vegans.

It is concerning to end this documentary with camera shots of meat, and how much this person enjoyed it. It is disturbing how the smoking addiction is completely unaddressed. It seems that in order to stop the meat addiction they overfocused on other addictions instead. Letting people do what they want can be greatly healing, but I don’t think Max knew what eating animals truly entails, and this is a vegan documentary. At least some commentary on the nuances of this complex topic would have been nice, people don’t really know what to do with the darker aspects of themselves that get displayed in the media, and covering them is important to make people understand as much as possible.

In conclusion I love that this documentary brings light to the problems, but I don’t see the right steps to solve them or steps that could greatly impact as many people as it possibly could. I want people like Max happy, thriving, and not in basements. I hope we start waking up to our shadows, and loving the parts of ourselves that we do not want to see. I get that this documentary was made with the best resources, and intentions in mind.