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Spurlock transfers his gaze from himself to the creeping prevalence of advertising itself, what it’s trying to tell us about ourselves, how it’s changing us, how we absorb so much advertising every second that we’re in danger of experiencing anything that isn’t in some way tied to the financial well-being of a massive global corporation. It affects everything, from schools (one of which sells ad space in its gym to a tattoo parlor), to love (which Don Draper famously called “invented by guys like me to sell nylons”), to one’s personal worth and emotional stability. This has been around forever, of course, but take one look at your television, your cellphone, heck, outside your window and see if you can find a 100 square foot space that doesn’t have an advertisement on it. This is getting worse, and it’s a bigger deal than we think. In one particularly compelling scene, Spurlock visits a company called Buyology, which gauges what audiences want from their movie trailers using the terrifying term “neuromarketing.” The company attaches sensors to your skull to determine what the human brain reacts to, positively or negatively, and cuts their trailers accordingly. “It’s the next logical field for us,” says the company’s CEO, with a smile he doesn’t think is evil, but is. The late Bill Hicks once said, “if anyone here is in marketing or advertising, kill yourself.” We live in the age he was warning about.

Review: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Will Leitch