Did Andy Warhol really eat a hamburger “just like everyone else”?
If you are an art lover, you are probably familiar with the video “Andy Warhol eating a hamburger.” It’s an excerpt from the film “66 Scenes from America”, directed by Jørgen Leth.
Jørgen Leth is a Danish filmmaker who came to the USA in the 80s.
There, he decided to make a film about America, what it was like to live there at that time. So, in his film, we can see things such as landscapes, motels, diners, portraits of people, highways, and things related to American culture.
His film « 66 scenes from America » depicts various scenes and among them, we can see people talking and doing different things across the United States.
The excerpt with Andy Warhol is one of the scenes in the documentary.
It is said that Jørgen Leth was really obsessed with Andy Warhol aand went to see him at the Factory. He presented his idea to him and the pop artist agreed.
According to some websites, Andy Warhol agreed because he liked the idea, but also because the way the film was going to be shot was very close to his own style: a single shot film with one camera.
The video lasts almost 4.30 minutes and here’s what happens:
Andy Warhol is sitting at a table. On the table, there’s a Burger King Bag and a bottle of ketchup. At first Andy Warhol looks at the camera and probably at the filmmaker. Then, he grabs the bag and takes out a paper napkin and a burger (a Whopper). He takes the burger out of the box and hardly puts some ketchup on the paper (he even says “it’s not coming out”).
Then he dips his Whopper in ketchup and starts eating his burger.
He eats small bites in a very slow manner.
From time to time he cleans up what is in front of him. He doesn’t really seem to enjoy his burger. In the middle of the video, he even takes some of it out. As if it was already too much for him. He doesn’t even finish the other part.
Then he puts the rest of the burger back in the box, cleans himself with the napkin, and puts everything back in the Burger King Bag.
He ‘folds’ the bag and moves it and the ketchup bottle to the left of the table.
Then he folds his fingers and looks at the camera. But he quickly looks around as if he doesn’t know what to do. About a minute later he finally says “My name is Andy Warhol and I’ve just finished eating a hamburger”.
Then a voiceover says “Burger, New York” and music starts playing.
Reading the summary I’ve just written, I understand that this video may seem awfully boring if you’ve never watched it. And visually, it’s not something amazing either. It’s a frontal video with a simple setting. Yet, there’s something really fascinating about it. It’s really the kind of video that you can watch from time to time and still enjoy. But what makes it so captivating?
When I started working on this topic, I noticed that, for many people, the fact that Andy Warhol eats a burger and ends up saying “My name is Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger” really make him look like everybody else. That this gesture makes him look ordinary. He could have said, “Look, I‘m like you, I eat burgers too” and the result would have been the same.
Of course, Andy Warhol eats a burger like many people in this world. Like us, he struggles to get the ketchup to flow (we’d like to say “yes, we’ve been there too, Andy”). Like many of us, he puts the ketchup on the paper so he can dip his burger in it, and like us sometimes, he doesn’t seem really convinced by his fast-food meal. In that respect, yes, he‘s like us.
Burger King even showed an excerpt from this video during the 2019 Super Bowl final with the Hashtag “Eat like Andy”. Like he was one of the first influencers.
But let’s be honest: the success of the video makes Andy Warhol even more legendary, even more extraordinary, and therefore even more ‘remote’ from us. This video reinforces the myth. It’s fascinating to see him eating what we eat too. The silence as we watch him eat, as if we were looking at a painting in a museum. It’s fascinating to see that he‘s like us. But in reality, I think he never would have been like us. Like many artists, he had an aura and a certain sense of immortality that made everything he did so captivating. And I think it’s impossible to get rid of that aura, to make yourself ordinary when you’ve shown such singularity. He could have been filmed eating a pizza in front of a Netflix series, it wouldn’t have made any difference. This is what always creates an irreversible gap between us and celebrities. Once we‘ve eaten our burger, we don’t have a Factory to go to, paintings to exhibit at the American Center, or friends like Ed Sedgwick to meet. We can all consume the same things, engage in the same daily activities, but it won’t change what we are in the eyes of others, will it?
Even though I think there’s a total contradiction between the content and the popularity of the video, I think Jørgen Leth’s video is really good. Everyone I know who’s watched it has loved it. It’s a ‘simple’ (I don’t mean that in a pejorative way) but fascinating video. You can’t help but watch it to the end. And, as I already said, it’s always a pleasure to watch it from time to time. The video is only 4.28 minutes long, the action could be summed up in 5 words, and yet it easily leads to some very interesting discussions. It’s something ‘almost ordinary’ that gives us food for thought, and for that it is a real stroke of genius.
