Something strange is affecting the workers on Io, and O’Niel can sense it. In this mining colony on one of Jupiter’s moons, the corporation is most powerful. It pays its employees, lodges them, amuses them, and feeds them.
The film does an excellent job at emphasizing the communal nature of the workers’ lives in this colony. Several scenes are shot in their cramped dorm-like living quarters and in their cafeteria. The workers eat, as they do all their activities, together. Dressed in their identical uniforms, they carry their food on generic trays and seat themselves in rows, on either side of long tables. In many ways, the lifestyle here resembles a prison.
On the menu are foods low in quality and high in fat, starch and sugar. These are typical of cafeterias and fast-food chains. The employees are forced to eat foods that offer short-term satisfaction, just as they are encouraged to find amusement and appeasement in short-term pleasures such as alcohol, sex and drugs.
O’Niel has a kitchen in his living quarters that appears to be equipped with the necessities to prepare a meal yet he is never seen using it. In fact, there is mention of how little he can bring himself to eat since his wife and son left him. He cannot even find solace in food.
At the beginning of the film, there is a very typical family scene as O’Niel’s son Paul eats breakfast at the kitchen counter before heading off for the day, as his mother looks on. This is a stereotypical scene that could easily be applied to a normal morning on Earth, in any average family. This is meant to show that O’Niel’s family could be stable and happy if they attempted to live a normal human existence. They are not confined to the wants of the corporation and can therefore escape its oppression.