The “Shopocalypse” is here and our savior comes in the form of one Rev. Billy, a pretend evangelist with a rocking bleach-blonde hairdo from the Church of Stop Shopping.
In the tradition of Borat-like comedic heroes, Rev. Billy will try anything outrageous to make Americans see the tragic side of Christmas in the new Morgan Spurlock-produced documentary “What Would Jesus Buy?”
If the movie is intended as some spiritual sign, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check out what the fake minister has to preach from his unusual pulpit.
College students are not foreign to debt. We submerse ourselves into gigantic sums of it just to make ends meet, with hopes of bettering our education. But come Yuletide, we add to that puddle of debt in the name of Jesus’ birthday.
Although it’s still a bit too soon to know the exact cash register numbers from this year’s Black Friday, an article on TIME magazine’s website reports that some research firms estimate a 6 percent decrease in purchases, while others show an increase of 7.2 percent.
When considering images of desperate Americans pushing and shoving to get into Target and Wal-Mart stores across the country, it’s hard to believe these small percentages can make a difference.
The “What Would Jesus Buy?” trailer shows parents scurrying to please their children with on-sale Xboxes and iPods in order to exemplify how we’ve turned Xmas into a national shopping mania day.
We’ve turned the celebration of a man who gave up all material possessions and his own life for the rest of humanity into an annual “shopathon” that requires special skills to find the best bargains.
There’s a scene in the movie (thank you YouTube) where the Rev. Billy and the church’s loyal gospel choir go to Disneyland on Christmas day where they began chanting at visitors and warn them about the “Shopocalypse.”
Rev. Billy eventually gets arrested and is told he’s not allowed to sing in the park with the brand name known around the world for creating musical cartoons. The core message of the movie is how we’ve been corporately manipulated into using the holiday to spend money we don’t have.
It also forces us to think about the actual products that we’re purchasing. We don’t want to think about the people who can barely survive on slave wages for feeding our shopping addictions, making the designer clothes we so desperately hope will be under our Douglas fir trees.
According to Responsibleshopper.org, factories in New Delhi were raided last month for having children as young as 10 years old making the clothes we buy at The Gap.
It’s this side of Christmas that we don’t like to ponder when we’re searching for that perfect pair of jeans.
Only time will tell if the movie will touch enough consciences to make a difference in the way we approach our December celebration practices.
Advertisers have turned commercial tactics into a science that makes us feel good about shopping ’til we drop.
They turn consumers into frenzied lunatics, dependent on gizmos and gadgets to a point where we don’t mind doing the pee pee dance all night, if it makes us the first in line – three hours before sunrise – the day after Thanksgiving.
To pump up the economy, corporations convince us that spending our way into eternal debt is the only way to feed our modern feel-good needs.
It’s hard to fight against those temptations, but you’d think people still in debt from last year’s Christmas might think twice before buying a new 500-inch flat-screen TV for the garage.
