Happy New Years everybody! Instead of getting shitfaced this year, I had one shot of whiskey at a Coyote Ugly-type bar with my relatives, and then went back to their house to play games...and I have to say, I actually had more fun then I usually do. Getting shitfaced has just lost any appeal it had to me in my younger years; I'm not sure how everyone doesn't eventually grow out of this stage; fourty-yr old alcoholics baffle me.
Anyway, it's been quite cold and snowy here in Upstate NY; with one storm after another pumbling us. So I've been spending a lot of time inside, painting my sister's bathroom for her, watching movies and searching the internet for a place to live upon return to Portland (yeah...can't wait to be back...been gone too long!) Anyway, one movie that I watched with my brother-in-law and sister which actually seemed to impact their thinking, was the movie What Would Jesus Buy? This is a documentary by Morgan Spurlock, that dude who made the documentary about McDonald's called Super-Size Me. What Would Jesus Buy? is about the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. If you have not heard of this group, go to UTube immediately and look them up! They are an anti-overconsumption activist group based in NYC who "preach" about being $aved, who ask the important question "are we people or are we sheeple?" Looking a lot like the Reverend Billy Graham and mocking fundimentalist Christain practices such as speaking in tongues and casting demons out of things (in this case, he commonly casts demons out of cash registers at Victoria's Secrets, Wal-Marts and Starbucks,) the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping simultaneously mock overconsumption and overzealous Christianity, a winning combination in my option. The Reverend Billy is probably the only reverend on earth who is barred from all Starbucks, he is probably jailed more then any other reverend on the globe as well. His charismatic preaching is amazing to watch; he thinks on his feet and rapidly comes up with answers to bystanders and cops at demonstrations that he and his church stage that amaze me. For example, at one demonstration a cop pulls on his elbow and says "can I speak with you for a second?"
"No," Reverend Billy responds, "we're having church here..." And indeed, they are; singing and preaching in the parking lot of the corporate headquarters of Wal-mart. The documentary follows the group on their veggie-oil buses as they travel the country, preaching about the coming Shopocalypse and how we all need to repent of our consuming ways and be free. The good reverend sets up confessional stands across the country where people can confess shopping sins, he encourages people to wave their credit cards in the air at his sermons so he can "wipe out all remaining credit" on the cards. He lays hands on people and prays that they will know the difference between real life and X-Box 360 and Wii life; he bapitizes babies so that they will never become consumers. The best part of the documentary, however, is the parts that talk about the sweatshop conditions in which most Wal-mart and Disney goods are produced; interviews with actvists who work to get rid of sweatshop conditions about 16 hour work days, broken bones and fingers crushed in machines, union organizers who get taken out of the factory and have their kneecaps broken (that was a Disney figurine factory, by the way,) really get one thinking. I could see that my brother-in-law and sister where really affected by these descriptions (indeed, anyone who isn't numb all the way through will be,) and the next day, when we where in a K-mart getting stuff, my brother-in-law kept saying "check where that is made...we can only get American-made stuff..." He was half-kidding; we knew we wouldn't find anything in K-mart that wasn't made in China or Taiwan or Korea, but I could tell that he was now concerned about the terrible conditions the things they where purchasing might have been made under. This made me glad we'd watched it together. Later, when I heard him talking to his mom about what he'd learned from the documentary, I thought "praise Jesus...he's been $aved!"
All joking aside though, the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping are doing great things to get the message out there; they are an activist group who really seem to be waking people up to some degree about the conditions of developing-world factories, the slavery which leads to cheap goods here in the US. They seem to be more effective then most other activist groups I know of, and, to tell the truth, they don't do anything too extreme. Well, ok, so diving into the bushes at the corporate headquaters of Wal-mart and yelling about demons is a little extreme; but that is exactly why I love Reverend Billy!
Love ya,
Carrot
I think if they really wanted to reach a wider audience then they shouldn't use religion especially in a comical way to do so because they are people who taking Christianity seriously. I don't like the overzealous worshippers either but it's called respect. It's good to get the message that we're turning into insatiable materialistic society but they need to find some other way of reaching out. I loved the Supersize Me documentary though. I barely eat at McDonalds only when there's nothing else to eat around me haha.