Only disconnect
On May 17 the president of the United
States ascended the podium of the Capital Center Partnership
in St. Paul, Minnesota and presented his thoughts on the
American energy crisis:
It’s time to act. The energy plan I lay
out for the nation harnesses the power of modern markets,
and the potential of new technology. It looks at today’s
energy problem and sees tomorrow’s energy opportunity. It
addresses today's energy shortages and shows the way to
tomorrow's energy abundance. As a weatherworn but wise old
Texan once observed, “To consume is the ultimate
expression of humanity.”
Sure he did.
The opening lines quoted above come
straight from Dubya’s May 17 address — the same one
where he reassured the American public that “conservation
does not mean doing without. Thanks to new
technology, it can mean doing better and smarter and
cheaper.” The president wore a dark suit for the occasion,
with a bright blue tie that echoed the electric blues and
environmental greens of the stage backdrop. He spoke softly
but carried a big stack of goodies for his powerful friends.
The final sentence in the quote comes from
the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s latest contribution to Bay
Area counterculture, “1600 Transylvania Avenue,” which
debuted at Dolores Park last week. Here the president of the
United States indulges in slightly flashier clothes,
particularly enjoying the swish of a succession of
ever-gaudier capes.
As he should. For the White House has been
occupied by gang of Corporate Bloodsuckers, and The
President’s a very special one. It’s his Big Tax Cut
that will enable Americans to pay their ever-rising
utilities bills.
Glee and gratitude all ’round.
At least, as much glee and gratitude as a
nation of zombies can put together.
Turns out that the unprotesting American
people are swallowing the swill the Bloodsuckers produce
because their little gray cells have been paralyzed.
Remember the happy populace in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave
New World,” kept placid and unquestioning by regular doses
of soma (whose effects are perhaps not so different from the
ecstasy dished out in SoMa clubs — but that’s another
story)? In the Mime Troupe’s version, incessant doses of
commercial messages create the same semi-somnambulant state.
It’s well nigh impossible for ordinary folk to jam the
media outlets, because the corporations that own them are
legal people: they enjoy the rights and powers of private
citizens, but with a lot more financial backing. (For the
legal-minded: this status follows from a 1888 U.S. Supreme
Court ruling, in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern
Pacific Railroad, that the Southern Pacific was a “natural
person” and therefore entitled to all Bill of Rights
protections.)
To learn how the Highest Form of
Capitalism, now inhabiting the White House in human form, is
brought to its knees, you might catch the Mime Troupe on its
summer tour (for a schedule, consult www.sfmt.org. or call
415 285-1717). Reaching the ripe old age of 40 has not
slowed the pace of the company’s pratfalls, and winning a
Tony has failed to veil its posturing with an air of
respectability. Its villains are still something to sneer
at; its lovers are still loverly. A performance by the group
is still, quite literally, a romp in the park.
Or you might pick up a copy of Kalle Lasn’s
Culture Jam: How To Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer
Binge — And Why We Must.
Any resonance of the title with the
classic doomsday film “Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned To
Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is probably intentional,
for Lasn is just as iconoclastically unorthodox as Stanley
Kubrick and Terry Southern. The founder and head hellraiser
of Adbusters Media Foundation (adbusters.org), in recent
years Lasn has perpetrated a series of “marketing
campaigns” on the world, including Buy Nothing Day and TV
Turnoff Week.
The campaigns are clever and amusing as
they turn familiar brandname sales pitches on their heads.
Joe Camel becomes Joe Chemo; McDonald’s golden arches turn
into the EKG chart of a “Big Mac attack.” But their
motivation is serious — and revolutionary. Says Lasn:
A free, authentic life is no longer
possible in Americatm today. We are being
manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions,
personalities, and core values are under siege from media
and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous
product message has woven itself into the very fabric of
our existence. Most North Americans now live designer
lives — sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV,
sleep again. I doubt there’s more than a handful of
free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We
ourselves have been branded.
The solution? Social demarketing — “uncooling
consumerism.” Calling attention to the stark naked nudity
of the Emperor of not only Ice Cream but also Philip Morris
and Nike and Calvin Klein and poking fun at his barrel chest
and spindly legs.
The result? An escape from “the
postmodern malaise… a perspective-jarring turnabout in
[our] everyday life.” Laughing our way out of what French
philosopher Henri Lefebvre called the “bureaucratic
society of controlled consumption.”
Now that’s cool.
Betsey Culp
