(Kalle Lasn, “Culture Jam: How To Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge – And Why We Must”, 2000 : 41)
—
Store attendant isn’t exactly high up there on the “dangerous jobs” list — it should, in theory, fall significantly behind soldier, policeman, fireman, race-car driver, and even window-washer.
The Guardian reports that police estimated that approximately 2,000 people were outside the Wal-Mart store when the mall opened, and many stepped over the body of the dead man, who was later identified as Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old man from Queens.
The mob expressed anger when the Wal-Mart store decided to close because of the death, complaining that they had been there in line since Thursday morning.
Black Friday: Shop ’til you drop
These events, shocking and disgusting as they may seem, are unfortunately a common trend on Black Friday, the name given to the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US, which marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.
It is also the beginning of the fiscal period in which retailers are in the black i.e. making a profit, and it is usually the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of consumer traffic.
These events that took place in the US on Black Friday give a whole new meaning to “shop ’til you drop”.
The ‘swinish multitude’ & the ‘many-headed hydra’
It was Edmund Burke who said, in the mid-eighteenth century, “Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude”.
Where was the learning, the education, the common sense of present danger, as the throng pushed against the store doors?
Authorities are reviewing surveillance videos — but even if they were able to pick out the person who touched him, would the perpetrator have been able to kill the man on his own, without the hundreds-strong army behind him?
It was a murder with a victim but no criminal.
It was Plato‘s wild beast of a mob — or perhaps Shakespeare‘s “many-headed hydra” — that killed a man.
And as his family and friends mourn his loss, there is no individual to blame.
Some want to blame Wal-Mart’s insufficient security; others want to blame its rock-bottom prices.
Society’s affluenza killed him
But it was society that killed him, a society entrenched in consumer capitalism — perhaps made even worse by the global recession.
It was affluenza that killed him, all those people oozing sickness as they stepped over his crushed body.
Affluenza, as it is termed, is a fused word formed by “influenza” and “affluence”, described by John de Graaf as “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”.
Were the shoppers, who were adamant the store remain open because they had lined up for hours on end, remorseful over what they — the swinish multitude — had done?
Would it stop them from doing the same thing again next year?
I doubt it.
Plentitude feeds the malaise
What they buy today won’t be good enough tomorrow, and there’ll be another sale worth lining up for — another sale worth endangering their own and others’ safety for.
I don’t believe that mankind is inherently unreasonable or innately cruel, but then I think of those that found it unfair that the store had to be closed because of the death.
Was it fair to kill a man who was doing his (usually quite safe!) job?
Or fair to expect to be allowed to rummage for bargains as he lay there, dead, on the floor of the store?
…What a way to go!
***
And so… the disquieting, alarming sense of self-loss within us knells, signaling our ever-approaching death by consumption… and what is our communal, global response?
Lasn (2000: 41) asserts it best: “to turn on the TV.”
Sachafortune22's Blog
AFFLUENZA: SHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP (DEAD)
November 29, 2008“The Manchurian Consumer has been programmed…
to go out and purchase things…
Slogans now come easily to his lips.
He has warm feelings toward many products…
his most innate drives and emotions trigger
immediate connections with consumer goods.
Hunger equals Big Mac.
Drowsiness equals Starbucks.
Depression equals Prozac.
And what about that burning anxiety, that deep,
almost forgotten feeling of alarm
at his lost independence and sense of self?
To the Manchurian Consumer,
that’s the signal to turn on the TV.”
(Kalle Lasn, “Culture Jam: How To Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge – And Why We Must”, 2000 : 41)
—
Store attendant isn’t exactly high up there on the “dangerous jobs” list — it should, in theory, fall significantly behind soldier, policeman, fireman, race-car driver, and even window-washer.
Tell that to the Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death when shoppers broke down the doors of the chain store in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York.
The Guardian reports that police estimated that approximately 2,000 people were outside the Wal-Mart store when the mall opened, and many stepped over the body of the dead man, who was later identified as Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old man from Queens.
The mob expressed anger when the Wal-Mart store decided to close because of the death, complaining that they had been there in line since Thursday morning.
Black Friday: Shop ’til you drop
These events, shocking and disgusting as they may seem, are unfortunately a common trend on Black Friday, the name given to the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US, which marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.
It is also the beginning of the fiscal period in which retailers are in the black i.e. making a profit, and it is usually the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of consumer traffic.
These events that took place in the US on Black Friday give a whole new meaning to “shop ’til you drop”.
The ‘swinish multitude’ & the ‘many-headed hydra’
It was Edmund Burke who said, in the mid-eighteenth century, “Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude”.
Where was the learning, the education, the common sense of present danger, as the throng pushed against the store doors?
Authorities are reviewing surveillance videos — but even if they were able to pick out the person who touched him, would the perpetrator have been able to kill the man on his own, without the hundreds-strong army behind him?
It was a murder with a victim but no criminal.
It was Plato‘s wild beast of a mob — or perhaps Shakespeare‘s “many-headed hydra” — that killed a man.
And as his family and friends mourn his loss, there is no individual to blame.
Some want to blame Wal-Mart’s insufficient security; others want to blame its rock-bottom prices.
Society’s affluenza killed him
But it was society that killed him, a society entrenched in consumer capitalism — perhaps made even worse by the global recession.
It was affluenza that killed him, all those people oozing sickness as they stepped over his crushed body.
Affluenza, as it is termed, is a fused word formed by “influenza” and “affluence”, described by John de Graaf as “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”.
Were the shoppers, who were adamant the store remain open because they had lined up for hours on end, remorseful over what they — the swinish multitude — had done?
Would it stop them from doing the same thing again next year?
I doubt it.
Plentitude feeds the malaise
What they buy today won’t be good enough tomorrow, and there’ll be another sale worth lining up for — another sale worth endangering their own and others’ safety for.
Such is the way of the world.
“Plentitude feeds the malaise as it fills the stomach,” Kalle Lasn says in his book Culture Jam: How To Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge – And Why We Must (2000: 11).
I don’t believe that mankind is inherently unreasonable or innately cruel, but then I think of those that found it unfair that the store had to be closed because of the death.
Was it fair to kill a man who was doing his (usually quite safe!) job?
Or fair to expect to be allowed to rummage for bargains as he lay there, dead, on the floor of the store?
…What a way to go!
***
And so… the disquieting, alarming sense of self-loss within us knells, signaling our ever-approaching death by consumption… and what is our communal, global response?
Lasn (2000: 41) asserts it best: “to turn on the TV.”
Posted in Commentary | Tagged affluenza, Black Friday, Culture Jam, Edmund Burke, Kalle Lasn, many-headed hydra, Plato, shopping, swinish multitude, Wal-Mart | 1 Comment »