Fighting Excessive Consumerism

The exaggeration to prove a point, is that Billy is not a real reverend and the church is an activist group. From what I saw, they did not blaspheme, nor put down any religion, however they used a medium that most Americans are used to, to get their message across to the masses. You learn that Billy has a court order against him by Starbucks, and is not allowed within cooee of a store, and that when singing their gospel outside some of the big box stores like Wal*Mart and Kmart, they were ordered to move on by police and security. The last thing big retailers want are the Church of Stop Shopping outside their stores discouraging the punters to stop shopping, heaven forbid! The troupe even sang out the front of the Wal*Mart headquarters and Billy tried to purge the demons from the large sign. Hilarious stuff to watch. When Billy performed an exorcism on a cash register in Victoria’s Secret, I knew that I couldn’t stop watching or laughing about the simplicity of his message. I did find one thing disturbing though, and that was the behaviour of my youngest daughter Megan during the family showing of the movie. She was justifying her spending habits during the documentary, however, I do believe the message sunk in near the end. It was just strange behaviour, and I suppose it was the first stage of denial that will eventually lead to realisation, and then action on her behalf.

Many people in western nations live beyond their means. It is a documented fact that many of us swipe up huge credit card debit at Christmas time, all in the name of buying gifts for people, that we think will make them happy. You know what, it doesn’t make you happy. Have a look at it this way. How many times have family members bought you something, and visa versa, and in a week or months time, the item gathers dust in the corner or under a bed somewhere? Too many as far as I am concerned. Our recent decluttering exercise at home is testement to that.

The simple message of this documentary is you don’t have to buy an expensive gift for someone to show them that you love them. You can’t buy love! Something as simple as a hug or a kiss or being there for your family when they need you is what love is about. Not that brand new Tickle Me Elmo that walks and talks or the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 that glue your kids to the TV screen as a suedo babysitter. A hug or a good deed lasts forever in my mind, but stuff does not. Due to designed obselesance, it needs to be replaced with the next great product. Stuff just promotes the aquisition of more stuff and as I have stated before, it is advertising that tries to make us buy stuff we don’t really need, with money we don’t really have, to make us feel better about ourselves or make other feel happy, and to show off to people we don’t even like. That is about as good a definition of excessive consumerism that you are likely to get (from me, anyway).

Anyway, enough ranting for one day. Here is a clip of the good Reverend Billy on prime time, and a trailer from the documentary. If you can get your hands on a copy of the DVD, I highly recommend it.