Cypriot Anti-Consumerist Graffiti

One of the things that struck me about Cyprus were the ubiquitous American consumer logos...Coca Cola, Starbucks, TGI Friday's, Bennegins, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and the list goes on and on. I should not have been surprised given the state of globalized commercialism. And yet, I found signs of displeasure with it. Within moments of our arrival in Nicosia, I saw the "McCancer" stencil not far from the a tourist area near the border. I began to see more and more of these subtle stenciled works.

I began to think of these not simply as graffiti dirtying up the walls of the city, but as contests over place. In my posting from 2 weeks ago about Cyprus and contested space, I noted that, "the island rests divided by political, religious, and other ideological space imprinted upon the literal space of the island." Here is a physical space that has come to carry an ideological critique. An "anti capitalista" ideology must live among some segment of this community to emerge into an attempt at claiming space.

I find these subversive and witty little stencils compelling evidence of contested space.

Commodified Memory V

Commodified Memory IV

here are some new images for this ongoing series ive called commodified memory. ive been working in thrift shops, second hand stores, vintage stores...etc shooting images of 2nd hand material culture. this section of the project isolates an item or two to suggest a commercial sort of shot. these then will be paired with an image from the earlier shots into a composite.

Commodified Memory III

Sorry for the lack luster posting the past week. Things have been crazy busy.

Here are a few more shots from my spring project on commodified memory. On a number of these shots lately I have been cropping in to remove any sense of context, horizon, or anything that gives orientation. Here we are confronted from image edge to image edge with consumable as they are found in the second hand store.

Commodified Memory II

This project has a bit of a schizophrenic approach right now with several different shooting modes. If you are a follower of this blog, you likely know of my love for Stephen Shore's work. Many of my shots this semester follow in Shore's heritage in terms of subject matter but funneled through a more rigorous formal sort of composition than Shore. If you are not familiar with Shore, do a Google image search for Steven Shore American Surfaces. One direction takes looks for pattern, rhythm, shape, color etc and tries to image them within the frame in a visually arresting way. Another tendency is to create an abstraction of the product by a closer cropping. This, at least in my mind, suggests volume and abundance. And thirdly, I am trying to image the feel of the store and the consumer's gaze upon the commodity. That upon looking at the image, we will scan the products and make similar judgments about them as we would in the store itself.

Commodified Memory I

Since it is spring break at UND, I actually have had time to get out to shoot this week on the Commodified Memory project for this semester. While I have not sat down to write much about this project, which usually helps me clarify the direction of the project, I know that it is about our culture's use of things, human attachment to them, and the consumer process.


This study looks at the re-use of things found in pawn shops, thrift stores, antique shops and other places where we might find quality used items.

One of the great things about Grand Forks is how welcoming and accomodating the businesses have been to allow me to enter their stores, clog their aisles for a couple of hours, ask questions, request stepping stools etc. All have been wonderful to work with. The Salvation Army even allowed me in the back of their store to see their processing area. It was amazing...more photos to come.

Guns, An American Promise, and a King James Bible

Today as I rode the elevator up to my apartment casually browsing through the mail I had just picked up, I stumbled upon this little jewel of an insert in the local ads.

I couldn't believe it.




Gun sales. An oath. Patriotism. American made quality and jobs...and a King James Bible.

Are you kidding me?

.My first impulse is to let my cynicism prevail and stereotype the target demographics of such an ad. But there are serious issues at stake.

Beyond profaning, what millions consider a sacred text by using it for advertising, the ad makes further uncomfortable associations between an oath, religion, patriotism, the perceived quality of American products and the sanctity of American jobs all used to market a weapon.

Now I am not opposed to hunting either. I am disturbed by the use of the Bible to market a gun. And actually...I am disturbed by the use of the Bible to market anything.

I wonder how would other religions react to such an ad? Would the Muslim world be upset to see their Koran used in a casual (and perhaps even well intentioned) advertisement? What about the Jewish communities? Would they allow the use of the Tanakh to market a gun or something else? My hunch is that they too would be upset.

One of the ironies here is that the Bible is clearly labeled "Holy Bible". "Holy" or "sacred" suggests that it is meant to be set apart from. Here a sacred text is used as a marketing tool within the market economy which runs in great contrast to the economy of God and grace.

I know that I am not the only one likely to be upset by this, but I wonder why more people are not upset. I posted the ad on Facebook and have had mixed reviews on whether it is offensive. People I consider thoughtful Christians come out on either side. What is it about this ad that irks me so?

Is it my sacramental sensibilities about the nature of "holy things"? Is it my general distaste for the market economy? Am I just a cynic who takes pleasure in critiquing the world around me? Perhaps. But then again, I cannot help but wonder if we have become so desensitized to marketing that we fail to see a transgression when it is in front of us. If the product were to change, would this then ruffle peoples feathers? Mentally go through a list of household items and consider the ad. Skittles. Tampons. Baking Soda. Motor Oil. Shampoo. Do any of these change your reaction to the ad?

Similarly, have we so domesticated the sense of the sacred that we no longer care how our sacred texts are used? I cannot help but to think of Stanley Hauerwas' provocative opening chapter of Unleashing Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. He starts out saying,
"Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to all children when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian maturity is marked, such as eigth-grade commencements. Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own.

North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their 'common sense' is sufficient for 'understanding' the Scripture. They feel no need to stand udner the authority of a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the 'religious experience' necessary to know what the Bible is about. As a result the Bible inherently becomes the ideology for a politics quite different from the politics of the Church.

Note, it is not an issue of whether the Bible should be read politically, but an issue of which politics should be determining our reading as Christians." (p. 15)

As shocking as Hauerwas' statements are, there is part of me that wants to agree and particularly in connection to this ad. If the Bible would be taken from the democratic economy, perhaps it would regain its sacredness. Then, I suspect more people would be offended by ads such as this in its casual use of imagery and patriotic ideology. Do we so easily forget that this text contains the narrative of God's interaction with humanity, whereby we can come to know Jesus the Christ, inspired in some way by the Holy Spirit? Are we reading the scriptures with this weight upon us and upon the words, or have have they become so mundane that we no longer see them through an appropriate lens?

But then again, perhaps I am just a cynic who likes to critique everything around me.

Consumerism and Choosing a Church: My Dilemma

The other day I commented on some of Robert Bellah’s work in Habits of the Heart. Here is an excerpt:

“Bellah also comments on the American phenomenon of revivalism saying, “the emphasis on personal experience would eventually override all efforts at church discipline. Already in the eighteenth century, it was possible for individuals to find the form of religion that best suited their inclination. By the nineteenth century, religious bodies had to compete in a consumers’ market and grew or declined in terms of changing patterns of individual religious tastes” (233).

It is the last sentence I want to consider today. If you are a frequent visitor you may know that Karina and I have recently relocated to Grand Forks North Dakota. We are in the process of searching for a new church. Bellah’s statement though has troubled me for a while. How does one search for a new church without the consumer mentality of “church shopping.” What factors should we consider? Do our hopes for what we want in a church constitute us as consumers? When I have recently shopped for a new vehicle I want something that has good gas mileage, safety, roof rack for our bikes. And we have a “want list” for our church too…people in our age range, medium to high liturgy, and small groups top our list.

Is my want list any different than anyone else with say a preference for “good worship music and band”? Are aesthetics ok to consider?

Should the question be considered in relation to the purpose of the church and what ones role is within it?

Any thoughts?

Individualism & Spirituality

Spirituality is the favorite playground of the postmodern expressive individualist. Spirituality is perceived as the perfect means to cultivate the private self and self-expression. Yet with little to no connection to anything historical or theological framework Christian spirituality quickly becomes syncretistic; a strange blend of Holy Spirit and self help. Yet, the purpose of Christian spirituality is not “developing a better self-image, achieving self-fulfillment, or finding self-affirmation, nor is it the development of individualistic qualities.”[1] Rodney Clapp states what orthodox Christian spirituality is not.
It is not opposed to the body, it is not non physical. It is not removed from history, the ongoing flow of time. It is not asocial, a solitary activity or state of being. It is not primarily inward and invisible, a hidden affair of the private heart...[It is not] a compartmentalized experience, customized by and for the lone individual, removed from any pesky, constraining traditions or social bodies (institutions).[2]

Rather it is about developing patterns and virtues that help incarnate Christ’s social body in the world. Clapp concurs stating that “Orthodox spirituality is participation and formation in the life of the church that is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit.”[3]

Evangelical spirituality, as I have noted many times, is a personal Christological piety. Yet when this eclipses the preaching and the Sacraments or that which constitutes the church as the church there is a serious problem.[4] When this type of spirituality is the center of ecclesial unity, “the individual is prior to the church in such a way that a cafeteria style approach to Christianity is inevitable.”[5] The tendency of American individuals is to “leave the church” which may or may not actually entail a physical leaving but rather making “faith their own.” Real or valid faith is determined by a process of internalization not by just accepting what ones parents believe. Particularity of faith is swallowed by subjectivity.[6] Without the framework of church history and theology a flimsy spirituality ensues.

Within individualism, a consumerist tendency fills the self-created void of others with desire for desire. Tolerance and pluralism relegate belief (and practice) “to one more item on the market shelf”[7] where we are free “to treat these narratives, roles, and symbols as disposable commodities: things to be played with, explored, tried on, and, in the end, discarded.”[8] Not only do our individualistic spiritualities succumb to consumerism. Consumerism is a spirituality itself. Not recognizing the irony, culture implores individuals to cast off or empty the self of all things external. The empty or impoverished self may selectively be filled with “commodity based self-enhancements”[9] as salvation from the emptiness of self. Miller’s comments on consumerism are telling about the state of Christianity. Individualism promises wholeness within self-sufficiency, but this leaves the individual in radical isolation, where selves never fully comprehend the other. “Relationships are reduced to acts of consumption, a consumption that, because it is completely determined by the monadic self, can never free it from itself.”[10] The empty self must consume, but gets consumed by the process of consumption where even our Christian spirituality and practices, designed to cultivate and channel our desire of God, are commodified. Consumer desire does not end in possession, rather it is endless desire itself.[11] Christian spirituality, even in the most individualistic sense longs to go to heaven – or more appropriately the coming of God’s Kingdom. The empty individual, consumed by consumerism, desires endlessly, and is thus perpetually seeking a unique spirituality from the “wisdom of many religious traditions stripped from their supporting communal infrastructures.”[12] The perceived freedom of choice in plenty of the spiritual cornucopia distracts us from recognizing the “structures that that maintain our dissipation.”[13]


[1] Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove, IL: IVp, 1998), 102.
[2] Rodney Clapp, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 14.
[3] Ibid., 14.
[4] Carter, 176.
[5] Ibid., 176.
[6] Chan, 109.
[7] Beth Newman, “Pluralism as Idolatry” (http://www.abpnews.com/1454.article) Accessed on December 7, 2006.
[8] Vincent Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York: Continuum, 2005), 6.
[9] Ibid., 54.
[10] Ibid., 111.
[11] Ibid., 141.
[12] Ibid., 142.
[13] Ibid., 142.

Tyler Durden: A Dark Christ-Figure?

Our small group has been studying the Gospel of Luke for the past 6 months or so and we continue to return to Luke 4:16-21 as a hermeneutical lens for understanding Luke’s perspective of Jesus.

The passage states, “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The scroll was open to Isaiah 61 which should be read a fuller understanding for this context but Jesus’ own words suffice as a summary. Verse 19a of the Luke passage or 2a of Isaiah 61 mention the “year of the Lord’s favor” which points to the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 where all property shall be returned to its rightful owners and debts are forgiven.

With that in the back of my mind, my recent viewing radically changed my perception of Tyler Durden. Kelton Cobb, in The Blackwell Guide to Popular Culture states that Jack apprentices Tyler’s in an “ad hoc twelve-step program that Tyler devises to free Jack from his bondage to the dominant paradigm of consumerism” (p. 11). I began to wonder, is Tyler a sort of Christ figure, albeit a very dark one?

Much of what the Lukan passage suggest and recurs throughout the Gospel is liberation from illness, oppression and the structures of society. Tyler is trying to liberate Jack and subsequently the rest of the men (and also the participational viewer) from the burden of branded identities and consumption. Tyler whispers to Jack while he is on the phone with the police, “Tell him the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception.”

Another telling scene is in the basement of Lou’s bar or tavern. Lou enters and proceeds to pummel Tyler. Tyler willingly accepts this beating for the sake of others. Tyler motions to Jack to stay on the sidelines because his entry would derail his purposes of obtaining this venue on behalf of the greater whole. He, like the Space Monkeys later sacrifice themselves so that fledgling community of Fight Club may go on.

Another telling scene takes place in the back of a convenience store…the epitome of unnecessary consumption. With the glow of soda machines in the background the store clerk, Raymond K. Hessel is hauled out at gunpoint and made to kneel on the ground. Tyler sifts through his wallet finding an expired community college I.D. card he asks what he studied. The clerk, fearing for his life manages to dribble out barely understandable words. At one time, he had wanted to be a veterinarian and having become overwhelmed by the work involved he left his dreams behind to work in a life-sapping environment of consumption. Tyler takes the man’s license and says that he will check in on him in 6 weeks and will kill him if he is not on the way towards becoming a veterinarian. Afterwards Tyler says, “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day in Raymond K. Hessel’s life.” Raymond is awoken from the slumber of self in a society bent on selfish consumption and freed to pursue his dreams. In fact, his life (both metaphorically and literally) depend upon it. In a later scene, we see the back of a door covered with stolen drivers licenses signifying that this was not a random act. Rather they had encountered many attempting to liberate them from consumption towards a greater good.

Another central question that should be asked is the nature of the violence. To what end is the violence. Is there meaning in or redemption from the violence? In these particular scenes it would seem that there is. The cross, the supreme act of violence in the Christian tradition becomes the central motif for Paul and the means of our salvation. Here too the violence is the necessary method of freeing others from the oppression of social structures. Raymond K. Hessel and all the others represented by their drivers licenses have been in someway freed. The Space Monkey’s too have been freed from their miserable lives to find meaning in liberating others. And we as the viewer also are to find liberation by participation in the story.

Tyler may be thought of a sort of Christ-figure insofar as he gives sight to the blind (awakens slumbering culture to the effects of consumerism) and then heals them by giving them a new identity, and brings good news to the poor (both literally poor and of spirit), and frees them from the burden. The clincher for this Christological lens is the year of the Lord’s favor…the Year of Jubilee. Tyler, and project Mayhem are bent on bringing down the credit card industry to level the economic playing field. By destroying this harmful and oppressive banking practice Tyler initiates what to many would be the Year of Jubilee.

And yet, we must consider (as one of my students pointed out) not only what Tyler is liberating them from, but to what/where are they going? And this is where the Christ-figure lens would seem to fail. Robert Bellah points out a fantastic irony in Habits of the Heart by saying, “just where we think we are most free (we’ve cast off these oppressive structures and philosophies), we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture. For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our private selves” (p. 65). Radical individuals fail to see that they cast off one set of traditions for another set. Thus Tyler leads them from the oppressions of one tradition (namely consumption) to another (namely violence and anarchism). If this is correct and the film finally does not endorse the violence it portrays, Tyler can simultaneously be thought of as an anti-Christ leading his followers into another form of oppression.

Fight Club and Consumption

This past week I had my class view Fight Club. While I had seen the film many times before, I had not seen it for several years. This viewing opened up several new layers of the film that over the next few days I want to spend some time wrestling with.

I saw the film first in 1999 when the film came out against the advice of a good friend who was thoroughly disappointed with the lack of fighting. He had hoped that it for a boxing movie to which Fight Club is sure to disappoint. The film is certainly violent, but it serves a different purpose than a film like Rocky where the hero rises against the odds to greatness. Fight Club uses violence as a subtext to explore what is necessary to subvert the dominant paradigm of consumption.

Fight Club is a scathing critique of our branded and consumable identities. The Narrator played by Edward Norton, who remains nameless save a few 3^rd person references as “Jack” is shackled by societies addiction to things. The fact that he largely remains nameless is suggestive of two things: 1) that he finds his identity in those things he buys and 2) Jack is a sort of everyman in which we are to see that we too are kept by these consumeristic desires.

In response to the question of police about the destruction of his apartment, Jack states, ““That condo was my life. I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That is not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was me!” It was ME! His identity had become those things. In a consumer culture we can buy our identity, change it on a whim because we are buying not simply clothes or furniture but a lifestyle that tells others about who we are. For Jack, identity was found in his stuff…his Ikea furniture, his AX ties and DKNY shirts etc. In one poignant scene Jack tells Tyler, “I had it all. I had a stereo that was very decent, a wardrobe that was getting very respectable. I was close to being complete.” To which Tyler replies casually, as if unbound to all forms of materialism, “Shit man, now it's all gone.” Jack’s identity was almost complete as if there is nothing of value within the self but must be supported and comforted with commodities and now, it was all gone. Without these material enhancements, Jack must now set out on a path of discovery towards who he really is.

In that same poignant scene come the most scathing critique of consumerism.

Tyler Durden: Do you know what a duvet is?
Jack: It's a comforter...
Tyler Durden: It's a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then?
Jack: ...Consumers?
Tyler Durden: Right. We are consumers. We're the bi-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me, are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Jack: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and string green stripe patterns.

Here we get a glimpse of the final scenes of the film. That this cultures ways of consumption, this lifestyle obsession is coming to an end. We are left to wonder now in retrospect, does Tyler already have his plans in mind? This is also telling for Christians who are just as easily sucked into our cultures consumptive ways. We too are more interested in the personal enhancements, the versatile solutions for modern living, than issues of social justice. Certainly the health and wealth gospel only serves to uphold the cultures consumption. Messages of service and sacrifice, the Cross and martyrdom are sadly out of fashion.

If we are to critique our culture which in embedded in consumption, we must also provide a viable alternative in which we locate our true identity. Which the church has: the story of God in Israel and Christ. And yet, we must be careful not to package and sell the story in the medium of that same consumeristic culture. It is a telling irony, that Tyler’s anti consumption task force, Project Mayhem is funded by consumption or their selling of designer soaps. It points out the irony that anti-consumerism can still be sold as a product or identity. Jack says, “It was beautiful, we were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them.”

The Christian faith is not another add-on identity to those we have already garnered. It is something other. Something that demands the whole self.

Santa, St. Nicholas, and Touchdown Jesus

A few years ago I read Touchdown Jesus: The Mixing of Sacred and Secular In American History. While I disagree with R. Laurence Moore’s underlying premise that religion is and should be a private matter (he is most interested when it “trespasses” into the public square) he does offer some quality insights into the peculiarities of religion and America especially when it comes to Christmas.

Moore begins by asking, “How is it possible that at the start of the 21^st century, with seemingly everyone sensitive to issues of religious pluralism, and relatively few people declaring publicly any longer that America is a Christian nation, that a day which explicitly sets one of the worlds religions above all others is a national holiday? Is not the public recognition given to Christmas a far greater violation of church/state separation than school prayer?...With the exception of the highly secularized national day of Thanksgiving, Christmas is the only religious holiday that gets national recognition, and with surprisingly little complaint” (p.28).

Moore builds his case to answer this question on the national economy. He suggests that American Protestants had thrown out the holiday of Christmas because it was a Roman Catholic creation. And yet, Christmas slowly eased back into the American consciousness through the practice of giving gifts. Moore states, “American commerce saw a way to make money. American gift giving recalled less the visit of the three magi to the Christ child than the visit of St. Nicholas (later the jolly American Santa Claus)…[which with department stores] transformed Christmas in America into an economic necessity. American prosperity from year to year stands or falls on the success of sales during the holiday season. No imaginable Supreme Court is going to create obstacles to this consumer juggernaut. Nor is any Jewish group or Islamic group likely to finance a test case to bring down Christmas. They too are merchants” (p. 28-29).

It seems that the religious connotations of the holiday have been suppressed while another consumer oriented, general good will type of message has co-opted the holiday. What continues to surprise me is that Christians both recognize that “their” holiday has been co-opted which they are upset about, and yet, they are quite unwilling to make the changes to subvert what it has become. It would seem they want consumerism and Jesus without considering whether or not that consumerism is compatible with the anticipation of Advent or the life of Jesus. I believe Moore is right when he states, “To people who say every year that it is time to put Christ back in Christmas, there are two possible answers. The first is that he has never been there, so no model exists for putting him back. The second answer is also a warning-if Christ ever were allowed to dominate the public celebration of Christmas, the national holiday would have to be scrapped” (29).

"And his name shall be called snacks are with us": Christmas and Kitsch

Christmas astounds me. More accurately I am amazed at the ways in which it is perverted and marketed. What Christmas joy I might actually have left is being killed off daily by the ubiquity of Christmas music, consumerism, and just bad theology. One solace has been the Advent Liturgy and its focus on anticipation and waiting rather than our cultural illness of immediate gratification. That aside I am constantly incensed as both an artist and theologian at the horrific nativities that clog our lawns, tables and store shelves. Plastic and mass produced Jesus, Mary and Joseph's replete with an eerie glow from the light-bulb up their rear. What are we saying about the holy family by imaging them in a hollow, mold-injected plastic with an artificial light? It is these types things that suggest to me that the iconoclasts had it right.

Here is a link to a host of Christmas kitsch to simultaneously brighten and steal your Christmas joy.

http://www.goingjesus.com/cavalcade1.shtml

I can't decide which is my favorite...B'gok!

Be sure to look at all 3 pages and the 2007 additions!