Stop your consumption! Fight capitalism! Buy this sneaker

Yep, it’s that time of year again, when leaves turn, scarves come out, and the acolytes of anti-consumerism fan out across North America in their perennially fruitless campaign to stop the holiday shopping binge. And, as if on cue, just in time for the non-shopping season, a slew of new docudramas have cropped up to denounce the many and varied evils embodied by the Christmukhah gift-giving spirit.
Of course, that’s the beauty of capitalism; even the most virulent critics of consumer culture often wind up profiting from their Neo-Marxist brand of hypocritical claptrap.
For students, the protest anthem of the week is the mantra of Reverend Billy, patriarch of the Church of Stop Shopping, who asks “What would Jesus buy?” in his new film. Typical of Cinema Politica fare, he derides the evils of the big box store, mourns over a media dominated by conspicuous consumption, and foresees the coming of a “Shopocalypse” brought on by mankind’s waste and gluttony. Ironic, isn’t it, that even before his WWJB was released in theatres it was already being advertised at Virgin Megastores, Barnes and Noble and Blockbuster.
It’s been a while since anti-consumerism was last in vogue. The heyday of rebel-couture was almost a decade ago when Naomi Klein was first publishing, and spastic groups of vacationing students ran roughshod throughout the streets of Seattle to the music of Kurt Cobain.
At the time, Adbusters Magazine had risen to become the unquestioned crown prince of fashionable yuppie bashing. A counter-culture advertising spoof, the magazine promoted causes like Buy Nothing Day, and “culture-jamming” (which would later be called vandalism). Playing on radical chic, and sporting a none-too-complex criticism of bourgeois society, their message took the hipster left by storm. For a time.
Over the last decade, the rhetoric of anti-consumerism was forced to confront the reality of living below the poverty line. And, now the hipsters who vandalized Starbuck’s counters in their rebel years have found productive employment behind them.
Even Adbusters jumped on the consumerism bandwagon. Mortgaging its spot as the “anti-logo” brand of choice, they’ve become the proud vendor of a line of footwear called “the blackspot.” Designed with no logo and nicknamed the anti-swoosh sneaker, these shoes retail for between $75 and $95, taxes included.
Now, flash forward a generation and we’ve got activist-entertainers like Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and now Reverend Billy, who’ve perfected the art of turning a profit by criticizing the capitalist establishment that’s making them rich.
Like the counter culture movements of yesteryear, today’s anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist philosophy is a giant con. It’s a way of getting hipster kids to part with their money in favour of the glitz and glam of an ephemeral rebel yell. Concordia’s students would be well advised to ignore the reverend Billys of the world and buy another iPod instead.