What Would Jesus Buy?

[flashl]

By Amy Goodman

"Black Friday” is the name retailers have given to the day after Thanksgiving in their attempt to make Christmas synonymous with shopping. On Black Friday, Americans are expected to flock to the malls and shopping centers, eager for discounts, armed with plastic. Business analysts fill the airwaves with predictions on how the fickle consumer will perform, how fuel prices and the subprime mortgage crisis will impact holiday shopping. Black Friday is followed by “Cyber Monday,” a name coined by the retail industry to hype online shopping. Listening to the business news, one would conclude that the future not only of the U.S. economy but of humanity itself depends on mass, frenzied shopping for the holidays.

Rev. Billy is the street preacher played by Bill Talen, a New York City-based anti-consumerism activist who is the subject of a new feature-length documentary hitting theaters this week, “What Would Jesus Buy?” The film is produced by Morgan Spurlock, who gained fame with his documentary “Super Size Me,” in which he showed his physical and emotional decline while eating only McDonald’s food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month.

In the movie, Talen and his amazing Stop Shopping Gospel Choir cross the country in two biodiesel buses, holding public faux-Gospel revivals denouncing the “Shopocalypse,” our crass, corporate, credit-driven consumerist culture and its reliance on sweatshops abroad and low-wage retail jobs at home, while celebrating small-town, Main Street economies, the strength and value of fair-trade shopping, and making do with less.

“We are here today, 28 days before Christmas,” Rev. Billy intones at the outset of his tour, to his home congregation in Greenwich Village, “behind so many layers of billboards, with supermodels looking down on us in their Christmas lingerie, billboards covered with fake Dickensian gingerbread lattes—we’re going to go out across this shopping-addicted country.” He added later, “We will sit down and defeat the bulbous yellow feet of the most famous corporate logo in the world, and the one that has chosen to steal our children’s imaginations for 80 years, the devil, Mickey Mouse.”

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[eleny]

1. Tar, feathers and a bus ticket to Washington D.C.

[silverweb]

2. I love Rev. Billy!

He's flamboyant and obnoxious to his targets and oratorically eloquent in damning the absolute absurdity of the American consumerist religion!

:loveya:

[TAZller]

3. Bottled water and 3 Billion condoms.

[Ian David]

4. Maybe if Jesus was more generous with the presents, Judas would have been nicer to him.

"Oh, Jesus... why do I bother looking for the afikomen every year, when you only give me a shekel for it?"

[Possumpoint]

5. What Would He Buy?

Would it be medicine for the sick, food for the hungry or clothes for the needy? Would he be supplying housing for those without? Would he be encouraging others to give a helping hand with out expecting something in return?

On the other hand, would he be buying more toys then a child can play with? How about a new outfit for each day of the week? Would he rush out to buy the latest I-pod, camera or celphone? Or would he buy lavish jewelry to make a woman smile for a moment? Would he buy multi million dollar churches? Giving his money so that the parson or bishop can lead a lavish life style?

If any of what they teach about Christ is true, I think he'd be pissed at what the merchants have convinced us is the true meaning of the celebration of his birth. Christ's birthday has become the enrichment of those in retail business. According to the bible Christ threw the money changers out of the temple. Maybe he should return and reinstall the true meaning of Christmas.

[Kazak]

6. He'd buy the world a Coke...

Duh!

[flashl]

7. Duh, I should have had a V-8 or slept at the comfort Inn?

[dropkickpa]

8. An MP3 player for Dropkid's B-Day

Then I could return the one I just got for her.

[NNN0LHI]

9. A 50 inch plasma TV and a blue ray HD DVD player

Hey he is only human.

Don

[otherlander]

10. I think he'd buy these:

http://www.maggiesorganics.com/products_style.php?style_id=47&cat_id=1

[graywarrior]

11. Every nail he could get his "hands on".

:rofl:

[porphyrian]

12. Followers that actually understand what he said? -n/t

[Lorien]

13. Here's the trailer for his documentary:

http://wwjbmovie.com/trailer.html

Though as a former Disney Animator, I have to take exception to his claim that Mickey Mouse "steals children's imaginations". Television and video games have done a good job of that. For the most part we were just retelling fairy tales as best we could. Believe me, it's not always easy to make a story that fits neatly into a 32 page picture book stretch out into an 85 minute long feature film (and then draw each and every frame of it).

[L. Coyote]

14. Painkillers, obviously, and bandages. And a ticket out of the Roman Empire

Maybe a vacation in Petra!

[nightrider767]

15. Jesus would buy wine and some good bread,,

to share with his friends, the apostles....