The Church of Stop Shopping

nobody@vox.com(reagan) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:19:31 -0800

Happy Thanksgiving!

I thought I'd pass this along to everyone out there who I know is trying to cut back on holiday spending:

About a year ago, I came across a documentary called "Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping" about a performance artist who went around Times Square in New York trying to get people to curb their materialism and maybe not shop so much, especially at stores that commit (or are implicit in) atrocities in countries where they make their products. It was a decidedly low-budget production, and obviously a labor of love for the filmmaker, but it was moving in a "look at what we've become -- and now let's do something about it" kind of way.

Well I was surfing the net just now, and I ran across Reverend Billy's second movie, which is coming out this Christmas. It looks like Rev. Billy is gaining momentum this time, because he has locked arms with Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made "Super Size Me" - in which the fillmaker/director/star eats only at McDonald's for 30 days straight - and the TV-show "30 Days", in which he attempts many other ill-advisable feats for the same span of time, such as living on minimum wage.

It's on a limited run, so we haven't gone to see it yet, but if their previous work is any indication, it looks like it should be a refreshing documentary that attempts to break the spell of the now-traditional holiday frenzy by (satirically) invoking the spirit of the man who the holiday is ostensibly all about.

It's called "What Would Jesus Buy?", and it sounds like the perfect antidote to an age when the leader of the free world is a man who told us all that the most important sacrifice we could make in the months following 9-11 was to "Go shopping." Seriously. Does everyone remember that? Of course he's moved on to sacrificing our moral high ground and our civil liberties since then, but that's a subject for another post.

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CANDOR CANDY

The Church of Stop Shopping