Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Lent and advertising

Each year, Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter by observing Lent. It is a time for fasting, not for fastings sake, or to gain favour from God, but to remind ourselves that as Christians we are to walk alongside Jesus in his passion and journey to the cross. fasting reminds us that our desires aren't set on this current world. Fasting foments our desire for God's kingdom, for the way of suffering to be transformed into the glory of the resurrection.
Now, I guess you could acheive these subjective feelings with otherwise pointless flaggellation, but Jesus suffering was for the sake of love, and ours should be too. In a culture that is consumed by the desire to consume, that prefers the titillation of glitter to the dignity of the poor, we need to remember again the powerful witness of lives that sit lightly to these desires.
So this year I'm giving up advertising for 40 days again. I don't want my desire for stuff artificially stimulated, I don't want to be told I need anything other than God's kingdom. No billboards, no junkmail, no radio ads, no logo's. (If I cant look at your t-shirt, I'll try to look at your eye's)

Part two of my lent strategy is to really enjoy what I already have. i'm already eyeing off that snorkelling gear in the cupboard.

Last year this two part strategy was difficult but strangely liberating, why don't you give it a go too.

6 comments:

alison said...

How will you do it?

Mike W said...

mostly fleeing and averting the eyes. Westfield is particularly tricky. Last year I got to know the floor really really well. It does mean you bump into people a bit, but hey, that happens anyway.

Hows the theology of everything cool coming along? Got any tricky ones? I need some ideas for a project

alison said...

Still the same old one, now waiting a couple of weeks to be reviwed and turned into a proper paper by my supervisor. I'll let you know how it all turns out, and I'll keep you in the loop if another one come up :P

Have you ever heard of the groups and people who deface billboards to make people aware of the impact of advertising? There's a whole school of thought out there arguing that advertising actually threatens the 'publicness' of public space, in that advertising companies are taking over public space and forcing their agendas onto the public who may not want to know anything about their products or see the images they use. It's encouraged heaps of people to subvert ads with grafitti or even just cover up billboard images with white paper. Matt and I tried out the latter option a couple of years ago - someone had illegally stuck up those Grand Theft Auto posters with the images of the chacaters in our neighbourhood, so one night Matt and I went out and covered up all their faces (and cleavages!) with sheets of A4 paper! Haha! Another time we just went and ripped them down.

More creative and organised movements have actually defaced billboards to make them say completely different things. I'm not sure if I advocate this type, because those companies have paid for that space, and technically you are defacing their property. But it's still very clever! You should check out some of the work of B.U.G.A. U.P.. They are an Australian organisation that did heaps of work on cigarette advertisements during the 80s, and they did some very clever and funny things!

alison said...

I was trying to remember the term for all that, and I finally got it. It's called culture jamming.

Mike W said...

yeah i know buga up and culture jamming reasonably well. I think christians should be more radical than the culture jammers because we have a far greater object of desire, jesus christ and his people. I'm sure the asherah poles and altar to Baal that gideon smashed down were private property too. I agree that publically owned space should be free of commercial advertising, Cityrail as much as the ABC.
Yet our churches remain unable or unwilling to truthfully confront the idolatry of greed that has infiltrated our culture and our churches. We'll talk about it, but actually doing something about it, or even having church discipline isn't going to happen anytime soon.
I was chatting to some fairly knowledgeable ppl today as to why sydney anglicans aren't interested in moving to the southwest, a mission field of a million people. He has been agitaing for a while, but is simply confronted by the fact that sydangs are not willing to move to poor areas, neither lay people or clergy. It makes me sick. For all our talk of being biblical, we give the junkmail that turns up in our boxes more authority than Jesus commission. The biggest false gospel in australia is the consumerist dream
So, living a life free from the detatched teasing promise of consumerism aint easy. but i reckon its an even more powerful weapon than a can of spray paint.

Mike W said...

yeah i know buga up and culture jamming reasonably well. I think christians should be more radical than the culture jammers because we have a far greater object of desire, jesus christ and his people. I'm sure the asherah poles and altar to Baal that gideon smashed down were private property too. I agree that publically owned space should be free of commercial advertising, Cityrail as much as the ABC.
Yet our churches remain unable or unwilling to truthfully confront the idolatry of greed that has infiltrated our culture and our churches. We'll talk about it, but actually doing something about it, or even having church discipline isn't going to happen anytime soon.
I was chatting to some fairly knowledgeable ppl today as to why sydney anglicans aren't interested in moving to the southwest, a mission field of a million people. He has been agitaing for a while, but is simply confronted by the fact that sydangs are not willing to move to poor areas, neither lay people or clergy. It makes me sick. For all our talk of being biblical, we give the junkmail that turns up in our boxes more authority than Jesus commission. The biggest false gospel in australia is the consumerist dream
So, living a life free from the detatched teasing promise of consumerism aint easy. but i reckon its an even more powerful weapon than a can of spray paint.