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Last night I saw What Would Jesus Buy?, a documentary about the commercialism of Xmas (and, well, USian culture in general) and the attempts of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping to make people slow down and think before acquiring boatloads of more stuff. Think about whether you need it, think about how it's made, think about where it comes from, think about how you'll pay for it, think about how much enjoyment you'll get from it, think about where you'll store it.
It's an interesting journey, though I don't think it's the absolute best version of this that it could be. I'd like to see more about the choir members, for instance, or the reality-based part of the message (No one is going to wholly stop shopping: money is a mostly-necessary convenience for trading for things we don't make ourselves. But many people could learn to spend differently.) And there were times that the interviews with random people felt a little too cherry-picked. On the whole, though, it's a message worth hearing. There are some scary statistics out there, about how much people spend for this holiday, about the (lack of) correlation between stuff and satisfaction, about showing love through shared experiences, time together, rather than just high-ticket stuff. Another plus: I really liked the art marking the different sections of the movie, ikon-type pictures with Monty-Python-esque animation.
Even in the People's Republic of Cambridge, last night's 7:20 screening was sparsely attended, just 6 people, two-thirds of them Jewish... are people too busy buying stuff?
Some of the previews before the movie were really scary; what's up with that? If I don't even want to see the images in the preview, it's worse for little kids!
It's an interesting journey, though I don't think it's the absolute best version of this that it could be. I'd like to see more about the choir members, for instance, or the reality-based part of the message (No one is going to wholly stop shopping: money is a mostly-necessary convenience for trading for things we don't make ourselves. But many people could learn to spend differently.) And there were times that the interviews with random people felt a little too cherry-picked. On the whole, though, it's a message worth hearing. There are some scary statistics out there, about how much people spend for this holiday, about the (lack of) correlation between stuff and satisfaction, about showing love through shared experiences, time together, rather than just high-ticket stuff. Another plus: I really liked the art marking the different sections of the movie, ikon-type pictures with Monty-Python-esque animation.
Even in the People's Republic of Cambridge, last night's 7:20 screening was sparsely attended, just 6 people, two-thirds of them Jewish... are people too busy buying stuff?
Some of the previews before the movie were really scary; what's up with that? If I don't even want to see the images in the preview, it's worse for little kids!