Mass
consumerism is destroying our planet. This Black Friday, let’s take a stand
Alan
Bradshaw
With
climate catastrophe on the horizon, we should reject this orgy of consumption –
and find joy in not shopping at all
Fri 29 Nov
2019 10.06 GMTLast modified on Fri 29 Nov 2019 10.12 GMT
In 2008 a
Walmart worker was trampled to death by crowds at a Black Friday shop opening
in New York. The event was one of a handful of incidents that became emblematic
of that distinctly American occasion. Black Friday, which takes place today,
still registers as the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.
But in
recent years, shopping aisles in the UK have started to tremble too. Black
Friday, once only seen by Britons when watching US television shows, is a
regular part of the calendar.
It was most
noticeably introduced, in 2013, by Asda, itself owned by Walmart, alongside
mainstream retailers such as Argos, John Lewis and Amazon. Slowly these strange
annual scenes of feverish consumption made news across the UK: the police were
called to 15 different Tesco outlets in 2014.
Inevitably,
Black Friday has now established itself as one the biggest retailing days in
Britain, too – but this year it’s a far more muted affair, with sales spread
over an extended period. Amazon, for example, now heralds Black Friday with a
whole week of discounts – a trend matched by many competitors. While some
retailers continue to tantalise shoppers by announcing their Black Friday
opening hours, the day itself hasn’t the spectacular veneer of its US cousin.
In Britain
there is a long tradition of moralising about mindless materialism. As far back
as the Elizabethan era, a moral panic emerged about an “orgy of spending”.
Later, Marxist philosophers such as Theodor W Adorno treated the consumerism of
the postwar era as a foolish “fetish”. Books such as The Hidden Persuaders by
Vance Packard, published in 1957, and No Logo by Naomi Klein in 1999, became
huge sellers in their eras, both describing a world that had become colonised
by marketing and branding.
By the
1990s and 2000s, exuberant consumer culture was confronted by an equally
exuberant anti-consumerism. Popular movements such as Adbusters and Reverend
Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and movie hits such as Fight Club and
American Psycho denounced a spiritually bankrupt culture. These concerns were
accompanied by increasing environmental activism. By now, confronted by the
stark realism of the climate emergency messages delivered by Greta Thunberg and
Extinction Rebellion, the penny is starting to drop as we learn to correlate
our lifestyles with the fate of the planet.
Today, in
austerity Britain (and, yes, for all the talk of spending promises, austerity
is still here), the idea of excessive consumerism seems to have lost much of
its resonance. Memories of consumerism and easy credit seem to have become
tainted by the recession. Academics have observed how Britons felt ashamed of
their pre-crash consumerism and (wrongly) felt personally accountable for the
austerity that followed, identifying particular consumer objects – such as
expensive tracksuits and conservatories – as symptomatic of a flaw in the
national character.
For many
consumers, shopping has become mixed with guilt and a sense of responsibility
as it increasingly depends on credit card debt and the labour of poorly paid
and precarious workers – and it has a heavy environmental toll. Buying
something today is also an experience drained of fun: it often entails making
sure you are in when the package arrives, unpacking it and realising that it
isn’t what you wanted.
In this
context, Black Friday arrives in all its ambivalence. We may still be served
the familiar spectacles of excited consumers carrying giant plasma TVs out of
shops, while an army of delivery workers ring doorbells throughout the nation.
But there is no shine and veneer, and the rampant consumerism of the 1990s,
with its attendant resistance, seems very far away.
The time is
right for a more resonant and joyful anti-consumerism. The recognition that we
need to downsize our lifestyles for environmental reasons now corresponds not
with the false political economy of austerity, but the very real awareness of
the damage that consumer capitalism wreaks on the world.
The
challenge, then, is to make anti-consumerism joyful by emphasising the
satisfaction and necessity of becoming more sustainable and refusing to fuel a
system grounded in the exploitation of people and the environment. Today, the
greatest pleasures might be found in not shopping at all.
• Alan
Bradshaw is a professor of marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London
and is proudly on strike. He is author of Advertising Revolution: The Story of
a Song From Beatles Hit to Nike Jingle.
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