Barbarians

When we conjure this word, images of gruesome hordes overcoming a medieval village flash on our mental video screens. Fortunately, we have come far beyond those harsh days, I guess. What if we think of the word in its more idiomatic usage? When you look that up you’ll find “a brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive person.”

Does this fit the Black Friday massacres? The Sunday Times ran a short piece by Peter S. Goodman in which he attempted to give a cultural accounting for such anti-civilized mass id-driven slaughter. My only quarrel with the piece is that Goodman doesn’t go far enough. But he does offer some perfectly worded thoughts for US to dwell on this season, which Christians believe offers the promise of Good News.

In case you’ve been traveling in a parallel universe, the event was a horde of 200 mindless barbarians trampling to death a part time worker at a Wal-Mart. Goodman gets right to the point: “American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.” He clarifies the messengers by adding, “Hollywood and Madison Avenue have excelled at persuading us that the holiday season is a time to spend lavishly or risk being found insufficiently appreciative of our loved ones.”

Part of what I research are the ways marketers tweak images and contexts of brands in order to manipulate our consuming behavior. The latest is a method of branding called “neurological marketing.” Basically it’s about accessing “hot spots” in our brains with images and sounds that are impossible to overcome by our intelligence and intellects (see Martin Lindstrom’s “buy•ology”). This process is designed for and is most effective with children. And I can’t help reviewing the scenes in our home when the little ones tear through the pile of gifts in front of them, and when they finally get to the last one, they look a bit dismayed as if to say, ”Is that all?” Then they grab one or two, the ones they actually wanted, and ignore the rest. Listen carefully to and watch your young ones and note how much of what they want are all about brands.

Goodman created a perfect American metaphor to frame our supreme cultural phenomenon: “Chinese-made flat-screen televisions sitting inside Wal-Mart have become American comfort food.” He also refers to a new phrase creeping into the news media drone, which I‘m fairly certain is falling on our cultural deaf ears: “Live within our means and save: This new commandment has entered the conversation, colliding with the deeply embedded imperative to spend.”

Back in June this year I entered a post, “Consumerated,” dealing with this embedded concept. It indicates that with both the idea and symbolism of the phrase “Black Friday,” we Americans don’t and can’t begin to consider the cultural significance and consequences of the event and its representation of who we are.