What Would Jesus Buy?

The first thing you notice while watching the Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping documentary titled What Would Jesus Buy is the font chosen for the credits. Now you may think that if you are noticing the title credit font that there must be something wrong with the movie. Kind of like how my own personal attention was drawn to how much makeup Keira Knightley's character was wearing in Pirates of the Caribbean because, well, there was essentially little else to draw your attention. But noticing the font used in the title credits of What Would Jesus Buy is all-important because it is something you are not used to seeing.

The font is commonly known as the Walt Disney font.

Disney, of course, has a reputation for going after anyone who even comes close to trampling upon their often rather tenuous hold on copyrights and trademarks (how exactly can it be copyright infringement to appropriate Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when Disney didn't invent that fairy tale?) and it is shocking to see this most instantly recognizable font in the world today in a movie that within five minutes has a scene in which Rev. Billy (one of my few living heroes) enters a Disney store and announces that Mickey Mouse is the Antichrist. And you know? Maybe he's right. Maybe Mickey Mouse is the Antichrist. No, wait, Ray Kroc was the Antichrist. By utilizing the Disney font the makers of What Would Jesus Buy engage in the authentic definition of the now-widely misused word irony. Irony is not about coincidence or a bummer of a juxtaposition like rain on your wedding day; irony is a powerful tool that Rev. Billy consistently engages in his very persona.

You see, there is a tremendous irony taking place in America today: Christians are being taught by frauds like Joel Osteen that Jesus Christ taught a spirituality of consumption rather than a message of production. The words of Jesus Christ do not jibe with the patina of Christianity that is the norm today in which the celebration of a man who supposedly is single-handedly responsible for a Christian's passage into heaven is accomplished by buying the Xbox and Nintendo Wii and Prada booties for your cat. The implicit and explicitly irony in Rev. Billy's message in What Would Jesus Buy is that Jesus would not buy anything to celebrate your birthday; He would instead show up empty-handed and still manage to leave with your adoration. How do Christians celebrate Jesus' birthday? By showing up overburned with packages and leaving overburdened with debt. Is that really how you think Jesus Christ wants His birth and life to be celebrated?

Here is a little nugget of information that you probably did not know: every single human being currently alive in North and South America and Europe combined could fit inside the retail stores current constructed in the United States. Here is something else to be gleaned from What Would Jesus Buy: the average family spends an hour each work in spiritual worship while they spend over five hours shopping. The message of Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping is simple and that message is that Americans, contrary to popular opinion, do not consume but are consumed. The outrageous amount of credit debt and the easily repressed fact that when you buy a $200 Nintendo Wii on your credit card and you don't pay it off at the end of the month then you are actually going to wind up paying anywhere from $220 to $500 for that Nintendo Wii signals the devastating realization that Rev. Billy is right.

And that's why he is feared by Wal-Mart and the Mall of America and Target and Disney and every other Big Business in America. There is a scene in What Would Jesus Buy that shows Rev. Billy and his congregation being tossed out of the Mall of America for staging one of his protests. This scene actually surprised me because, unlike in Wal-Mart or a retail store, there is a law in place that says malls are considered public areas and therefore you cannot be tossed out of a mall for expressing free speech as long as you are not interfering with a specific business inside or are not attempting to sell something or are not being violent. In other words, precedent is in place that sets aside the right of anyone to walk into a mall and express free speech while meeting these conditions...unless you are telling people the truth about shopping. In fairness to the Mall of America, the film does not show what happened inside during the protest and Rev. Billy and his followers may very well have interfered with businesses inside. If not, then his civil rights were egregiously violated.

There is another bit of irony in the misinformed sense that most people confuse with mere coincidence that takes place in What Would Jesus Buy. While on their traveling evangelical mission the bus that the Church of Stop Shopping gets hit by an 18 wheeler and several people on the bus are injured. There is the suggestion that a collision of ideologies took place here: an 18 wheeler that was on a desperate mission to make its delivery hits those who are trying to spread the mission to simply roll back your shopping to a state within your own particular means. This is important in light of the testimonials from children that are enough to make you either cry or vomit. One tragically confused little girl says that if everybody is buying an item, then she will buy it. Doesn't matter whether you likes it or needs it: she must have the item so that she won't be laughed at or so that rumors won't be spread about her!

The fact that a delivery 18-wheeler can be taken as a symbol of the power of misplaced and fraudulent Osteen and Falwell and Swaggart and Robertson style of Christianity that somehow managed to pull off an illusion that even Harry Houdini could never have topped (making Christ a rabid deregulatory capitalist) combined with the almost J. Edgar Hoover style of placing law enforcement between Rev. Billy's message and those who are pulling out their credit cards to pay twice what the crap they're buying is actually selling for speaks volumes about the disconnect that exists between the original message of Jesus Christ and the Ayn Rand insanity that has inexplicably become the accepted interpretation of his words. It would be as if someone took Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and twisted it so that it appeared as if Lincoln was embracing slavery and the right of the South to secede.

What Would Jesus Buy climaxes in an orgy of irony when Rev. Billy stealthily arranges for an entirely peaceful and non-intrusive demonstration in the heart of Disney itself proclaiming, truthfully for the most part, that on Main St. USA in either Disneyland or Disney World that everything that is sold in those stores is actually made in China. Of course, Disney's jackbooted thugs descend upon him almost immediately: Disney does not want the truth of the blood on its hands exposed any more than than Wal-Mart. There is an absolutely hilarious scene during the Rev. Billy's visit to Disneyland when a Disney G-man tells Billy's wife, and I quote: "[Disney] basically has control of this place, it's not like the US on public land where you're free to sing." So there you have it consumers: you give up your First Amendment right to free speech while on Disney's property. What we suspected all along has now been revealed to be policy. Walt Disney World and Disneyland are not part of America. Jean Baudrillard was right: Disneyland is a simulacrum; it is not real.

If you want to remain a part of the irony that is America's conception of itself since the last half of the 20^th century as a country built upon the principles of Jesus Christ while it is in fact a country built upon the principles of Ray Kroc, then continue to watch Joel Osteen and congregation of 50,000 people or so where he cannot even seen the faces of most of those showing up. Or, take a listen to Rev. Billy and then you will begin to realize that you absolutely have to take steps to stop from being consumed by Big Business just as surely as the weakest member of the soccer team is consumed by the strongest member after a plane crash.

I only wish I could have published this in the Disney font.