Apotheosis in a late stage capitalist society is
dependent upon passage beyond our chains of self into material goods.
Deification occurs when we transcend our own mortal existence to gain what
we’ve always longed for and become a product. Only then do we live forever and
manage to defeat the time trial that is our lifetime.
Our fear of death and the unknown has been
heightened in the absence of true religion. Advertisers use our own mortality
as a way to pierce our thoughts and sell us products that promise more than
anything can truly offer. No, religion and the afterlife is now for zealots and
the weak minded. Those of us raised on Coca-Cola, Saturday morning cartoons and
Bisquik know that there is nothing after our own death. No heaven. No hell. No
purgatorio as in Dante. Materialism and consumer culture is our new religion,
and we worship at the altar of the flat screen. Culture and the media is our
pantheon and it tells us to buy more, own more. And work more to do it. The
things you own surely can’t own you? Inanimate objects are harmless of course,
as harmless as the NRA would tell you that guns are. People are the real enemy.
And so fear of one another is bred as well. It’s
only the material product itself that offers us any respite from the unnerving
paranoia and distrust created by advertisers to sell us more…stuff. And it’s
all vague, worthless crap anyway. Shoes, phones, little dolls with little doll
eyes, DVDs. Products need no longer have a purpose, only a hook or an angle. A
flashy advertisement that promises something we long for. It fulfills a need we
didn’t even know we had.
Objects use to be created to fulfill needs, to
accomplish goals. Man needed the wheel to move faster and cart grain around.
Form follows function after all.
But now products are created simultaneously with the
function built in. The necessity created afterwards in a conference room or a
marketing office. When I was younger I didn’t know I needed a cell phone; now I
can’t live without one. Products no longer fulfill needs, they create needs.
Those of us that produce culture and goods, our
musicians, our artists, our leaders, our corporations are the high priests of
our religion. We long to know everything about them. Others are paid to follow
them around and capture every meaningless detail of their lives in a fish eye
lens. And then they report back to us the glory and sanctity of their blessed
day to days. Where they eat. Where they shop. And of course, what they buy. Celebrity
is bestowed and created by the media.
When those celebrities pass on, as we all will, we
immortalize them by turning them into products. Michael Jackson figurines. Kurt
Cobain video games. Paul Newman salad dressing. And this is what we all long for. To
become something other than flesh and blood. To become something that is
useless, but is not subject to our own mortality and fickle desires. Something
that can live on when we are gone. A piece of us that is not in all actuality a
piece of us. Ashes to fashion, dust to rust.