Buy More Stuff

With Christmas less than a week away, it’s Buy More Stuff season!

Trying to define or describe Buy More Stuff is complicated.

Call it street performance, call it culture-jamming, call it schizophrenic capitalism at its finest, Buy More Stuff looks like a very polite protest attended by earnest, young, well-dressed professionals. Here and there, a head of bright pink hair or particularly prominent facial piercings make you wonder exactly what slice of the Seattle populace these protesters might represent.

The group stations itself in the heart of the shopping district at peak hours of holiday gift-buying frenzy with their iconic signs and fliers. Their message is clear, succinct, and limited to a few phrases: “Buy More Stuff!” “Hurry!” “Or else they’ll run out of stuff!” “Or you’ll run out of time!”

Passersby stop, confused.

Some ask who the protesters are working for: Does the mall pay you to do this?

> No, just here to get the message out. Buy More Stuff!

Some are angry: What are you, like, die-hard capitalists or something?

> No, just want to encourage everyone to Buy More Stuff!

Others are sure they’ve seen through the irony: You’re being sarcastic, right?

> No sir! 'Tis the season to Buy More Stuff!

My favorites are the smug passersby who act like they’re in on the joke. They smile or raise an awkward fist in solidarity with what they’re reading as a progressive, performance-art commentary on the state of American consumerism. They get it. They're hip. And then they walk into Macy’s. To Buy More Stuff.

Freud describes the phenomenon of “disavowal” as a compromise made within the human psyche when it becomes necessary to believe two contradicting things at one time. I don’t actually believe that something bad will happen if I say “Macbeth” while inside a theatre. And still, I never say it. And I chide anyone who does. Disavowal.

We accomplish the act of disavowal by splitting our ego in two. One part serves what Freud calls the “reality principle” and the other serves the “pleasure principle.” Hence the “there are no calories in cookie crumbs” scene of disavowal. I know better, but I do it anyway. The fantasy is not actually believed. But it’s not not believed either.

The Buy More Stuff protest is so potent because it takes aim at the fantasy-producing disavowal at the heart of the western capitalist project. We know that stuff will not make us happy. We know that buying more stuff will not fill the holes in our lives. We know that buying more stuff for our loved ones will not make them love us more or defend us from abandonment. And yet, we walk into Macy’s.

The embodiment of sobriety and reason in their three-piece suits with professionally lettered signs, the Buy More Stuff protesters are not ironic. They are not, in fact, trying to get people to Buy Less Stuff through some sort of reverse psychology street ministry.

Instead, Buy More Stuff asks us to hold our fantasies accountable. In doing so, the protesters reveal the sometimes uncomfortable disavowal that is subtly taking place within each of us as we indulge in the pleasure principle of consumption.

Now excuse me, I have to go to Macy’s…

Bakhtin and Santarchy

So every year I await, with glee, this event.

Since winter of 2005, I have thrown in my lot with ho-ho-hoardes of manic Santas who pick a Saturday in December to gallivant though bars, clubs, and public spaces in the cities of their choice, spreading holiday cheer and purging late-winter angst. Clad in my homemade in-your-face-sexual-gender-queer-faux-cowgirl-fuzzy-raver Santa Suit (google image search "Santa Chaps" for proof), I hit the streets with my friends, feeling as though we're taking part in a contemporary version of the Bakhtinian "Carnival" - the secular social festivals of the European Middle Ages in which traditional class structures were temporarily inverted:

"One might say carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order. It marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed" (Bahktin, Rabelais and his World).

During Santarchy, everyone dressed as Santa is kin. Names dissolve into the sea of intersubjective Saint Nicks, and a strange secular sense of collective power is felt. A red mass united sans political program, Santas hug and make small talk, share spiked cocoa and discuss the intricacies of unique suit-construction. Santas fuck gently with the "muggles" (citizens and bar-goers that generally resemble them on any other day of the week), but have clear policies against fucking with kids or the police.

The trap of counter-cultural rituals like these is that the inversions are only temporary. As every Master's Thesis on the Burning Man Festival must contend with, Santarchy makes us wonder whether impermanent upswellings of culture-jamming collectivity actually challenge the authority of prevailing powers or ultimately reinforce them. Santarchy is of course guilty of most of the charges of contemporary pop culture events: reliance on internet access, unapologetic commercialism, racial-homogeneity, and latent sexism (while fiesty female Santaclowns abound, there are still a few exploitative gropey Santas).

Bahktin maintained faith that the wicked mirth generated by Carnival could ripple outwards and help to expose the "gay relativity" of all human cultural products. My Santarchy apologia relies similarly on my belief that sometimes we are what we pretend to be. Or rather, we have the potential to become more like those versions of ourselves that we strategically assume. My red-suited avatar is a sexually-liberated, gender-queer, loud-mouthed social muse that believes in the power of singing together, drinking together, and momentarily releasing the given name that binds me inside a claustrophobically singular identity. My Santa isn't afraid of death or final papers or Gropey McDrunkenClaus or the surprisingly aggressive SFPD because she has her bearded tribe at her back and peppermint schnapps in her flask.

Unsuited now, I return to my law-abiding, sobriety-favoring, responsibility-bearing graduate student life. Till next year, Santa.