Rock is dead. Hip-hop is dead. Chivalry is dead. Romance is dead. These things – among many, many others – have died because they were all over-marketed, over-commercialized and sucked dry of all artistic and emotional sentiment for the sake of profit. This is not unexpected or uncommon: Where there is money to be made, everyone will choke the life out of art for some greenbacks. Our society has found a way to profit from anything pure and revolutionary so drastically that the heart and soul of everything we value can be bought and sold on a whim. This all might sound suspiciously familiar if you read my Valentine’s Day column, but bastardized holidays and products are no longer the hot meal ticket for profit in America. Now, we are in a cultural, social and political atmosphere where emotions can be preyed upon.
I know there is a lot to bitch about when it comes to holidays and how they have been unofficially trademarked by Hallmark. It is superficial and obnoxious, but in most cases the commercialization of anything and everything personally valuable is frustrating but ignorable. The world is older than me, I realize, and my pops, who attended Berkeley during the ’60s, would say this latest phenomenon is nothing new, but corporations are not just selling products, they are selling ideals. You’re thinking, “Well duh, Ron! What did you think they were selling?!” My point is that in our current American society, the life mantra for green products, organic living, biodegradable whatever and reusable, pollutant-free energy is going to die just as hard and as quickly as punk.
Green living is the new hot meal ticket. Everything has to be recyclable, made with natural products, using low emissions, pesticide-free, gluten-free, preservative-free, toxin-free, environmentally friendly, running on bio-diesel with ethanol, while being solar-powered and wrapped in soy-based magic. Good! Idealism is great! We will prevail and save the world! Uh, well, you see, just like rock ‘n’ roll, chivalry and modesty, corporations will smother us into a made-in-America, trans-fat free, green coma powered by Energy Savers life support. The point is, how in God’s holy name did corporations like General Electric and Chevron grow the cojones to advertise green living?
First let’s examine the meaning of the word “green.” Now, I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure “green” originated from the lush greens found in nature – you know, like trees and whatnot. And green living came about because we wanted to make every product eco-friendly, and again, I’m speculating. So how can corporations like GE sincerely promote environmental progression when they are so obviously the ones behind the Green Scare in the first place? GE manufactures plastics, machinery, media conglomerates and, of course, military weaponry. Coincidentally, in 2000 the Political Economy Research Institute named GE as the fourth largest corporate producer of air pollution in the U.S. Additionally, GE is third in US toxic waste production following only the government and Honeywell, a GE mirror conglomerate. So how can GE so smugly make extravagantly green commercials when the reason the Green Scare erupted in the first place was due to corporations like GE?
I’m not the smartest man in the world, and you don’t have to be either to see right through the bullshit that GE and Chevron and every other corporation like them are peddling as a direct cause for our reaction to “go green.” And now, they are selling us the products to help clean up their toxic mess. It is not enough to shop at Trader Joe’s and Market of Choice, or to buy jeans from American Apparel, or to use appliances with the Energy Savers sticker because in some fashion we still find a way to support corruption and evil. I don’t have the solution; I just know the problem. So the next time you see a GE commercial claiming they are “part of the solution,” just remember they were the ones that created the problem in the first place.
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