Random Variable

As it has been reported in the news that we may spend more than £2.5 billion on Christmas presents today, I thought it’d be prescient to address something that’s been nagging on my mind.

When (Red) first tried to add me to MySpace, I immediately clicked “Deny” and left it at that. It’s only in the last week I actually understood what the purpose of (Red) was – a multi-vendor brand that participating companies donate a proportion of profits to, in order to provide antiretroviral drugs to Africa.

So this is another example of the new-age philanthropy of the 21^st Century. For a while I’ve been thinking that sustainability/ethicality is the natural evolutionary/revolutionary step for capitalism. Heck, “why the hell not?” I thought.

However, there seems to be a sinister obverse to this apparently sustainable capitalism.

Before I go further, let’s look at some numbers (UNAIDS 2006):

 

140 000 is a rather small figure compared to the grandiose advertising that (Red) has created. Their manifesto (the marketers are not even beneath stealing political language) almost suggests that their work alone will save everyone from AIDS in Africa. The problem with this is the message that such a campaign sends out – that politics is useless, and economics can save the day. Yes, governments have been dragging their feet in providing donations, but that is no reason to say that we can ignore politics altogether.

What’s scarier is the assertion of commodity fetishism, or as Žižek puts it “liberal communism.” Yes, you may continue to consume and exploit as much as you wish, but as long as you moderate it – donate some money to charity, offset your carbon emissions, buy (Red). Not only that, but as the advert above shows, isn’t this the friendly face of neo-colonialism. Look at how Gisele represents the West; modern, artificial, and Kesme represents Africa; primitive, natural. The message being that Africans are incapable of helping themselves, that we must preserve their way of life, and we can do this through our consumerism. This ignores the fact that a large problem is the intellectual property war conducted by Western pharmaceuticals against those who would produce cheap generics, and also that our consumerist excesses are going to damage Africa in the form of ecological crises. Africans can golly well help themselves, if we didn’t try to fuck them at every opportunity. Mark from K-Punk has written a more detailed write-up of the semiotics of that particular advert over at AnyBody.

The logic of “liberal communism” appeared once again at my school, last week during charity week. I don’t wish to criticize the fact that we were supporting a good cause, but it struck me as odd that the fundraising (estimated to be several thousands of pounds) was accompanied by an orgy of consumerism. You could not walk down the corridor without a student trying to sell you something in the name of charity. In addition, each house, ala Harry Potter, put on a lunchtime event which basically consisted of teachers being humiliated in school versions of the crassest television programmes currently on air (and frequently involved male teachers in drag, singing). Of course, this is all met with the rebuttal “It’s all for a good cause, etc…” It’d be almost acceptable if it weren’t for events like the fashion show, which seemed little more than an excuse to accentuate consumerist teenage sexuality.

By the end of it all, whilst observing all the waste surrounding the place, I was muttering to myself Žižek’s opening remarks in his May master class (Žižek 2006): “No charity, we need some bloodshed.” Of course, I wouldn’t want a sponsored charity Battle Royale, but perhaps we need to beat ourselves up a little bit more.

Further reading

Donnelly, John. (RED)-hot this season – The Boston Globe. December 8, 2006. http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/12/08/red_hot_this_season/ (accessed December 23, 2006).

UNAIDS. 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic: Executive Summary / UNAIDS. Geneva: UNAIDS, 2006.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Master Class on Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction.” no. . London: Birkbeck University, May 25, 2006.

Richard Feachem (Donnelly 2006), executive director of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, estimates that (RED) will raise $1 400 000 by the end of Christmas. If the cost of treating a patient in Africa for a year is $1 000, this will mean an extra 140 000 people treated with antiretroviral drugs – 2% of the 6 300 000 urgently needing antiretroviral drugs.