Shopacalypse

Reverend Billy is the founder of the Church of Stop Shopping that preaches against "mindless consumerism." An article and a video about Rev. Billy from a recent episode of the Today Show is here. Billy is a performance artist who has staged corporate "exorcisms" on location at stores like Victoria's Secret and Starbucks.

Earlier this year, Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame produced a documentary about Reverend Billy; the film is called "What Would Jesus Buy?" Apparently the movie will come out in December this year. An interview with Mr Spurlock about WWJB can be found here. A quote from the Spurlock interview:

For the past two years I haven’t bought anyone in my family Christmas presents and I haven’t asked them to get me anything either. I’ve said, “I don’t need anything, I love you guys and the most important thing is for me to get to see you and spend time with you.” So we’ve been planning family vacations. Let’s spend our money on something that we will all enjoy, and be together. That’s what I encourage everyone to do. That’s the most valuable thing you can do-spend time together to talk and communicate and connect. We don’t connect with people at all anymore. How many times do you just send an email to somebody without getting on the phone or send a text message? It’s the world we live in. We continue to get further and further away from real human contact. Especially for people that we love and care about, we can’t let that happen. So for me, that’s the one thing that I’ve really tried to do since meeting Billy.

Somewhere along the line we bought into this whole idea that if you don’t buy a lot of stuff or if you don’t buy a lot of things then you are cheap and you don’t love someone or that they are not as valuable. I think we need to remold that.

Entertainment Industry 101: From Humps and Lumps to Greater Meaning

It's too bad we can't draw flowcharts on Blogger, but try to picture this.

Universal Studios, like Universal Music, was until recently a subsidiary of Vivendi. We recall Vivendi/Universal Music/A&M were behind the masterful My Humps.

To service some debt a few years ago, Vivendi had to sell a majority stake of Universal Studios to GE. (You with me?) All three are looking for new blockbusters.

Now GE+Vivendi/Universal Studios have picked up a new movie called "The Peaceful Warrior." The trailer is below. The storyline is: a chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of a college gymnast ("Movies aid search for "greater meaning"" from Yahoo! news.)

It is nice if a particularly moving filming gets people thinking, and it's good entertainment, too. The business model here, though, is spelled out below by one of the companies' representatives: creating a market in transformational films.

There are a few question marks. General Electric, the owner of the company that distributes Peaceful Warrior used to produce nuclear weapons. Vivendi reaped gains from My Humps.

Additionally, although General Electric is no longer involved in producing nuclear weapons, the company owns GE-Aviation / Smiths Aerospace ("We Bring Technology To Life", a twist on GE's motto "We Bring Good Things To Life.") Although it's not clear how much of Smiths Aerospace's business comes from the defense market, much of their avionics no doubt go to the military. I once worked for a similar firm (oh, yes, I did and it's a looooooong story) and it was mostly manned by ex-military selling to the military.

Any one of us could read the Bible online, or perhaps the Dhammapada, available for free. But it wouldn't generate revenue. Quoting Reuters,

"Despite the marketing challenge, Fogelson sees further opportunity in the growing audience for such transformational films. "I think there is absolutely a viable and powerful business model in making and distributing films for this audience," he said. "I think it starts with knowing there is a large enough and very passionate audience that can be found and spoken to and served. Whether it can expand beyond that I think is entirely a function of what kind of product is created.""

From Net Impact to No Impact

Colin Beavan and his family are living a Thoreau-esque year in the heart of Manhattan. The New York Times reports of this unusual family that has experimentally switched from a consumerist lifestyle to one that bars toilet paper, anything other than grocery shopping, any form of travel other than by foot and bike, you get the point.

Mr Beavan also blogs about their adventures at No Impact Man.