>>REVIEW
YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US: THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLSHIT
Laura Penny
McClelland & Stewart, 278 pp.
Not too long ago, I had an epiphany outside my local Wal-Mart (yes, I realize that describing any Wal-Mart as "local" is a contradiction in terms, but bear with me). I was locking up my bike, and strong gusts of wind were blowing McDonalds waste all around and over me – french-fry cartons, cups and straws, among other things. As a cheeseburger wrapper enveloped my head, I cried out in hopelessness and frustration towards the big behemoth of a building, "This is fucking bullshit!"
From writer Laura Penny comes the reassurance that, yes, it is bullshit. In fact, our culture is inundated with the stuff. Penny says "we live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production." How true. We are put on hold by machines, we are sold things we don’t need, we are almost run over by lunatic drivers in SUVs who are prattling into their cellphones, and we are sometimes pelted by garbage from products that really don’t need that much packaging (can’t cheeseburgers go on reusable plates?). Be honest – there are times when you look around at our world and feel like you’re taking crazy pills.
Take Wal-Mart, for example. Whose damn fool idea was it to plant one of these godforsaken monstrosities in almost every large municipality in North America (and beyond)? (Sam Walton is the answer, but that’s another story.) The Arkansas-based retailer is one of Penny’s favourite targets, and she skilfully (and wittily) rips the corporation apart for using foreign sweatshops to make their shit, urging people to buy shit that they don’t really need, offering shit jobs, shitting on unions, and bullshitting customers and employees into thinking that Wal-Mart is nothing more than a down-home, good ol’ family store.
Ah, but the problem of bullshit is so much larger than even the giant Wal-Mart. There is the industry of public relations, where people get paid to produce and creatively package bullshit. (The most brilliant line in the book: "Advertising and PR make one thing and one thing only, and that is shit up.") There is the mainstream media, which more often than not dutifully mimics PR. There is Fox News, there is George W. Bush, there is Enron, there is Big Pharma. It’s endless, and more than a bit depressing to think about for too long.
In conclusion, all I can say is that this is a shitty book. That’s not to say it’s a bad book – there’s just more use of the word "shit" or its variants in here than I can count. Penny is kind of lacking on the solution end of things, but she’s good at what she does. She’s a shit disturber who knows how to make people laugh.
It’s good shit. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.