A big haired preacher in a white suit getting the attention of people in malls and on the street: he has a message that must be proclaimed. People are busy shopping, Christmas is drawing near. This is the prime time for his message, but it surprises us: “Stop shopping.” This is Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping warning us of the coming Shopocalypse—telling the world about the errors of its ways: especially the errors of materialism as brought to us by companies such as Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Disney.
Rev. Billy and company are really a troupe performing guerrilla theater. In the documentary What Would Jesus Buy? they take their show on the road from New York City to Southern California visiting and disrupting stores and malls, eventually doing their thing at Disneyland on Christmas day, leading to Rev. Billy’s arrest.
Is Rev. Billy the newest form of a Grinch trying to destroy Christmas? No. He really isn’t against shopping—it’s something we all have to do. Rather, he wants us to think about what we buy and the cost that our materialism carries, including overextended credit, slave wages to produce the things we buy, the destruction of local merchants by giant retailers, and our desire to have all that we want or that someone else has. What Would Jesus Buy? has a message that needs to be spoken to a world that is out of control.
Although Bill Talen does not claim to be Christian (Rev. Billy is only his persona), the street theater of The Church of Stop Shopping would warm the heart of Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah or Hosea, and his message would resonate with those ancient prophets as well as with Jesus and his followers in scripture. Matters of greed and injustice are often at the core of biblical teachings. These are the issues that WWJB? brings to us.
The film was produced by Morgan Spurlock who brought his own guerrilla message in Super Size Me. Like the earlier film, WWJB? is a combination of the gimmick (the Church’s road trip and provocative actions) and commentary on society—including discussions about credit, Wal-Mart, and hearing how vacuous consumers sound when they talk about the things they buy.
The street theater by Rev. Billy and his church pulls us in to be entertained, but then there is a shift to talk about the assumptions and practices that underlie our consumerism. We may hear people say incredibly stupid thoughts, but we recognize that there is a bit of them in all of us. We are part and parcel of the materialistic society that is lampooned in WWJB?
From my perspective the thing that is missing from the film is a spiritual aspect. The film is designed to challenge a secular audience to reconsider their shopping habits, so it makes sense that it would steer clear of such a topic. On top of that, the religious style of Rev. Billy also might make people think this is a religious film when it’s not. But certainly materialism is a serious threat to any spiritual life. Materialism is often a symptom of a lack of anything spiritual in our lives. We keep trying to fill our lives (and the lives of our children) with more and better objects because we do not know how to share ourselves with one another. A refrain that come up from time to time in the film is that we should buy less and give more. That isn’t as nonsensical as it may sound if we understand that objects are often a poor substitution for the love that we could give.
Some may take exception to the Rev. Billy persona as a mockery of religion. They may also think the title of the film is a bit sacrilegious. In reality, these aspects of the film make evident the parody these people are engaging in. The real scandal is not that they use and make fun of religious trappings, but that their message is one that should be heard in churches, but rarely is.
