This post is partly a
response to a gmail I received from a kinda warm and enthusiastic reader from Bengaluru. The post had her
bothered much, and after doing a very balanced critique of the post, she then proceeded to ask me, as to why of all festivals, did i have to take up Christmas for a tool of the Capitalist ideology? ;-)
It's like asking Actor Ajith why-o-why he acted in Nerkonda Parvai!?
So well, it's the need of the hour, should i say!
As Tagore beautifully puts it, the need of the hour is to, 'strike at the root of penury in my hearts'! Penury here could connote to mean the loads and loads of ignorance as regards 'ideological conditioning' into which we have been so luxuriously and regally ensconced all this long!
Still, I don’t have simple elucidations as answers for this thoughty question! I’m giving her a lengthy answer via email. But for
readers here in general, a brief one!
But let's also remember that, nowhere else is
this ideological conditioning of a 'capitalist enterprise' so overtly rampant and manifest
than in the 'capitalist ideology' that surrounds Christmas. And hence the connect! And pray, it’s not
me, folks, it’s Sheila Whitely who had written this massive book on the Capitalist
Ideology surrounding Christmas!
Lemme give you an example!
We all would very delightfully remember and enthusiastically recollect with such regal relish, from the time we were paapas, [kids] Sachin
Tendulkar and Shahrukh Khan being brand ambassadors for the famed Pepsi ad in the
late 1990s. Well, these two greats were paid in crores for being brand
ambassadors for Pepsi, we were told.
Or coming quite nearer to our
times, we all haven't sure forgotten the famous case involving Actor Kajal Aggarwal who filed
a case in the High Court of Madras against VVD Coconut oil just a couple of years back! According to the
actress, the company was bound to use her promo-ad only for a period of one
year, but they seem to have violated it and continued to use it even beyond
2008, she averred, and hence demanded a whopping Rs 2.5 crores as compensation
from VVD owners.
The point here is, VVD makes
use of Kajal’s celebrity status and popularity, as brand value to promote their
product, and for a whopping premium! Pepsi makes use of celebrity icons Sachin
and Shahrukh as brand ambassadors because of their celebrity status, again for
a whopping price!
But imagine everyone
starts sporting a Pepsi can or a Pepsi Cola bottle during a particular
social/cultural or religious festivity, everyone among the participants richly
adorned in the bright blue of the Pepsi jersey singing a Pepsi-composed number! After that, Pepsi ain’t gonna
need a Sachin or a Shahrukh! When they’ve got a completely free promotion,
marketing, advertisement, peddling, hawking and touting of their brand done
almost every year, and literally no money paid in the process, whatsoever!
On the other hand, let’s again imagine yet another situation where Coca Cola pays a sum of Rs. 50,000/- for every pavapetta thoppai walah dressed in their Coca –
Cola red every year during Christmas, the Christmas thatha (grandpa) who goes around throwing out toffees and gifts!
The situation would have been entirely different ain’t it!
Also, all ye upcoming Santas, I wish to
bring to your memory, a recent case in Gujarat in May 2019, where PepsiCo had sued nine poor
farmers from Sabarkantha and Aravalli districts in Ahmedabad commercial court
and Modasa district court for growing a variety of potato for which they [PepsiCo] claimed that they alone had the exclusive copyrights.
[On an aside, beware all ye Santas in thatha’s clothing, ;-) Coca Cola Inc is not far behind! Please have a lawyer in tow, when
you do the jig and hop around happily this Christmas! You may end up in court paying
damages, according to Coke’s sweet will and wish!]
But well, shouldn't we all empathise with the pavapetta Santas who, without being paid even a penny, ‘hop a little, jump a little, one-two-three’, ‘run a little, skip a
little, one-two-three’ ;-) all through the length and breadth of the cityscape,
all through the nights, climbing up and down the stairs of each and every
house, and getting nothing in return, all sweaty inside, and tired outside, finally ending up exhausted on all sides, in the mighty Coca-Cola 'designed & marketed' Santa and his Red!
Do you think Coca Cola
Inc would have even bothered to sponsor this pavapetta exhausted Santa thatha (grandpa) at least one pet bottle
of their soda for free??? ;-)
Nayyyver! They would
rather give him a google mapped 'ping' to search for Coke parlours nearby and buy
for himself a coke, paying from his own pavapetta pocket! ;-)
Added, just
key in the phrase, ‘Santa Claus Costume in Chennai’, and hey ho! google ji gives
you a whopping 2,03,000 results in a flat 0.67 seconds to get for yourselves
Santa Claus costumes for rent or for buys, and this, only in the city of
Chennai!
If the Santa Claus
merchandise is a billion-dollar industry in China alone, annually, just
imagine for yourselves, the range of its reach and impact in western countries!
Therein lies the power of a Coca Cola!
Therein lies the power
of a Capitalist Ideology!
Therein, ladies and
gentlemen, also lies the huge success of any Capitalist Ideology! They
indoctrinate you with their ideas in such appealing and convincing ways, using
the most influential brand ambassadors, to such an extent that you fail to realize
which is cultural and which is real, or which is marketed and which is not!
Now the question again
is, whose Christmas are the Christians celebrating today?
Or to put it simply,
whose Christmas is it?
Coca Cola’s or Jesus Christ’s
???
If your answer is, 'Coca Cola's, then the next question is, how do we separate and delink Coca Cola and their Rangers, from Jesus Christ and his manger???
On an aside, lemme also add to say that, Capitalist ideologies of this order, can't be delinked with such ease! Their capitalist ideological indoctrination has permeated every nerve and sinew of the loyals and the faithfuls that easy solutions are hard to come by!
images: cricfitdotcom, vvd-on-youtube, and theuijunkiedotcom
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