Saturday, 10 August 2019

How a 'Capitalist Ideology' helped shaped Christmas for the Proletariat!

Ideology | Illustrated!!!

In continuation of our discussion on ideology, on how the dreaded ‘i’ word has succeeded in so skillfully concealing or masking or hiding or distorting the truth and the reality from the pavapetta proletariat or the powerless, let us move on to specific illustrations of the same!

Well, as a foreword, let me add here that, some of the things that we discuss on ideology here, may swaing go against established conventions, against the grain, and so let me also remind you that, we do theory, not to rock our boats, but to capsize them! ;-)

To turn turtle our boats, or in other words, to topple our boats a dam damaal full 360 degrees, so that we come to know and to feel and to enjoy an alternate reality, a beautiful reality, a better reality that lies outside our blinkered, tinkered boats, the blinkered boats of religion, caste, race, and colour that have poisoned our pavapetta minds from seeing the humaneness within humans or the warm personality within a person!  

As an example of how ideology operates, let us herewith discuss the manipulative forms of ‘ideology’ that have been subtly woven into the fabric of Christmas celebrations all over the world!

Well, let’s just discuss in brief two important points here!

First of all, how many of us know that the colour red in Santa Claus’s suit is only because of a hugely successful advertising campaign for Coca-Cola that featured a big Father Christmas wearing red robes with a white trim, the soft drink's colours?


Well, before 1930, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf! In 1930, artist Fred Mizen painted a department-store Santa in a crowd drinking a bottle of Coke. The ad featured the world's largest soda fountain, which was located in the department store Famous Barr Co. in St. Louis! Mizen's painting was used in print ads that Christmas season, appearing in The Saturday Evening Post in December 1930. [These are the Company’s own words, btw]!

And hence, Santa Claus transformed in our minds and hearts, from a lean and lanky weirdo into the image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and humane Santa, whom we all very 'fondly' call Christmas thatha! [Christmas grandpa!] Something similar to the ones you find going around homes and institutions, with chocolates and gifts and a thoppai (paunch) included, during Christmas carols, come the annual Christmas time!

And that explains how the corporates or the capitalists have conditioned our religious rituals, and our culture, and thereby our realities for us all! How powerfully they have indoctrinated our festivals, our rituals and our celebrations a full 360 degrees, ain’t they?

Therein lies the power of ideology, ladies and gentlemen, where the distortion is so subtle that the pavapetta proletariat, don’t even realize that they have been tricked or manipulated!

So whenever you see a guy wearing a plump, rounded thoppai-donning Santa Claus in red attire, remember you have been indoctrinated by a Coca-cola-nised corporate ideology! And wait, I ain’t telling you these 'legendary' stuff! It’s there for y’all in the coca-cola company’s website itself for y'all to see! 

Secondly, how many of us know that, the concept of Christmas as a day of grand festivities is an invention of the Victorian urban middle classes? And that this invention was meant to be a celebration of their struggle for hegemony? 

Sheila Whitely says that, Christmas was invented by the Victorian urban capitalist fiefdom as a celebration of their triumph and their prosperity and of their profits made possible by the industrial revolution! Shocking ain't it?

She adds to say that, these urban Victorian elite slowly and subtly passed on to their poor counterparts, the pavapetta proletariat, who succumbing to their wiles, and to this ‘invention’ of Christmas, were forced to dole out all their year’s earnings and savings on Christmas decorations and ‘celebrations’ when the Christ whom they celebrate, as they all know, fully well, was born in a lowly stable or a manger! [a maatu thozhuvam], light years away from the Victorian invention or conception of Christmas!

Professor Sheila Whiteley would then be our launchpad into this example on how these ideologies successfully create a false consciousness and condition and operate our Christmases for us all, annually!

And well, her groundbreaking book that uncovers the ideology hidden behind Christmas festivities, titled, Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture, is such a revelatory read of sorts!


As I’ve said earlier, our posts here on ideology are not meant to rock our boats, but to overturn them a full 360 degrees! ;-)

Cos the truth may sometimes be bitter! Whereas distortions and masks of the truth would always seem better!

Well, coming back, Sheila Whiteley observes that, for the many, Christmas is an unavoidable expense, one which emphasises giving, but at a cost, as child-centred advertising creates often unrealisable expectations!

The letter to Santa is quickly superseded by a list which not only details the identified gift but also the comparative price offered by catalogues and relevant stores.

The emphasis on harmony, hearth and home versus the bleakness of the outside world is ideologically powerful. For those without families, Christmas is all too often a time of acute loneliness, Sheila quips!

It is also evident that the demands of conspicuous consumption, fed by a diet of advertisements and a heavily depleted cash card, highlight the problems associated with low-income families!

Meanwhile, the ‘construction’ of Christmas in the media often implies that its readers/viewers recognise that commercial interests override any real commitment to universal goodwill!

Sheila continues,

More recently, as George McKay observes, iconic advertising figures like the Coca-Cola Santa and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have generated a global appeal which includes such Communist countries as China and Cuba, so providing a uniquely rich focal point for the study of popular culture and its relationship to ideology.

The topics explored in Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture relate to major issues concerning cultural activity (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its relationship to a set of basic values (the idealised construct of the family), social relationships (community) and the way in which ideological discourses are used and mobilised, providing insights into how the themes surrounding Christmas are constructed (in the media, films, cartoons and music) through an often idealised nostalgia for the past!!!

For media studies, the case studies offer a compelling account of how Christmas is shaped by the media, by the Corporate giants, and how this relates to social change and how it influences the public perception of the festival.

John Storey’s opening feature article in this book, proves the real icing on the cake!

It takes the reader back to the 1840s, presenting a critical exploration of ‘The Invention of the English Christmas’ by the Victorian urban elite!

In their struggle for hegemony and domination over the pavapetta proletariat, Christmas was intended as both a celebration of the prosperity made possible by the achievements of the Industrial Revolution, and a recognition of the need to ‘exhibit’ that prosperity with those for whom industrialization and urbanisation had not been an unqualified success. ‘If what was invented was commercial out of instinct, it was charitable out of a sense of fear and guilt’!

Deivameyyy! Rakshikaneyyy!

Sheila continues...

The text at the heart of this aspect of the invention of the ‘traditional’ English Christmas is Charles Dickens’s ‘utopian’ novel A Christmas Carol (1843). The story of Scrooge is a clear warning to the class he represents: share prosperity or face destruction. Even so, Dickens’s emphasis is on charity rather than fundamental social change; charity relieves suffering, but what it does not do is change the causes of suffering.

Rather it is a temporary redistribution of wealth, which works to safeguard the hierarchies of wealth.

While the first two chapters focus on the Victorian English Christmas, George McKay turns his attention to the US, where the historical antecedents of Christmas advertising show that, as long ago as the mid-nineteenth century, a Father Christmas-style character had been employed for seasonal marketing. 

‘Consumption, Coca-colonisation, cultural resistance – and Santa Claus’ takes the reader back to Philadelphia where, ‘in 1841, a performer dressed as a character named “Criscringle” publicised a local store’s merchandise to passers-by.

So yup! whenever you see a person dressed as Santa up street, giving you gifts and candies, please rise up in unison to say, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not, what they do!’!!! ;-) 

Cos this is exactly the point where capitalist ideology has succeeded amazingly over all and sundry, to the extent that any Christmas ain't gonna be complete without Santa!

Sheila Whitely continues -

Santa Claus then, became a standardised visual amalgamation – white, white beard, portly, jolly, wearing an identifiable fur or fur-trimmed uniform – developed through the century. It was this image that was most famously exploited by the Coca-Cola Company from the early 1930s on, in the corporate company colours of red and white, as part of its campaign to increase winter sales of its soft drink’.

The most successful of the Coca-Cola Santas was introduced in 1931 by commercial illustrator Haddon Sundblom, and in 1939 the dominance of Christmas within the American seasonal marketplace was confirmed by the introduction of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a marketing tool by the Chicago-based department store chain Montgomery Ward. The subsequent song, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, further popularised this new character on the home front!

The next time when you sing or listen to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, don’t fail to remember the fact that, the song was a powerful marketing strategy by a corporate giant, a capitalist, who wanted to make you consume his products through a subtle use of ideological conditioning!

Sheila Whiteley continues –

By tracing ways in which iconic advertising figures like the Coca-Cola Santa and Rudolph generated appeal around the globe, McKay introduces key issues surrounding the Americanisation of Christmas, and reveals how ‘external forms of American popular consumption (or the consumption of America) have inscribed within them variously power, pleasure and fear’!
Terms describing the process of the consumption of export pop cultures mix critical positioning, political accusation and emotive response: ‘McDonaldisation’, ‘Disneyisation’ and, of course, ‘Coca-colonisation’. 

A question that's worth discussion here is, are we celebrating Christmas, or the Coca-cola-nised versions of Christmas, having fallen 'willing victims' to the wiles and the false consciousness and the dominant ideologies of the corporates who have been all along running and conditioning Christmas for us all!!!

So much for the ‘power’ latent within ideology to condition our lives, our rituals, and our celebrations, in every aspect of our life, all through our lives!

In the words of Carl Jung, 

Who looks outside dreams! Who looks inside awakens!

To be continued…

images: coca-coladotie, coca-colacompanydotcom, 
videos: Please do watch this video at leisure HERE

No comments:

Post a Comment