Heart of a Heartless World
Marx saw religion as "the sigh of the oppressed". As oppression imposes itself upon people in ever new ways, from the crushing weight of the credit card to the mind-numbing sterility of Madonna, the religious cries in the wilderness become more pathetic, more ridiculous, more religious than orthodox religion. Everyman (BBC1, 10.30pm, 4 August) offered a glimpse into the crazy world of the Kensington Temple, an evangelical church for born-again inmates. They screamed that Jesus is Alive in much the way that born-again Stalinists used to stand on street comers yelling that inflation had been abolished in Albania. The spectacle is highly amusing, until you think that these are potentially intelligent beings throwing themselves before the mercy of an all-powerful invisibility above the clouds.
The documentary showed how one woman had turned from stealing and drug-dealing to running aerobic classes for nifty Christians and reading the Bible with her boyfriend instead of sleeping with him. Clearly, for her the religious hallucinations offered by faith gave a better escape route than the buzz from cocaine. Members of the Kensington Temple wander round street markets offering salvation to wage slaves looking for cheap goods. Fortunately, most of the people approached by them in the documentary told them that whatever else they needed, they did not want to find the Lord. If Christianity is to have a future in places like Britain where most workers are not interested in falling to their knees as a strategy for escape, it is the loud-mouthed, emotionally-crippling, morally-obnoxious evangelicals who will carry the torch. By and large, though, the workers of the more developed capitalist countries will have little time for religion. Secular capitalism creates new gods, one of the oddest of whom is the man who died fourteen years ago as a drugged-exit, drunk-out obese clone who was too incapacitated to even wipe his own backside: he spent his last months wearing nappies, apparently.
The cult of Elvis is a minor form of secular worship in the USA, as it is in Britain. Viva Elvis (C4, 10pm, 12 August) was a journey to the outer reaches of human absurdity. There was a woman who has an Elvis museum in her house, including such exhibits as the Great One’s toenail clippings and a wart which he once had removed by a surgeon. Another crank had a shrine to Elvis in his living room which was constantly attended by himself and his son — Elvis, of course. An Elvis look-alike competition was shown in which grown men performed before screaming women who looked like recent escapees from the Kensington Temple. In Mexico a man called El Vez translates Elvis's profound lyrics into Spanish so that those hitherto stuck with the limited offerings of an Aztec past can now sing and sigh to their heart's content about hound dogs and other pressing questions of the day. Why all of this searching for gods? People who are made to feel small and powerless look for something which is big and powerful. They look and are offered a menu of Jesus, Elvis, not to mention Ron Hubbard and Lenin. Shut your eyes and believe in religion; open them wide and you might just catch sight of how big and powerful we all are if only we decide to be.
A Vindication
The newspaper, Stage and Television Today (1 August) interviewed Michael Ferguson who has been executive editor of the awful EastEnders since 1989. Jane Gamer, the interviewer, reports that "He has delved deep into soap psyche and seen battles of good versus evil, the foundation stone of Passion Plays, plus myriad struggles of Common Man and an ability to tap a deep-rooted need in millions of viewers". In this column we have repeatedly stated how soap operas are moralising mouthpieces appealing to alienated workers. EastEnders, in particular, offers its viewers simplistic caricatures of Good and Evil to be followed or avoided in line with the consequences depicted in the drama. We were criticised in the tabloid rag, The People, for making such observations, but now we have it from the horse's mouth; says Ferguson, ". . . there is a strong tie in it for me with the morality plays, there is good and evil. Nick Cotton is the personification of evil . . . Dot Cotton is a good character, she has a high sense of moral duty." Wage slaves used to go to Churches to be told what their moral duties were. These days, those who are not having evangelical orgasms in the Kensington Temple or paying pilgrimage to Elvis's left toenail are watching Saint Dot fight the twice-weekly holy struggle against Wicked Nick to see how the good life must be led.
Cat Sense
There is an irritating ad for Whiskas which says that if cats could do so they would buy Whiskas. Cats have more sense than to buy anything. Cats take what they need. Cats do not go shopping or carry credit cards or have overdrafts or make adverts selling horrible, cheap rubbish. My cat runs a mile every time he smells Whiskas. Come to that, he never goes to Church, worships no gods and has never been seen near the hi-fi when Elvis is on. And he has no sophisticated consciousness like humans do. Come to think of it, humans would not buy Whiskas, or any other commodity for sale, if they thought about it for more than five minutes.
Steve Coleman
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