Bravo! What a great film, part comedy, part documentary and part anti-consumer movement. Anyone who has even felt the slightest pang of misgivings on how commercialized and exploitive Christmas has become needs to see What Would Jesus Buy?.
Filmmaker Rob VanAlkemade follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping choir on a cross-country odyssey to stop the looming “Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt”. Reverend Billy (not sure if this is an ordained title or an adopted one) and his loyal apostle-style choir, fuse their anti-consumer message with performance art to ask Americans to slow down and stop buying so much during the Christmas season.
Americans are out of control with a several billion dollar shopping addiction.
Each week Americans spend 1 hour in spiritual pursuits and more than 5 hours shopping. Over $500 billion dollars is spent during the holiday season and Americans generate 5 million additional tons of X-mas waste. VanAlkemade and Reverend Billy highlight the loss of the American dream– where the growing attachment to stuff operates as a testament to our dissatisfaction.
Americans hold more than 2.4 trillion dollars in personal debt with more than 1 million bankruptcies filed each year.
What Would Jesus Buy? is a wake up call to the hyperactive consumer in all of us –a call to stop being complacent in a system of consumer exploitation between poor people in third world countries who make cheap consumer goods and the working class Americans who buy the crappy stuff. Americans hold more than 2.4 trillion dollars in personal debt with more than 1 million bankruptcies filed each year.
Under their clever performance art sermon, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping are preaching a practical environmental message: buy local goods, consume less, don’t exploit someone else to get cheap products, and let’s buy half as much and give away twice as much.
What Would Jesus Buy? is an incredibly well made, hard-hitting, humorous and poignant documentary. Rob VanAlkemade has a rare filmic hit on his hands. Bravo!
Order this film on Amazon.com What Would Jesus Buy?
Visit: http://wwjbmovie.com/
GreenMuze.com Rating: 
Show/Hide comment form
