Comments on: A Fascist State? Another Look at Kingdom Come and Consumerism

By: Its J G Ballards World We Just Live In It | Fantastical Andrew Fox

Its J G Ballards World We Just Live In It | Fantastical Andrew Fox — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:13:51 +0000

[...] Crash, which, if you read it in the right way, is a snarkingly funny book. Here’s a fairly recent review of the novel, focusing on the book’s savage critique of consumerism. And here’s Rob [...]

By: MarkA Rowe

MarkA Rowe — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:50:57 +0000

A very good piece @ a very good website. Salutations to all my animal relations.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:42:09 +0000

Very interesting, although I am probably more sympathetic to the equation of consumerism as a feature of fascism. On this subject, you need to read the excellent book by Koepnick, The Aesthetics of Power (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), which deals with the role of consumerism and commodity aesthetics in fascist ideology.

By: Rick McGrath

Rick McGrath — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:50:39 +0000

interesting… you realize you’re employing the same kind of psychopathological techniques adman/marketer Richard Pearson uses in Kingdom Come to sell the Metro-Center? aggression. unexpected madness. fear. the repackaging of the obvious as new. envy. enemies.

I doubt if you’ve read Ballard, and I know you don’t understand Mike’s article… if anything, you (david) cruise the web looking for the tagword “consumer” so you can drop in a link to your $25 diatribe against “the rich and powerful” — which I take as the manifest sign of a latent desire for equal power and control on your part… yes, you’d make a wonderful leader…

JGB: “I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”

See? he even includes you!

By: Michael Dawson

Michael Dawson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:54:35 +0000

I’d be happy to debate which is quasi-religious, Rick. This kind of pathetic ass-talk about “consumer society” and the massively over-estimated, under-informed boob JG Ballard, or what I suggest.

“Consumers are fascists” seems to be the point of this sophomoric and prolix prattle, to the extent anybody can tell.

Fuck off.

By: Rick McGrath

Rick McGrath — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:24:14 +0000

hey, michael… your meaningless rant is poor camouflage for advertising your own quasi-religious site… knock it off.

By: Michael Dawson

Michael Dawson — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:58:40 +0000

People are not consumers, they are product-users. There is no such thing as “consumer culture” or “consumerism” or “consumer society.” http://www.consumertrap.com/consumer-bias

This is capitalism. Advertising and retailing and commercial television are manifestations of big business marketing. Big business marketing exists to serve the rich and powerful by manipulating ordinary people.

This kind of ham-handed blather obscures reality. Knock it off.

By: Things I have been reading this week « Blue stockings

Things I have been reading this week « Blue stockings — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:27:11 +0000

[...] Mike Holliday on J.G.Ballard’s Kingdom Come at Ballardian: …there is a malign dialectic at work here. I buy things in order to try and reassert my identity, but as the marketplace grows I am offered an increasing variety of goods and services, and associated ways of living, from which to choose. Now my identity is even more in question, because it is something that I myself have to select and realize. The impact is heightened as the material prosperity of society increases – even something as basic as food becomes no longer a matter of survival and physical well-being, but a decision about life-style. [...]

By: David Pringle

David Pringle — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:44:53 +0000

Interesting stuff, Mike. I’m glad you quoted from Michael Burleigh’s _The Third Reich: A New History_ (2000), because that’s a work we know Ballard read and approved of — he commended it in one of his “books of the year” recommendations in the press. Burleigh’s book may well have _informed_ JGB’s thinking when he was planning _Kingdom Come_, which was probably not the case with any of the other works on fascism/Nazism you cite (which may or may not have been on his private reading list — but there’s no evidence either way; of course, it’s quite possible he read some of your earlier cited works, such as Fromm and Shirer, many decades ago).

I’m also glad you said this, with respect to Ballard’s belief in the inherited human capacity for violence: “… a view which has some support from the anthropological and historical evidence, which indicates that hunter-gatherer and primitive agriculturalist societies often had far higher male mortality rates from violence than did Europe and North America in the 20th century, despite our technologies of destruction and two world wars.” That’s information that perhaps ought to be more widely known. Interestingly, the two sources you cite for it — “See, for example, Azar Gat, War in Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006, Chapters 2, 6 and 9; also Steven LeBlanc, with Katherine Register, Constant Battles: The myth of the peaceful noble savage, St Martin’s Press (New York), 2003″ — are not ones I’m familiar with. I got the same message from another fairly recent work, _Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors_ by Nicholas Wade (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), which I recommend to one and all.

– David P.

By: Rick McGrath

Rick McGrath — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:40:21 +0000

Cool, Mike! Lots to think about here, especially as I can see links between the manifest you describe and the latency of Pearson’s wacky ad campaigns…

By: Tweets that mention Ballardian » A Fascist State? Another Look at Kingdom Come and Consumerism -- Topsy.com

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:46:17 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Simon Sellars. Simon Sellars said: New post: Mike Holliday takes another look at Ballard's Kingdom Come… Can we really equate consumerism with fascism? http://bit.ly/c7wriy [...]