A How-To of Holy Resistance
By Claudia Orenstein
The Reverend Billy Project:
From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with the Church of Life After
Shopping
By Savitri D and Bill Talen
Ed. and Intro. by Alisa Solomon
Univ. of Michigan Press, 2011
$22.95
As I read this marvelous and important
book, the word that kept springing to mind more than any other
was "timely." In December 2011, Bill Talen, in the guise of his
alter ego Reverend Billy, headed a long line-up of performers
taking part in "Occupy Broadway," twenty-four hours of continuous
free performance in Times Square, with the goal of introducing
"tourists and New Yorkers going to Broadway shows or shopping
themselves into debt to the idea of occupation as CREATIVE resistance"
by "turning once blandified space into a space for cultural production."
Reverend Billy has gained an impressive
following since the 1990s, when Talen first created the evangelical
head of the Church of Stop Shopping, a character he has been playing
on street corners and in shopping malls ever since. Nonetheless,
his crusade against overconsumption and the ravages of global
capitalism on American habits and values, as well as on the lives
of sweatshop workers around the world, may have seemed at times
like an isolated or futile crusade. Savitri D, his director and
wife, sums up this concern in a scene from the 2007 documentary
on Reverend Billy, What
Would Jesus Buy? She slumps exhausted on a hotel bed
after an uneventful exorcism ritual at Walmart Headquarters and
says:
I just don't know if anyone hears us,
or if they do hear us, they so don't want to hear us... I feel
I need for what we do to have some impact on someone soon.
Although the film shows inspired audiences
singing and cheering along with the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir
at several events on Reverend Billy's tour to save Christmas from
the "Shopocalypse," D's cries reveal the struggle of the committed
activist facing daunting odds.
Five
years after this movie premiered, however, the Occupy Wall Street
movement, aided by the international economic collapse, has helped
foster a newly politicized environment in America, within which
Reverend Billy's message is being "mike check" amplified. Moreover,
for OWS, which prides itself on being leaderless, Reverend Billy,
a fictional character, offers a much needed focal point around
which participants can gather and hear their views expressed in
clear and creative terms. In Talen's embodiment, Reverend Billy
has as much charisma, visibility, and conviction as any real religious
leader, but with a "comic irony," in Alisa Solomon's words, that
"prevents Reverend Billy from tumbling into self-righteous moralizing."
[14]
At this new politically transformative
moment, The Reverend Billy Project, a collection of essays
and reflections by Talen and Savtri D on their performance activism,
offers an opportunity to see the longer trajectory of their politically
engaged performance (or theatrically engaging politics)--to hear
their personal thoughts while peeking into their creative process
and tactical planning. The book combines a trio of voices, moving
back and forth between sections written by Talen and D that are
bookended by a rigorous critical Introduction by Alisa Solomon
and an interview with the authors.
Solomon clarifies the deeper nature of
Talen's work by linking the power of Reverend Billy's political
message to the inherent strengths of performance.
Reverend Billy connects the enjoyment
we have in the theater or in the streets with the need to free
our colonized imaginations, to detach ourselves from the long-standing
idea that shopping offers the most direct route to pleasure
(and to patriotism). [13]
Her views help give theoretical grounding
to the more personal reflections elsewhere, and they reveal the
strategic thinking behind political actions that, on the surface,
can sometimes sound like mere comic antics--conducting an exorcism
on a Starbucks cash register, for example. It is, of course, Reverend
Billy's purpose to create events whose dual nature as ironic spectacle,
on the one hand, and serious, politically revelatory action, on
the other, reveals the insidious invisible discourses that pervade
contemporary capitalist culture and dull our minds to the harsh
realities of the global marketplace.
The bulk of the book recounts the thoughts
of Talen and D as they wrestle with the highs and lows of political
activism. In chapter 1, "City of Angels: Banished, Convicted,
and Free," Talen recounts how his "activist pride," in choosing
to go to jail instead of paying a fine for one of his Starbucks
actions, melts into terror when he is confronted by gang-members
in an L.A. prison. [33] Faced with these dangerous cell-mates,
in an environment very different from the New York cells he grew
used to from his frequent arrests there, Talen desperately tried
to explain his crime--ironic, political performance in a Starbucks--and
the philosophy behind it that targeted Starbucks's exploitative
business practices in places like Guatemala. To his surprise,
his frantic explanations hit home for these Latino inmates, whose
families knew first-hand the experiences Talen's actions addressed.
In response, they provided Talen with unsolicited protection from
other prison gangs during his three days of incarceration. This
experience gave him a reality check on the risky nature of civil
disobedience along with an unusual vote of support for his political
work.
Chapter 9, "Iceland: Holding Back the Dam,"
tells of Talen and D attempting to translate their American-style
activism to a foreign context when they are called in to help
a small Icelandic group develop a protest strategy against the
spread of hydroelectric dams across the country's pristine wilderness.
The seasoned activists are at first stymied by a country that
"lacks racial and ethnic minorities" and has only 320,000 people--only
"about fifty" of whom, they say, are willing to "get arrested
for civil disobedience on behalf of a cause like 'the wilderness.'"
[148] Furthermore, Iceland, they realize, was "never industrialized,
so the people never had to organize against the voracious appetite
of heavy industry." "Fish and cheap power are its only easily
commodified resources," they observe, and the Icelandic government
has made no secret of its eagerness to exploit the potential of
both." [149] Talen and D's long-cultivated political organizing
skills turn out to be valuable resources for the fledgling Icelandic
politicos. However, as the authors also show, the economic melt-down
that hit Iceland in 2009 was, in the end, more effective at revealing
the weaknesses of the economic system built on consumerism. It
moved many more people to the streets in protest.
One of the book's most gripping accounts
lies closer to home. In Chapter 5, "Coney Island: The Mermaid
in the Window," D tells how her and Billy's inauguration as Queen
and King of the 2008 Coney Island Mermaid Parade became a platform
for leading a protest against New York City's proposed "massive
strategic rezoning of Coney Island." The City proposal hoped to
replace the old Coney Island with a "flashy tourist destination
replete with luxury hotels, retail entertainment and a 'brand
new identity for the Coney Island brand.'" [63] This plan represented
an eleventh-hour abandonment of an earlier plan that had been
carefully carved out over two years with community input, balancing
local and business needs. The focus of D and Talen's campaign,
in this case, was on getting community voices heard at a land-use
meeting that would influence the City Council vote on the plan.
D
takes us through her creative process as she figures out how to
present the issues around Coney Island's redevelopment theatrically.
Surprisingly, in the tradition of Stanislavski, she does it by
fully identifying with the character she is asked to play, the
Mermaid Queen, imagining how the Queen would feel and act if faced
with the end of old Coney Island. D decides to live in a Coney
Island storefront window as the Mermaid Queen for the nine days
between the parade and the land-use meeting. A painted backdrop
in the window fills out the Queen's fictional world while proclaiming
D's intentions:
I will not return to my pearly castle
beneath the water. I will not eat again until you, my faithful
subjects, join me at the meeting and insist that this people's
playground, where we indulge the fantasies of our spirits, be
protected. [71]
The reference to eating evokes the most
striking and vital component of this protest, a nine-day fast
to amplify her message and force people to pay attention. In doing
this, D showed the real commitment behind her spectacle and helped
inspire 600 people to show up at the meeting. Reflecting on these
events, she writes:
I think people responded to this particular
hunger strike because it was both real and not real. I was really
fasting, but "I" was a "mermaid." I wasn't actually threatening
to die, and in fact I never could die, because I wasn't real.
The death I threatened was palatable, unthreatening, and even
better, people could play along and "save" me by going to the
meeting, or writing to the mayor. Had I done the same thing
as myself, as an individual citizen, I am pretty sure no one
would have paid much attention. This says as much about the
deprivation of our imaginations, as of our politics, and maybe
the two are connected. Maybe invigorating our imaginations,
our sense of play, is the way, at least a way, back to our politics.
[79]
The destruction of pristine landscapes
(in Iceland or elsewhere), exploitation of workers (in Central
America or closer to home), gang violence (inside and outside
prisons): politics is serious business. But a good part of The
Reverend Billy Project is to get at this serious business
through play and to remind us that, in the end, the work of human
beings is as much that of creating joy through imaginative play
as it is of taking care of our so-called important business. Often
these two tasks work best together.
In actions such as the one presented in
Chapter 7, where Billy protests Victoria's Secret's irresponsible
destruction of Canadian forests in producing its famous catalogues,
participants are moved to action, not only by the cause itself
but also by being asked to address the situation with their creativity.
In this case they are challenged to perform an angry endangered
animal in front of a Victoria's Secret store. Participants, Talen
notes, were "Ready to be foolish, to cross into the Sacred State
of Exalted Embarrassment." [100] Talen and D's political actions
don't just offer spectacle in order to capture attention, but,
through theatrical enactment, they give their adherents a chance
to feel the giddy joy of expressive freedom. This state is one
that capitalist culture robs from us by transforming everything
it touches into products deemed useful only in terms of their
market value. One of Reverend Billy's strongest messages is that
capitalism--especially the aspect of it that inundates us with
seductive marketing imagery--has cheated us of the exercise of
our own imaginations. Police reactions to the Church of Stop Shopping's
many displays of "Exalted Embarrassment" help reveal the extent
to which business activities are protected above so many other
values in our society.
By providing this sort of uplifting experience
through political performance actions, and also through the music
of the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, Reverend Billy's
Church balances precariously between creating actual and theatricalized
spiritual events. In fact, in his writings, it is sometimes difficult
to discern where Talen's sense of himself as separate from Reverend
Billy lies. Just as D's performance of the Mermaid Queen gained
its power from being simultaneously real and unreal, the Church
of Stop Shopping has solidified a committed following by being
both a real entity--allowing for a shared sense of community engagement--and
a fictional, ironic statement. Like other churches, it feeds a
variety of human needs, including the need to engage in meaningful
action while exercising our playful, creative spirits.
Fittingly, The Reverend Billy Project
is both instructive and fun, as the writing swings back and forth
between flights of innovative word play (including excerpts from
Talen's performance "sermons") and more grounded immersion in
the details of global economics and their fallout. The book contains
important nuggets of activist wisdom as it describes the planning
process of events and considers what makes them work and not work.
Notable is D's frustration at organizing a commemorative event
for Union Square in protest of the usurpation of that public space
for a planned trendy restaurant. Unusually, for this event, she
applied for permits and complied with all the City's numerous
regulations on public gatherings. She writes,
I have to admit the sanctioned stage,
just a few yards from where Billy was last arrested, felt diffuse,
uncharged. Somehow the permit made the event almost too stable.
Where would its threat come from? Where was the drama? [128]
She clarifies further,
The restaurant plan may or may not be
a result of an organized, methodical effort to squelch dissent,
but it is safe to say that the ideal conditions for consumerism
are almost never the same as the ideal conditions for a civic
democracy. If they can't shut public space down with laws and
permits, they will shut it down with shopping… What defines
a public space ultimately is its active use by the people. [136]
Clearly, the ideal impact of this book
would be to inspire its readers to reclaim public spaces of all
kinds by going out and occupying them, in body and spirit.
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