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STORY IN A REVIEW
1st year of university, 2010-2011, at the Faculty of Languages in Genoa I had studied in English Literature the writers from the postwar period to years closer to me who had recounted the devastating effects of modernization on English society, and especially in the case of Ballard with his particular dystopian science fiction (which viewed generally in the works of all writers, such as H.G. Wells and George Orwell, showed a future society violent and enslaved to itself) predicting a humanity incapable of reasoning and reduced in desires and reactions to the level of savages and children (and more).
In all the material the teacher had given us students for the exam there were two novels by Ballard, one for everyone ('High-Rise') and another to choose from between two titles ('Millennium People' and 'Kingdom Come'), all in English.
For the books, I had chosen 'Millennium People,' having agreed with a classmate to split the cost for the two books he would buy on Amazon (as they were not available in the only university bookstore in the city), and out of curiosity I had bought 'Kingdom Come' second-hand, in English, from a student a few months later and read it in the summer of 2012 at my summer vacation spot in Calabria.
The story is this: an advertiser, Mark Pearson, moves from London to Brooklands, a small town on the motorway to Heathrow Airport, to investigate his father's death, killed in a shooting inside a large shopping center, the 'Metrocentre'.
In his investigations, he discovers a disturbing reality: the life of the town's people is controlled and guided by the shopping center which with its continuous messages convinces them to go there and buy, in an endless consumption system.
But there is a group of people in important positions (like a lawyer and a police sergeant) who try to put an end to the shopping center and that system, with a tragic ending.
Interviewed on a famous English broadcast show (the name is in the notes on the comment of 'This is a Low' by Blur) shortly after the book's release, Ballard explained that this novel showed how consumerism was the only value to hold and display the identity of the English people, where other realities like politics and religion had failed.
But with the consequence of leaving a spiritual void that people might try to fill with acts of unreasonable violence to give meaning to existence.
While reading the novel with my mind it seemed I was watching an American crime film with some action, like those of the late '90s - early 2000s, considering that from the mid-'90s Ballard, from 'Cocaine Nights', had used a kind of 'crime story' to write his novels as a form to tell his stories and share his thoughts on society and the world.
I wouldn’t have thought that 'Kingdom Come' would become an important book in my life, marking me like much pop music I listened to as a child when I was young a few years ago, starting from the places where the story is set which reminded me of London and a town a bit outside where I had lived for a brief work period in 2009, when seeing almost only houses and shops on the streets I felt a bit of monotony and, perhaps, boredom.
But 3 years after that period, while reading the book on a sea arm in Calabria, a small experience would be important for my life: it was an afternoon and I was struck by a particular phrase, at least for me.
The phrase was:
'The great dream of the Enlightenment, that one day reason and rational selfishness would triumph, has led directly to the consumerism of our days'.
A 'popular' phenomenon like Consumerism (as I knew it, at least in the history of our country in the '60s) had to do with a movement of thinking heads of the 1700s, of high classes (nobles and bourgeois), that we had studied in school (the famous Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau...)?
I was so curious that, still being exam period even though I was already on vacation, I had sent an email to my French Literature teacher with whom I had studied the Enlightenment at that time to ask for explanations and for the same reason some other contact later, until 3 years after the first I had written the thesis for the first degree starting from that phrase.
It refers to Commerce: according to three authors (Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot) this was the solution to a nation's problems and its relations with others, guaranteeing peace, freedom, and prosperity to all, in a time, the 1700s, where France faced various internal and external problems, at all levels (social, economic, and political), until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789.
To reach Consumerism as we know it, the principles of the authors' vision were distorted in the name of profit only, and it all started in America shortly after the end of the last world war creating an economy of enormous and rapid production and consumption of products and rapid replacement of many of these, and so again, to fill the State's coffers in a short time, after many investments for the country's participation in the war (it was the 'Cold War' and between the United States and the Soviet Union - the communist Russians - controlling the West and East Europe, competed to become the strongest).
Where we Italians were, in the west, the Americans (their government) had brought their society model with aid to rebuild countries destroyed by the war, promising happiness through consumption.
Nothing could be more wrong: in Italy, there was only economic prosperity; and in fact quite a few personalities from the world of culture (like Pierpaolo Pasolini, the famous writer, for example in 'Scritti corsari', a book of his investigative articles on Italian society in the '70s, but with connections to the '60s - look for 'AccULTuration and enculturation') and among common people (like the protest movement of '68 - the famous slogan 'Produce consume die').
But little has changed since then: in the year I was writing the thesis I often heard news of lines of people in front of megastores of big phone or computer companies to buy the latest model just released (something similar happens today during 'Black Friday' and I think the use of ready food delivery apps like 'Deliveroo' has a whiff of consumerism).
And who is there to criticize? The philosopher Umberto Galimberti and the psychologist Paolo Crepet.
In a surprising way almost 10 years after graduation in some Marketing class of a high school where I am teaching French I spoke of the thesis topic.
To make it more interesting I opened and closed the lessons with two music videos: the first is of a song by Sleeper - a Britpop era group of Blur and Oasis -, 'Inbetweener', partially shot in a supermarket; the second is the montage of a little-known, I believe, song by Lucio Battisti, 'Supermarket' - from the 'Thoughts and Words' period - where in the text consumerism is noted in a love story.
But more: speaking of advertising, I read passages from the book by Begbeider ('Lire 26.900') which I reviewed a few months ago and explained about the Who's album inspired and partly dedicated to advertising, 'The Who Sell Out', from '67, translating the writings on the cover and playing and translating some songs.
Truly incredible that just for a sentence all this happened.
Thank you, Ballard.
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