Black Friday...Gray Thursday

On this blue Monday following Black Friday, can anyone remember Thursday? Thanksgiving, once America's holiday of gratitude and family solidarity, has become the staging area for Christmas shopping. It is no longer just the day after Thanksgiving -- Black Friday (as in "in the black, or profitable") -- that is devoted to consumerism, but Thanksgiving Day itself, on which more and more stores are now staying open for pre-Black Friday sales. Call it gray Thursday.

America's retail industry, now indistinguishable from its marketing industry, sees in every blank space a billboard, in every suburban meadow, a mall, in every screen -- big or small -- a banner ad. And in every 'non-working' holiday, a time for more shopping. The Thanksgiving weekend comprises four non-working days: that's ninety-six hours available for non-stop shopping. Ditto for Halloween, Ramadan, Christmas, you name it -- the "holy days" are now all shopoholy days. And whose fault is that?

I had a half dozen calls from radio and TV stations over this long shopping weekend asking me to talk about why consumers are so hungry to shop, why housewives were camping out at 3 AM Friday morning to make the 4 AM opening of mega-stores like Target. The assumption of the reporters who called was that Black Friday was a demand side phenomenon -- moms deciding there wasn't enough time in the day for all the shopping they wanted to do, dads insisting that stores stay open on Thanksgiving and open again midnight on Black Friday 'cause they just couldn't get enough of those bargains, kids leaping from bed at midnight as if they'd spotted Peter Pan in the window and shouting "let's go shopping!"

See, the point seems to be, the retail industry is just saying -- after all, this is its mantra -- we're just giving people what they want.

Well not quite: Americans like to shop, but they also like to pray, read, play, talk, make art, make love, take walks, and spend time munching turkey with loved ones. They like to shop but not 24/7. The shopping fanaticism we see on Black Friday, and throughout the year, is a supply side phenomenon: the result of corporations "pushing" not consumers "pulling."

That's why marketing and advertising are capitalism's main industries today, why they expend a quarter of a trillion every year to get people to "want" all the stuff they sell. It's why they target children and encourage shopaholism (a serious problem for more than 20 million Americans who regularly go shopping without a particular purchase in mind).

Where capitalism once produced goods and services to meet real needs and wants, today it produces needs and wants to sell all the goods, wanted or not, it must sell to stay in business. Real needs (clean water in the third world) go wanting, while manufactured needs (bottled water) are pushed on first world consumers who can get free clean water from their taps.

So Black Friday is no anomaly; it is consumer capitalism incarnate. It is not a compliant response by polite retailers to consumer demand, it is part of a massive world-wide campaign to instigate and sustain consumer demand beyond any reasonable definition of need or want. To satisfy shareholders not citizens.

Our hyper-consumerism is actually consuming us (sub-prime mortgage anyone?) As the subtitle to my book Consumed argues, it is "corrupting children, infantilizing adults and swallowing citizens whole."

It's time we understand that Black Friday is not something we do; it something being done to us. And comprehend that, left to the marketplace, Black Friday will eat Thursday as well and annihilate what is left of Thanksgiving and the American spirit it represents.

Comments

[Asmarina]

Don't forget Cyber Monday! Is what I meant to say.

[itmaybetoolate]

Give the consumer some credit! They could resist if they worked at it. But, it is TOO HARD to resist the ads, and they can't stand the thought that someone else will get the deal and they WON'T! In my mind, it is more about competition - shopping has become a sport and black friday is the superbowl - who will get the best deal which, of course, means they win! Each year I get even more disgusted when I see those mindless drones lined up, pushing and yelling, to get to the crap!

[JosephHorgan]

Of course, there are those of us who secretly laugh maniacally when we hear that sales are lower than expected (while the media exhorts us to get out there and stimulate the economy, buy buy buy!), that the whole binge buying thing seems to be losing steam.

In one story, Consumers spend cautiously spending more collectively , but less per person.

Does that include gas to get to the store? Increased food prices?

But another story curbing our maniacal laughter, says spending on the internet is WAY up. (Marketplace appeased! Prayers answered!)

But the real story, the one that matters to most people: Bankruptcies up 40%. More than 600,000 bankruptcies by individuals and households in 2007 so far. Average family credit card debt: $20K!

There's only so much blood the privateers can squeeze from that rock that's been pounded into sand. (The privateers are praying to their marketplace god that thar's black gold in them thar tar sands.)

An economy based upon binge buying, on buying stuff to throw away, is patently absurd.

"For at least another hundred years," wrote Lord Keynes about 100 years ago, "we must pretend... that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still." Time's up, Lord Keynes.

It's time to stop playing pretend. It wasn't a good idea to pretend the marketplace --made up of people, none of whom are omniscient, even collectively-- is a god. If we follow the logic of the marketplace-as-god, then the crops have not fed the people well so the king must die as a sacrifice to the god. I nominate Kings Coal, Corn, Cotton, etc.

When we stop playing pretend economics, when we stop playing pretend omniscient marketplace, when we stop pretending that fair is foul, when reality hits (like Enron, like Katrina, like bankruptcy, like a tonne o' bricks), we will remember that maybe Fair is Useful.

Reality, What a concept. Think it'll sell?

--Joseph

[realitytrumpsbull]

Ah, but in the New Economy, citizener, you'll
spend your Reichspesos frugally..­.because
you won't get very many to start with hahahaha..­..

[flatus]

Festivus for the rest of us.

[RedWhiteandBlueState]

Great, frightening post. I had a discussion with a friend of mine about ad firms. Think of all the Masters degree holding whizzes who spend their entire creative lives getting us to buy, buy, buy. A friend of mine, a very successful tv writer said his job is scripting the bits between commercials. It's like we have no chance of survival unless we turn off the tube and the net and risk ostracism from our peers for being "out of touch". I have an 18 month old boy and my wife and I are trying to strategize his way around obscene marketing influences - but they are ubiquitous and intermeshed with what is perceived as popular "culture". It is truly astounding. Now with digitial billboards we can't even take a walk without ads screaming from the sky. Where will it end?

[ORSunshine]

I agree that the hype for the day has been developed and promoted by marketing and advertising specialists, who figure if stores can lure consumers in with sales, that the consumers will open their wallets early and first at that store (ensuring that specific retailer a piece of the holiday cashflow). My boyfriend and I ventured in to the stores early in 2005 -- just to see what it was like. We found a few good bargains and got some gift cards worth a few bucks of cash... this year he went out to the sales and I stayed in bed (he wakes up at 4 AM every day), and he was rewarded with a $100 gift certificate -- so it was Christmas in November for him. Because of that, he'll probably go back, year after year.
My favorite reporting on "black friday" was done by NPR on Weekend Edition Sunday:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16598883
The phrase itself if just marketing-hype to make the media pay attention and promote the sales at stores -- showing people who don't shop on that day that they're missing out on all the sales.