Go ahead and use your hand to cover up those words: "BANANA REPUBLIC." Without those black letters, The bag is reduced to just paper and glue. It loses its power over you as a status symbol. Isn't it amazing how the precise contrast between Black Ink and White paper can alter your mindset? This illustrates the immense power that words have over us - and how that vunerability is often exploited to specifically communicate one group's selective and greedy ideas.
Since the down of civilization, the Natural World has had to defend itself from the Man-Made world of politics. We American Consumerists like to make fun of this contrast between Man and Nature, and today we've used it to hack some overpriced merchandise. "BANANA REPUBLIC" is a catchy name for a store because Banana Trees would never attempt to govern themselves! Perhaps that is a failing, perhaps that is why Nature consistantly loses to Man: Nature lacks cruelty. In this picture, a sprout is trying to put down roots between concrete blocks and a shopping cart. At least he is persistent in the face of adversity.
Every "BANANA REPUBLIC" bag is painstakingly crafted (with the finest materials) to become a disposable status symbol for the Elitist Yuppie Liftstyle. My "disposible" bag, however, is dying an unsually functional death, filled with yard waste and impaled by piercing twings. Nature is taking a stab at the bleach-paper world of Yuppieville, asking, "Which of us is truly necessay?"
What kind of people shop at "BANANA REPUBLIC?" Oh yea, they're Yuppies. These Yuppies let their clothes determine their self-image. Our whole social structure is based on this same facade of credibility. But deep down, we are all just hairy - smelly - mammals. It's harder to see that when you're wearing a 300-dollar shirt.
So I need to purchase my clothes from a South American Sweatshop to be able to compete in Yuppieville. I concede that. But it doesn't mean I can't still be a gearhead. I love the antique cars: the Oldsmobiles, Pacers, Camaros, and Metropolitans. I love the way they were designed and built to last. They were ethical cars! Yuppies often have trouble getting their minds around that one. Junk cars are remnants of a different era, when what's under the hood mattered more than the emblem on the grille. Today the stuff you buy is less important than the bag it came in, and distain for the (far more necessay) Natural World has finally become the mainstream.
This configuration of junk was not painstankingly staged or assembled for this shot. Things have been sitting just like this for years. This scrap heap is just part of my garage habitat. |
