I am strolling slowly ...
...
along the Viennese Mariahilferstraße ('Romero' and 'mall', do I
have to say more?). What a beautiful spring day, what a delightful shopping
street. More than enough clues provided for a critical leftist mind to
ponder on life in the year 2004.
There I spot a KARE-Shop.
It offers average interior design for average people with an average ambition
in interior design. Let's have a look and find out what's congesting the
market these days. Hmm.
Suddenly I shudder and at the time I pull out my wallet…no - even
worse - my credit card. For lack of cash.
Never before have
I come across an incarnated metaphor of the perfidy of our time more beautiful
than this one. A doormat with the famous photograph of Che Guevara on
it. Capitalism has an incredible advantage. It is able to simply assimilate
subversive trends, to dissolve opposing signs and emblems, re-encode them
and set them free again, neutralized and eclipsed. So I pay 22 euros and
60 cent for a dingy doormat with Che on it, wondering how many thousand
percent of profit margin there might be for the chain. So I actually pay
money for the possibility of trampling on leftist iconography. Every single
step of mine will enfeeble the once strong and powerful emblem further.
Do I like it? Sure do. The mat is cool.
This is capitalism. And I am its blasted despicable servant. I
will rot in hell for that and several hundred abdominous Umberto Ecos
are gonna spit blood at me - forever.
