Mr. Monopoly on Buy Nothing Day
On Friday, OTL continued its Buy Nothing Day tradition of jamming the corporate monoculture and our consumer culture by going to the bank and the mall.
In our scene, Mr. Monopoly (monocle, moustache, top hat and all) had just lost a bunch of money on the stock market and went looking for a handout with his corporate assistant and bag-carrying lackey.
We started at the source of consumerism, the bank (four of them, actually) to highlight the fact that banks in Canada make record profits, frequently making unethical investments, while people struggle.
Once Mr. Monopoly discovered that his loan had not come through, he started asking people if anyone could loan him $25 000 so he could take the limo home (his feet were tired after all). Bank security kicked him out, so he started asking people on the street the same question, as did his assistants, including the lackey who apparently hadn’t been paid yet (“my feet before your wages”).
Eventually, we ended up at the consumer circus itself, the shopping mall, filled with chain stores including some with unethical histories and present practices.
Mr. Monopoly felt right at home and realized that as long as people kept buying, he would make his money back anyways. He made a speech to talk about his joy. He actually made this speech a few times and as he made it the last time, we were rather roughly ejected from The Bay by an undercover security guard who also attacked our camera operator.
You can see more pictures and read more about this jam and previous jams here. The video will be posted soon.
It’s also interesting to note that the true history of Monopoly as an anti-capitalist game has been hidden.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language 😉
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo