This week at City Night Church, we are thinking about Capitalism. Capitalism is the dominant economic paradigm in our age, and many of us have grown up knowing nothing else? But is it Christian? What’s good about it? What’s wrong with it?

To get yourself thinking about the issues, it would be good to watch this video. The video is not about capitalism, but it’s about materialism, but when Capitalism is coupled with philosophical materialism (as presented in the video), there are major problems.

FYI: John Lewis is a department chain store like Myer and David Jones.

What does the department store think life is made up of? Why does bright light feature prominently in most of the scenes?

I don’t want to focus too much on the content – the obvious points about the commodification of modern life, how we effectively live even the most personal, private experiences via the medium of large capitalist corporations etc. But rather on the form.

Firstly, those sun-bleached colours: they have about them the aura of a dream, but also of aging and authenticity. Like the enthusiasm for sepia-toned photos, which is effectively a symptom of a society with no sense of history, for whom sepia is the colour of all things past and fulfilling, this bleached feel gives it that blurred-edge lightness of nostalgia. But it is the sun that is crucial: in almost every scene of this 90 seconds commercial, the sun is present, bathing the girl-woman in a constant maternal light. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the sun in this ad becomes coterminous with John Lewis (‘Our lifetime commitment to you’): there for us come youth or old age, in sickness and in health.

Second, the response. We in Australia, have not seen this commercial on our televisions, but the response overseas has been overwhelming. People have been moved to tears and it has been the subject of talk back radio and tv. Why so moving? Why so much response?

I think the answer is because it presents an (idealised) human life in its entirety. This is something one almost never sees in real life: normally, we die after our parents and before our children. So to envisage a whole life in a single meaningful unit is moving in itself because we are not something that happens. But more importantly: the rhythms of modern day capitalism are such that the only periods we can think in tend to be between pay packets.

Come to City Night Church this week to think about the issues surrounding Capitalism. Dinner afterwards – our Great Lasagna Bake Off at the end of church.

Mike Turner.