c garbage – because of an unwillingness to confront Ballard’s reputation. The shopping centre as the cathedral of a “new type of human being”: consumerism leading inevitably to fascism – it’s such a hackneyed line, such a cliche, but here we are, yet again, with Ballard hymned as a visionary of our times. From an Amazon review:
In his astonishing new novel J.G. Ballard has discovered the apocalypse in the form of washing machines, stereo units and every other form of what his characters have dubbed, with both political and religious fervour, Consumerism.
Sounds like a piss-take of a Ballard novel, but no, with Ballard and his fans it’s always deadly serious:
[T]he muzak played in the mall has a distinctly martial edge to it, which is more stringently replicated when the football hooligans begin marching in step and wearing uniforms emblazoned with the cross of St. George.
As always Ballard rewrites the rules. Rather than Modernism being followed by Postmodernism, in Kingdom Come Modernism is followed by Consumerism which at its extreme is compared to Nazi Germany and fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. All, his central character posits, are “states of willed madness.”
As a new regime emerges from the chaos of football violence we are led through a thinly veiled analysis of disinformation that is easily read as a metaphor for Tony Blair’s government.
The new regime take over the Metro-Centre, holding the mass of consumers hostage, many of them joining the insane campaign to establish a new Consumerism. The Centre becomes a tropical sauna, an enclosed environment where cargo-cult style shrines appear in the mist. This is Ballard’s most evocative writing for many years, a descent into madness that sees the ultimate shopping mall meet Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Not for me, thanks. For some reason, though, the notion that we’re really living in some kind of quasi-fascist state, but most people are too stupid to realise it, always finds a willing audience.
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