Prowling Michigan Avenue like Scrooge with a blond pompadour, Reverend Billy exhorted holiday shoppers to stop shopping, a request that, given the retail-rich surroundings, would’ve left people little to do Thursday but stand around and be cold.
“We are addicted, conflicted, hypnotized and consumerized,” he bellowed, with faux-evangelical enthusiasm. “We’ve got to save Christmas from the shopocalypse!”
While few could question this man’s fervor, it seemed the only thing the throngs weren’t buying was the message the “good reverend” was selling.
No matter.
For a performance artist slowly building an empire of irony around anti-commercialism shtick, the show must go on.
Bill Talen is not a clergyman, and his New York City-based Church of Stop Shopping is most certainly not a religious organization. But that hasn’t stopped him from bringing his own brand of guerrilla theater to shopping Meccas like the Magnificent Mile and to the Wal-Marts and Starbucks that dot the country. “We’re turning our communities into sprawl, we’re sitting in our cars all day long waiting for an exit to get off and go buy something,” said Talen, 47, bouncing in and out of character moments before his Michigan Avenue march. “What kind of culture are we making here?”
The Reverend Billy character first began appearing about a decade ago, just as New York City’s once-notorious Times Square was being transformed into a clean, family-friendly environment, anchored by a massive Disney store. Inspired by the street preachers who used to work Times Square corners trying to save souls, Talen, a longtime actor, bought a cheap pine pulpit, put on the white suit he used at his catering job and became Reverend Billy, the anti-corporate evangelist.
His “movement” grew, and before long, others joined to create, in essence, a theater troupe performing gospel music with a decidedly anti-corporate twist. They now have a yearly budget of about $250,000, Talen said, a combination of grants, donations and box-office receipts from regular shows they do in New York.
While he and his red-robed “choir” of followers bring a convincing song and dance, wailing about the dreaded sameness of retail chains and corporate coffee conglomerates, the group still faces questions of sincerity.
Simply put: Can you trust a prophet who stands to profit from his own words?
Talen has published two books, a CD of anti-shopping gospel tunes and a DVD. He has a slick Web site and two public-relations representatives. His current pre-Christmas cross-country tour to L.A.–in which he warns people of the impending “shopocalypse”–is being filmed for a documentary.
That film has brought perks for the normally volunteer choir, like a per diem and help with travel expenses. Talen acknowledges the conflicts, saying he fears his own hypocrisy. And he admits he sometimes must dance with the enemy in an effort to spread his word.
“We wouldn’t have had a record made if we hadn’t agreed to let it be sold in some of the wrong places,” he said.
One of those wrong places is the Virgin Megastore on Michigan Avenue, one of the very stores he walked past Thursday with bullhorn in hand, shouting: “Stop shopping! Start living!”
Outside the Disney Store, Reverend Billy and more than a dozen choir members stretched their hands toward the windows, as though reaching for something irresistible inside. Then they pulled their hands back and collapsed on each other, a unified rejection of corporate temptation.
“Hallelujah!” Talen cried.
“Shut up!” shouted a child hustling into the store.
