In a new tradition of trying to “make things better” by still working within the very system that makes it all so terrible, Lorde has opted out of the CD method of album sales (though vinyl still makes the cut). Instead, she’s offering in its place something she’s billing as a “music box.” And also: “not a product.” Though still “product” enough to sell. Complete with the disclaimer, “Does not contain a CD” (because yes, people are that dense and need to have things reiterated to them).
To promote the “non”-product, Lorde took to Instagram Live to unwrap the box and show people what’s inside, proving, clearly, that the record company really needs her to peddle her wares and sell that art as capital. Assuring us the plastic is made of sugarcane, Lorde unboxes the non-item (that is an item) while informing us she’s wearing a Céline dress (specifically one made while under the reign of Phoebe Philo) on the album cover. So yes, you can be environmentally-friendly and still buy designer shit off eBay, she’s ostensibly telling us. Of course, the dichotomy doesn’t seem to dawn on her, nor will it most of her fans.
Blithely reading from the interior of the “liner notes” (but lining what, really, is at your discretion), Lorde is oh so proud to declare, “You may notice something different about the contents of this box. Try to walk with intention in this beautiful Earth of ours. For Solar Power, I wanted to create something that symbolized that intention: an environmentally kind and eco-sensitive music box filled with secrets and ephemera.” Alas, the only “secrets” she should really be telling is the fact that any continued participation in a system that thrives solely on selling Capital cannot offer any noble act. Only acts which seek to cushion the system and allow it to continue.
Assuring buyers that the “biodegradable” music box has achieved a net zero carbon certification, Lorde seems to conveniently leave out the part where—even if this was completely true—she’s still bound to fuck up the planet by causing the emissions of this product’s shipment to locations throughout the globe. There is no “bucking” the system, only working within it to make people feel as though they’re doing “their part,” and, for whatever reason, it never seeming to occur to them that the only way to preserve Mother Earth is to do away with capitalism entirely. No, that’s not a call for socialism (the thing Americans still fear most) but a totally different way of thinking about human life and how it should function. Should it function solely for the sake of Capital? Bending over to produce in service of the proverbial machine that keeps churning out nothing, in the end, except forever chemicals? Absolutely not.
Yet instead of people discussing ways in which to overturn this economic system that we’ve been under for too long (to everyone except rich people’s detriment), they find a manner in which to weave climate change into the selling of more product. As Mark Fisher remarked, “Climate change and the threat of resource depletion are not being repressed so much as incorporated into advertising and marketing.” But does anyone really have to be reminded that “capitalism by its very nature is opposed to any notion of sustainability”? Try as famous people and corporations alike might to tell their public otherwise with the gentle “guarantee” that they can still “buy and feel good” about that purchase. It’s not doing any harm, not a bit. Yeah fucking right.
What now makes capitalism actually more heinous is this new sales pitch about “going green.” The hooey about eco-friendly practices. Whatever they may be, they’re not the antidote that’s going to save humanity. Because, again, the only thing that could is dismantling the current system. But isn’t it so much better for the already rich to just keep profiting off the system that’s in place while doing their best to make the plebes feel guilty if they don’t buy the “right” products? The ones that make all the “correct” declarations about preserving the environment. It is said that the corporation would sell the noose to hang itself, and that’s essentially what their promises of “going green” are. In vaguely acknowledging that they are the problem (in essence, hanging themselves), they’re also able to endure by insisting they can fix that problem with different products. Never admitting that the core of the issue is products overall—no matter what guise they come in.
Those, like Lorde, who shroud themselves in the idea of “doing their part,” are, in a roundabout way, actually only continuing the harm. It’s not anyone’s fault, per se, it’s that capitalism is so entrenched in every single aspect of life that, as the platitude goes, “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” And yes, that will happen. The end of the world for humans, anyway. Because they just can’t wean themselves off capitalism’s tit no matter how hard they think they’re trying. Fisher continues, “…the so-called anti-capitalist movement seem[s] also to have conceded too much to capitalist realism. Since it was unable to posit a coherent alternative political-economic model to capitalism, the suspicion was that the actual aim was not to replace capitalism but to mitigate its worst excesses.”
Fisher wields Live Aid and Live 8 as prime examples of this, citing their “ideological blackmail that…insisted ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any political solution or systemic reorganization…” He also makes mention of a particular batch of products (under the Product Red umbrella) U2’s Bono sold to align with the event, asserting, “The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism… no, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.”
Lorde’s music box is now apparently one of them. Except she’s not bothering to tell us that the proceeds will go to something “for a good cause.” The cause itself now is the consumer being able to tell themselves they’ve “bought sustainably”—an oxymoron if ever there was one.
