What is the function of the story that opens this reading?

The Cult You’re In by Kalle Lasn

A beeping truck, backing up in the alley, jolts you out of a scary dream-a mad midnight chase through a supermarket, ending with a savage beating at the hands of the Keebler elves. You sit up in a cold sweat, heart slamming in your chest. It was only a nightmare. Slowly, you reintegrate, remembering who and where you arc. In your bcd, in your little apartment, in the very town you grew up in.

It’s a “This Is Your Life” moment-a time for mulling and stock-taking. You are still here. Just a few miles from the place you had your first kiss, got your first job (drive-through window at Wendy’s), bought your first car (’73 Ford Torino), went nuts with the Wild Turkey on prom night and pulled that all-nighter at Kinko’s, photocopying transcripts to send to the big schools back East.

Those big dreams of youth didn’t quite pan out. You didn’t get into Harvard, didn’t get courted by the Bulls, didn’t land a recording contract with EMI (or anyone else), didn’t make a mi1lion by age twenty-five. And so you scaled down your hopes of embarrassing riches to reasonable expectations of adequate comfort-the modest condo downtown, the Visa card, the Braun shaver, the one good Armani suit.

Even this more modest star proved out of reach. The slate college you graduated from left you with a $35,000 debt. The work you found hardly dented it: dreadful eight-to-six days in the circulation department of a bad lifestyle magazine. You learned to swallow hard and just do the job-until the cuts came and the junior people were cleared out with a week’s severance pay and sober no-look nods from middle management. You began paying the rent with Visa advances. You got call-display to avoid the collection agency.

There remains only one thing no one has taken away, your only real equity. And you intend to enjoy fully that Fiat rustmaster this weekend. You can’t run from your problems, but you may as well drive. Road Trip. Three days to forget it all. Three days of living like an animal (in the best possible sense), alert to sights and sounds and smeJls: Howard Stern on the morning radio, Slumber Lodge pools along the 1-14. “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile,” sings David Byrne from a tape labeled “Road Tunes One.” The Fiat is, of course, only large at heart. “You know what FIAT stands for?” Liv said when she first saw it. “Fix It Again, Tony.” You knew then that this was a girl you could travel to the ends of the Earth with. Or at least to New York City.

The itinerary is set. You will order clam chowder from the Soup Nazi, line up for standby Letterman tickets and wander around Times Square (Now cleaner I Safer!) with one eye on the Jumbotron. It’s a place you’ve never been, though you live there in your mind. You wiJl jog in Battery Park and sip Guinness at Michael’s Pub on Monday night (Woody Allen’s night), and

you will dance with Liv in the Rainbow Room on her birthday. Ah Liv, who when you first saw her spraying Opium on her wrist at the cosmetics counter reminded you so much of Cindy Crawford-though of late she’s put on a few pounds and now looks better when you close your eyes and imagine.

And so you’ll drive. You’ll fuel up with Ho Ho’s and Pez and Evian and magazines and batteries for your Discman, and then you’ll bury the pedal under your Converse All- Stars-like the ones Kurt Cobain died in. Wayfarers on, needle climbing and the unspoken understanding that you and Liv will conduct the conversation entirely in movie catchphrases.

“Mrs. Nixon would like you to pass the Doritos.” “You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.” “It’s over, Rock. Nothing on Earth’s gonna save you now.” It occurs to you that you can’t remember the last time Liv was just Liv and you were just

you. You light up a Metro, a designer cigarette so obviously targeted at your demographic … which is why you steered clear of them until one day you smoked one to be ironic, and now you can’t stop.

You’ll come back home in a week. Or maybe you won’t. Why should you? What’s there to come back for? On the other hand, why should you stay?

A long time ago, without even realizing it, just about all of us were recruited into a cult. At some indeterminate moment, maybe when we were feeling particularly adrift or vulnerable, a cult member showed up and made a beautiful presentation. “I believe I have something to ease your pain.” She made us feel welcome. We understood she was offering us something to give life meaning. She was wearing Nike sneakers and a Planet Hollywood cap.

Do you feel as if you’re in a cult? Probably not. The atmosphere is quite un-Moonielike. We’re free to roam and recreate. No one seems to be forcing us to do anything we don’t want to do. In fact, we feel privileged to be here. The rules don’t seem oppressive. But make no mistake: There are rules.

By consensus, cult members speak a kind of corporate Esperanto: words and ideas sucked up from TV and advertising. We wear uniforms-not white robes but, let’s say, Tommy Hilfiger jackets or Airwalk sneakers (it depends on our particular subsect). We have been recruited into roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose.

Quite a few members ended up in the slacker camp. They’re bunked in spartan huts on the periphery, well away from the others. There’s no mistaking cult slackers for “downshifters”-those folks who have voluntarily cashed out of their high-paying jobs and simplified their lives. Slackers are downshifters by necessity. They live frugally because they are poor. (Underemployed and often overeducated, they may never get out of the rent-and-loan-repayment cycle.)

There’s really not much for the slackers to do from day to day. They hang out, never asking, never telling, just offering intermittent wry observations. They are postpolitical, postreligious. They don’t define themselves by who they vote for or pray to (these things are pretty much prescribed in the cult anyway). They set themselves apart in the only way cult members can: by what they choose to wear and drive and listen to. The only things to which they confidently ascribe value are things other people have already scouted, deemed worthy and embraced.

Cult members aren’t really citizens. The notions of citizenship and nationhood make little sense in this world. We’re not fathers and mothers and brothers: We’re consumers.

We care about sneakers, music and Jeeps. The only Life, Freedom, Wonder and Joy in our lives are the brands on our supermarket shelves.

Are we happy? Not really. Cults promise a kind of boundless contentment-punctuated by moments of bliss-but never quite deliver on that promise. They f’lll the void, but only with a different kind of void. Disillusionment eventually sets in-or it would if we were allowed to think much about it. Hence the first commandment of a cult: Thou shall not think. Free thinking will break the trance and introduce competing perspectives. Which leads to doubt. Which leads to contemplation of the nearest exit.

How did all this happen in the first place? Why have we no memory of it? When were we recruited?

The first solicitations began when we were very young. If you close your eyes and think back, you may remember some of them. You are four years old, tugging on your mother’s sleeve in the supermarket. There are products down here at eye level that she cannot see. Cool products with cartoon faces on them. Toys familiar from Saturday morning television. You want them. She keeps pushing her cart. You cry. She doesn’t understand.

You are eight. You have allowance money. You savor the buying experience. A Coke here, a Snickers bar there. Each little fix means not just getting what you want, but power. For a few moments you are the center of attention. You call the shots. People smile and scurry around serving you.

Michael Jordan goes up on your bedroom door. He is your first hero, throwing a glow around the first brand in your life-Nike. You wanna be like Mike.

Other heroes follow. Sometimes they contradict each other. Michael Jackson drinks Pepsi but Michael Jordan drinks Coke. Who is the false prophet? Your friends reinforce the brandhunting. Wearing the same stuff and hearing the same music makes you a fraternity, united in soul and form.

You watch TV. It’s your sanctuary. You feel neither loneliness nor solitude here. You enter the rebel years. You strut the malls, brandishing a Dr Pepper can full of

Scotch, which you drink right under the noses of the surveillance guards. One day you act drunk and trick them into “arresting” you-only this time it actually is soda in the can. You are immensely pleased with yourself.

You go to college, invest in a Powerbook, ride a Vespa scooter, don Doc Martens. In your town, a new sports complex and performing arts center name themselves after a car manufacturer and a software company. You have moved so far into the consumer maze that you can smell the cheese.

After graduating you begin to make a little money, and it’s quite seductive. The more you have, the more you think about it.

You buy a house with three bathrooms. You park your BMW outside the double garage. When you grow depressed you go shopping.

The cult rituals spread themselves evenly over the calendar: Christmas, Super Bowl, Easter, pay-per-view boxing match, summer Olympics, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween. Each has its own imperatives-stuff you have to buy, things you have to do. You’re a lifer now. You’re locked and loaded. On the go, trying to generate more income to buy more things and then, feeling dissatisfied but not quite sure why, setting your sights on even greater income and more acquisitions. When “consumer confidence is down,” spending is

“stagnant,” the “retail sector” is “hurting” and “stingy consumers are giving stores the blues,” you do your bit for the economy. You are a star.

Always, always you have been free to dream. The motivational speakers you watched on late-night TV preached that even the most sorry schleppers can achieve their goals if they visualize daily and stay committed. Think and grow rich.

Dreams, by definition, are supposed to be unique and imaginative. Yet the bulk of the population is dreaming the same dream. It’s a dream of wealth, power, fame, plenty of sex and exciting recreational opportunities.

What does it mean when a whole culture dreams the same dream?

Selection from: Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. Eagle Brook, 1999.

Response Questions:

1. What is the function of the story that opens this reading? What feelings does the story evoke in you?

2. What is the effect of all of the products and brand names that Lasn includes in this article?

3. How does Lasn define the term “Cult”? How is his definition different (and similar to) the common usage of the word?

4. Thinking rhetorically: In this article, Lasn uses the rhetorical strategy of direct address— that is, he uses the pronoun “you” and directly addresses readers of the article. Why do you think Lasn uses this strategy? What effect does it have on you as a reader? How does the strategy of direct address contribute to (or detract from) Lasn’s argument?

5. Thesis: in one sentence, summarize Lasn’s main point in this selection. Then discuss if you agree or disagree with him and why you feel the way you do.