Macro plastics

Someone has to say something. More accurately, I have to say something about the ghastly state of affairs. I have to say something because I see it everywhere – an accumulation of evidence pointing to the dissolution of any solidity that ever anchored the common good to the prevailing socio-cultural sensitivity. I want to rant on about the appalling state of society, but I’ll spare you further sophomoric abstractions and jump straight to the aforementioned evidence.

This one’s a sitting duck. It’s more of a sitting robot – a two and a half story high squatting robot made of bright red coke crates in front of the Cape Grace Hotel at Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred waterfront. This monolithic piece of garbage, which looks something like what an Inca statue might have had the Incas had LEGO, has a slogan, a piece of throwaway marketing doggerel in white letters probably 3 meters high across it’s chest.

Here’s what it says, “Believe in a better world”.

Now, if you’ve ever been to the V&A you’ll know that this robot stands directly in front of Table Mountain, and while thankfully not large enough to obscure the famous landmark entirely, it’s hulking and bizarre form can only attract attention. That’s one of my more minor objections to it.

My major problem is it’s colossal stupidity. How is it possible that Coca Cola’s marketing genius believes that stacking crates together like nursery school building blocks in front of nature’s majesty is in any way contributing to a better world? Look at the photo below and tell me that this inspires you to beluieve that the world can be improved by depositing massive piles of plastic in front of places of great natural beauty.

What does it mean? Is it an exhortation to the common man to lift himself from the drudgery of ordinary life, an obscene reflection of the modern zeitgeist that tells us that there’s a special spark of the angel and the rock star in every one of us, that greatness or at very least the good life is just around the corner for us, if only we can dream it.

Jesus wept.

What hogwash – this false god of caffeine and sugar could scarcely be more banal, more vapid in conception or execution. It is a perfect expression of much that I hold in contempt about the world we’re living in. A fizzy drink loaded with sugar builds a plastic icon even as the oceans choke on the micro plasic residue of a macro plastic culture.

How could Coca-Cola dream better than Table mountain?

And is this the better dream to which we should aspire? This aesthetically retarded vision paying homage to candy floss ideals?