The temple to silly slogans
Religious festivals are as old as our species. And right now there’s a fine one taking place in the Middle East, next door to where Islam, Christianity and Judaism began. It’s called the Fifa World Cup.
It’s made the desert bloom. Half a dozen startling temples have risen from the sand, with rich green grass and cool conditioned air. The Latin for temple is fanum. One who worships at a temple is a fanatic. And how the fanatics have flocked.
Islam, as host religion, flexed its moral muscles at the last minute. It clamped down on gays and beer. There would be no beer in stadiums and no gay armbands on the pitch. Fifa knew it was over a barrel. It took its spanking like a man.
The Germans got round the armband ban by wearing gay boots. Then they lost to Japan. And Catholic Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia. It was hard not to conclude that Allah had queered the pitch.
But Islam prevails in countries too hot for good football, and Judaism is too scattered to get a team together, so the dominant on-field faith is Christianity. Players cross themselves as they run on to the pitch. If they are blessed with a goal they run to their teammates for some ever-so hetero hugging and kissing, but once the orgy’s over they turn eyes to the sky and flick God a ‘‘thank you’’. Which is nice of them and modest. Yet if they miss a penalty, they take the blame themselves. They never lay it on God.
The fanatics do something similar. At vital moments they pray. But if the prayer goes unanswered, they don’t shake their fists at the sky. They just boo the ref. It seems that God can do no wrong. Nice work if you can get it.
The loudest religious expression, however, is found neither in the stands nor on the pitch. It’s on the advertising hoardings that lie between the congregation and the altar. Here the big boy corporations wage a battle for belief in themselves. Their words are religious and absolute.
VISA, the credit card company, describes itself in just one word: ‘‘Everywhere.’’ Like you know who. Adidas uses three: ‘‘Impossible is nothing.’’ Like the son of you know who, only he didn’t need sneakers to do miracles. And Mcdonald’s, the global purveyor of loaves and fishes, boasts that ‘‘We deliver’’. From evil, presumably.
But the biggest boy in absolutist advertising, the champion of commercial theology, is Coca-cola.
Coca-cola has nothing to do with football. Indeed, Coke has nothing to do with
anything but itself. But through decades of marketing it has assumed near-divinity.
Coke is everywhere like VISA, and it is also limitless. However much is drunk there is always more. It is Coke without end. And its recipe is a secret. None but the highest clergy may know how Coke came into being. And though everybody knows Coke, it defies definition, except in its own terms. Coke is it, runs the old slogan. Why is Coke it? Because it is Coke.
It’s the classic circular argument of theology. God is good. Why is God good? Because he is God. It’s an argument that begs the question. It leaves no toehold for dispute.
Coke has a new slogan for the World Cup: ‘‘Believing is Magic’’.
It’s the usual bunkum – linking two abstract ideas with each other and with Coke to enhance the stuff’s vague religious aura. But it’s also bang-on. Belief that sweetened fizzy water is somehow more than sweetened fizzy water has turned Coke into a billiondollar business. That’s magic. And it fits right in to any religious festival.