What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Is in My Store?

by Bill Talen

Overview

The Reverend Billy is a revivalist preacher who leads the Church of Stop Shopping, an anticonsumerist communion devoted to putting the odd into God. Created by the actor Bill Talen, the Reverend first appeared alongside the sidewalk preachers in New York's Times Square during the Giuliani years, bringing his new post-religious theology to eager crowds. Now Reverend Billy has a cult following across the country and was recently featured in a profile in the New York Times Magazine.

In these pages we go inside the Disney Store on 42nd Street ("the high church of retail") to witness staged dramas against consumerism that employ eight hundred Disney characters with their "reeling eyeballs and sky-cracking grins" as the mise-en-scène. We encounter the icon-twisting logic of credit card exorcism performed in front of astonished tourists and listen to a gospel choir made up of "recovered preachers' kids" singing anti-Starbucks anthems at the cash register of the $5 latte. We watch as the defense of a community garden is turned into an Off-Broadway hit and join with the Reverend as he preaches love and peace to the crowds that gathered spontaneously in Union Square after the attacks of September 11.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565848245
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	11/28/2003
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bill Talen is an actor and activist who, as the Reverend Billy, has been feted and arrested in several countries. He lives and preaches in New York City.

Table of Contents

	Frontispiece: Starbucks memo	vii
	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: Fun with the Unknown	xi
Chapter 1	The Pileated Woodpecker Screams	1
	Dear Bucksurveillor	19
	Postscript to a Scream	21
	The Reader Will Please Rise	24
Chapter 2	The Red Chair	27
	Two-Minute Radio Sermon: Sponsored Grandmother	53
Chapter 3	Counter Visions in the Disney Store	55
	The Cell Phone Opera	71
Chapter 4	Not Buying	81
	The Reader Will Please Kneel	93
Chapter 5	The Raven and the Wrecking Ball	95
	The Reader Will Please Rise Again	116
Chapter 6	The Revolution Is My Hot Neighborhood	117
Chapter 7	The Serious Circus	129
	The Parable of Selling Soap	145
	Two-Minute Radio Sermon: Which Way to Heaven?	151

Editorial Reviews

"The collar is fake but the calling is real." —The Village Voice

"A mind-bending blend of street theater, political grandstanding, and performance art. . . . Talen's act has made him something of a media darling." —San Francisco Chronicle

"The zeal of a street-corner preacher and the schmaltz of a street-corner Santa." —The New York Times

"It's a funny rant against developers and supermodels and everything that feeds off authentic humanness. But there's a potent, delicious kernel of truth here." —Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher