STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A punk-rock style, trendy tight fit and affordable price have made Cheap Monday jeans a hot commodity among young Swedes, but what has people talking is the brand's ungodly logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.
The jeans' makers say it's more of a joke, but the logo's designer said there's a deeper message."It is an active statement against Christianity," Bjorn Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."
Atldax insists he has a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, which he called a "force of evil" that had sparked wars throughout history.Such a remark might incite outrage or prompt retailers to drop the brand in more religious countries.
But not in Sweden, a secular nation which cherishes its free speech and where churchgoing has been declining for decades.Even the country's largest church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden, reacts with a shrug.
"I don't think it's much to be horrified about," said Bo Larsson, director of the church's Department of Education, Research and Culture.
Can you imagine, I mean, CAN YOU IMAGINE a church in the U.S. reacting in a similar way?
If they ever try to sell these jeans in the U.S., the Republicans will convene a special Schiavo-esque session of congress just to deal with the imminent threat to our nation's values.
And Bill O'Cocksucker will devote several weeks of programming to a boycotting campaign of retailers that carry the jeans...
4 comments:
i have often felt that blaming organized religion for some of our profound troubles is like blaming oxygen for its role in facilitating the explosion of incendiary devices.
The human tendency is to wonder and worship. The human tendency also is to organize its efforts. Perhaps the biggest problem is the most troubling, perhaps the most persistent human tendency: to misuse any power or agency it realizes or develops.
First of all--oxygen? Fuck that bitch.
Secondly, just because it is the nature of humans to create social structures that are then subverted and used to control us does not mean that the structure itself is not bad and deserving of blame in the whole area of supporting the evil that men do in this world.
Also, how else do human beings learn to overcome their more moronic tendencies than by tearing down those formerly holy and untouchable structures that have become rotten?
To oversimplify, any religion whose dogma insists on the inferiority of those who do not subscribe is a force for evil in this world, end of story.
Human beings have walked many paths to learning. Tearing down is only one of them. And if tearing down is not accompanied by introspection, or followed by rebuilding than it is little more than a riot, sure to lead to the kind of corruption for which religious institutions are so easily -- and often correctly -- blamed.
You're right -- the structure may be bad, regardless of the human tendency. But until that tendency is analyzed and transformed, it will simply erturn to build another, more powerful, more change-resistant structure, in which inhere the same evil tendencies you target.
That tendency clings to religion, and to politics, and proliferates there. Destroy the host, and the parasite merely adopts another home -- and adapts itself to attack from without.
Sorry for that breathaking bit of bad spelling and typography.
One must sacrifice accuracy for speed when doing these things while on the job...
Post a Comment