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Doru Pop Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania Holy Advertising

Abstract: This paper is focused on the transfer of signs and connotations from the sacred to the profane as it is explicit in the Romanian media and advertising industry. Advertising is considered a religion of the post-industrial capitalism, thus advertising and marketing practices are interpreted as means of substituting religious thinking. The central hypothesis is that advertising by means of psychological pressure and social persuasion has integrated Christianity as a cultural product within the commercial space. The author takes into consideration three levels: the impact of advertising on commodities industry, the expressions of popular culture, and its manifestations in the mass media. These levels are observed by interpreting advertising products from the top ten companies in Romania, ranging from personal hygiene and cosmetics, alcohol and soft drinks, chemical products from cleaning, household appliances and communication technologies. The paper describes how the secularization of sacred symbols has spread fast in Romanian media and in the advertising business, discusses the process of draining significations from Christian icons, and interprets the consequences of religious metaphors exploited for commercial ends. Starting from the mercantile rhetoric of contemporary advertising and the language of commercials, the paper criticizes the materialistic idolatry and the simulacrum of spirituality. Keywords: consumption; media; advertising industry; marketing practices; cultural analysis; popular culture; Christianity; religious metaphors.

1. In Consumption we trust! In the postmodern world, advertising jargon consumed some of humanitys most important religious set phrases, key figures, central symbols and icons. As a final point in the transfer of signs and connotations from the sacred to the profane, it was said that advertising has become the very religion of late capitalism. Advertising has pervaded the entire social body of the consumer oriented society, so as that the advertising industry has come to govern our world by the magic formula: Its all advertising (Lewis, 1999, chap. The Purpose of Advertising). More so, following Sut Jhallys thesis that advertising functions as a religion of the post-industrial capitalism, advertising and marketing practics have managed to substitute religious convinction by giving the modern man something else to believe in: the objects of consumption. The new belief system that advertising is built upon and is developing is not one that constructed against any of the old religions, in any case not against Christianity. This is a mythological setting that is using religious imaginary to its own benefit, without an classical ideological background, at least it is not one that can be traced in the religious conflicts of the past. So, this is not a anti-Christian predisposition, in the hard Nietzschean sense, but one descending from the Feuerbach interpretation of Christianity (Feuerbach, 1841), one that is an attempt of dissolving religious spirit into the humanistic, anthropological conceived assessment of the world. Following this implication, the question in this study would not be why advertising is replacing religious symbols and notions, but how does advertising establish this connection between lifeless objects, the products of impersonal mass manufacturing processes and basic religious myths and mythological structures? One way of interpreting this mechanism was indicated by Roland Barthes in Mythologies (Barthes, 1970). In his substantial text he explained how codes and conventions from classical myths were reassigned to advertising symbols. This semiological approach is oriented mostly towards the connexions of language and ideology, and is effectual when it comes to understanding myths. But the purpose here is mainly to illustrate the means by which advertising is using religious representations, without a search for semiotic meanings or the attempt to find the conventions used for production of meaning by using the elements of the products. Subsequently this is a discussion of the role advertising plays in incorporating religious images, a critical assessment of its traits, more than the search for ideological resources. The main line of examination follows the hypothesis that the role of advertising is awareness centered and that it is using psychological pressure and social persuasion to take apart the mind of the consumer, hence the analysis here tries to explore imaginary structures used to influence peoples behavior, attitudes and social conduct and to decode those advertising functions that are maneuvering desires. In this study, for methodical rationale, there are only three levels taken into account: the impact of advertising on commodities industry, the expressions of popular culture, and its manifestations in the mass media (according to Leiss, 1990). The central hypothesis is that advertising produces rituals of social communication and an analysis of these rituals can provide an understanding of the general changes in the collective psyche. As for data selection, this approach considers the exponential growth of advertising expenses in Romanian media brought into place by the continuous development of media markets. The examples were selected from the top ten brands in the Romanian advertising investments, appraised by media contracts. Due to the fact that this top was dominated in the last decade by companies from personal higene and cosmetics, alcohol and soft drinks, chemical products for cleaning, household appliances and communication technologies ( the first three in this top are international companies like Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola Co and Unilever followed by companies like Orange and Mobifon, European Drink & Food information according to Alfacont Mediawatch report, published in M&A) the examples discussed focuses on these industries. Although there is no contention that the examples provided below are to be considered absolute evidence for a generalized trend in the advertising industry, the question is, since brand loyalty substituted the faithfulness demanded by the

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traditional Church and this new God becomes a more and more demanding and jealous deity that the Old Testaments own Yahweh shall we call this GOD Yahoo?

2. Talking to Jesus In 1925 Bruce Barton has published a best-selling book called The Man Nobody Knows. His inspirational book presented Jesus as a succesful businessman and an advertising forefather, that has managed to create the most captivating of all selling propositions: Christianity. In the wake of the advertising culture, Christianity was seen as a cultural product that can be integrated in the commercialism of that age. It was a matter of time before advertising has integrated some of the core Christian messages, emptying them from their consistency and releasing a double meaning. Not only Christianity, but its key figure, Jesus, was imported in the marketing and selling dynamic. (foto Madona) One of the most popular recent Hollywood productions, Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ, follows a trend in cinematographic production that includes Jesus Christ Superstar or The Last Temptation of the Christ. This trend shows the basic principle of the transfer mechanism described above, that is a cultural reading by recycling themes and motives of religious element assimilated into the secular view. The Passion of the Christ, was a movie that turned the sufferings of Christ into a block buster with more than 350 mil. dollars gross. The fact that it portrays a violent dimension the founder of Christianity is not as much a problem as the fact that it integrated this extremely sacral condition into the material exchange of images in the media. On the other hand, critical comments on Christianity, like the The DaVinci Code (the book followed by the movie) were equally successful in reinstating this thematic misappropriation between the secular, profit oriented world and the religious. Basically these are the two ways of transmuting Christian symbols: violent media processing and ironic dissolution of significants. (foto Fujitsu) In this advertisment for the Fujitsu airconditiong machines, the cross and Christ himself became objects of promoting products emblematic for late capitalism. The transfer of significance is not straight forward, but a subtle one. Christian imaginary is merely re-shaped, re-packaged in order to serve different purpose. Christ sits on the cross fully dressed, in garments of his epoch, due to the fact that he is close to the equipment producing cold air. Funny as it may be, this ad proves the central argument made here. Christian mythology and Christianity have become selling brands within the free market system, while Christian symbols were integrated in the fashion accessories of the modern pop-culture. It has been extensively analyzed (see Fiske, 1989) how Madonnas impersonation of the Virgin Mary and the usage of crosses and other religious symbols in the music industry reproduce and re-enact social relations specific to the political economy of capitalism. Symbolic significants of Christian faith were added to the plus value of commodities and the integration of Christian images in the marketing process was done by integrating the main representations of the faith into the advertising production. At the end of this process, advertising is not only promoting whiter teeth and cleaner homes, it also reshapes fundamental religious codes. As the Levonelle campaign for condoms stated: we entered into the realm of the Immaculate contraception, the perfect paradox for this unholy union. 3. How Santa Claus became an icon for capitalism? It is unequivocal in the Coca Cola marketing strategy the manner in which the major international brands use this re-shaped Christian idiom and put it into use for the consumer oriented promotion practices. Believing is no longer only the attribute of the religious thinking, but a part of the marketing process. Before the FIFA World Cup 2006 (see M&A, 20 (354)), Coca Cola has launched in Romania the Believe campaign (campania Crede) under the slogan Believe in yourself. Obviously we can recognize here, as Paul Vitz suggests, the current narcissism and self oriented contemporary culture. A new secular cult of the self which is defined in contrast, not against, the traditional Christian concepts about the self. This campaign provides a glimpse into the mind frame promoted by the new mythology of consumption. Developed by the McCann Erickson agency, the campaign enclosed the two main ingredients of modern day religion: football and sex. The video clip incorporated the most important messages of the New consumers Gospel. The ad goes like this: People believe in cars people believe in fairy tails people believe in football people believe in sex find something to believe in, followed by the Coca Cola trademark. The slogan find something to believe in (gsete ceva n care s crezi ) comprises the ideal substitution of religious belief with the belief in pleasure enclosed objects, in the revelation provided by the bottle containing the magical fluid. Relevantly enough, believing is not an attribute only for consumer goods that present themselves as

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life elixirs, as Coca Cola does. For instance Artic, a traditional Romanian household products company, specialized in refrigerators and washing machines, has promoted its rebranding campaign in 2006 using a similar catchphrase: Believe in yourself. But how has advertising associated concepts like believing with lifeless goods and technologies? The notion, called by Norbert Bolz (Bolz, 1995) cult marketing, implies that marketing and advertising approaches that incorporate religious discourses and themes have put into effect a profane version of religious communities and religious existence. The communication industries are putting forward illusions of the profound emotional space formerly belonging to religious faith - where shopping takes the place of praying and the icons of technologies substitute the idols of the old Gods. Some critics suggest that this process of misappropriating Christian figures by the marketing strategies has started when The Saturday Evening Post has published, some 75 years ago, in 1931, a creation of the Swedish artist Haddon Sundblom. A red costumed old man, with a big white beard and a red nose became the symbol of Coca Cola. (foto Santa) Santa Claus was painlessly integrated in the consumer society, with his reindeer and his gift wraps, in one continuous process. On one hand, Santa Claus is now used to evaluate yearly profits, and is exploited by capitalism to promote increases in sales at the end of every season, total profits in retail being a confirmation of business proficiency of that year. On the other hand, capitalist media outlets have engulfed this sign and are using it extensively. There are dozens of Christmas movies, motion pictures that have Santa Claus as main character, or the story happens during the Christmas season, all for the benefit of commercialism. Textfeld: Whos pulling the sleigh of the marketing Santa Claus?

This secularization of sacred figures is one that has spread fast in Romanian media. The model was quickly adopted by several producers and dominant media outlets in a series of promotional messages built around Santa Claus and Christmas. Pro Tv, one the most important television networks in Romania, has created a special campaign called Santa Claus truly exists(Mo Crciun exist) where the slogan went on something like this: Santa Claus comes first on PRO TV. In this television show children called the network and talked live with a fake Santa (together with his dwarf and wife), and Santa offered them live on television several toys and products of mass consumption. Children are trained from a very young age that prizes and gifts come from commercial networks. In this logic Connex, the mobile phone company already mentioned, used Santa Claus in a more patent way. In their ad the company boasted that they Work for Santa, and a small green dwarf was going to work in a platitudinous world and he creates true joys for the clients of Connex. This type of draining significants from Christian icons is relevantly set forth in another ad for a telephone company. The Ring plus telephone cards ad is build around the image of a Santa Claus with a hands free attached to his ear. This commercial Santa stands with a promise (by the word of Santa) that the offer is valid so that the customers can buy their merchandise. And, it should be mentioned that Santa shows up in the international Tuborg ads, the brewing company is promoting a special brand of its beer, by the name of Christmas brew. At long last Christmas was transformed into a brand name. Another treatment for the re-branding of Santa Claus (and Christmas) is the ironic one, like the one used by Jacobs coffee to promote its Christmas offer. In this television commercial the ad agency is using a boy who lures several bogus Santa Claus with the smell from a cup of coffee, while his parents are cooking the festive dinner. But the National Lottery of Romania has hit jack pot when used Santa portraying him as a thief, who steals the little teddy bear of a sleeping girl. The slogan went on in English: Did you have a bad year. Play Loto. Santa Claus definitely had a very bad time in the postmodern world. The semiologic level of the transformation described here is manifest in the competition between Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola for the colors of Santa. Because Coca Cola took possession over Santa Claus and its colors, the contender of Coke decided to create its own representation of Santa, that is a blue Santa. Since red was not available anymore, the Pepsi campaign produced a postmodern interpretation of Santa Claus. This Blue Santa comes with a dozen of semi nude elf women, all singing and dancing in a titillating way: Oh, you Pepsi Blue, you're the surprise of the year, while the good old man is luring clients from a fancy car and is behaving like a pop star. Although it was intended to change the color of Christmas, the blue drink never was too popular in sales, so that the color or this holiday remained red: red as Coca Cola, of course. So, although the transformation of Santa Claus into a media asset cannot be compared with the makeover of Jesus into an advertising object, Santa Claus's substitution of baby Jesus, together with the shift in messages is a comprehensible example of how media production has insinuated into the theological and spiritual while keeping the forms and shapes it evolved towards a materialistic endorsement. The birth of the Christ first turned upside down into a celebration of an old man, and later this old man became the key salesman of multinationals.

4. The new priesthood of commodities (foto Patimi) To the classical Sex sells

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dogma of advertising, contemporary selling strategies added a new canon, that of spirituality sells. The representations of Christian faith and the figurative tokens of Christianity (Moore, 2005) were integrated in the mechanisms of contemporary advertising industries. After Santa Claus and Saint Valentine were enrolled in the consumption culture, the priesthood of Christianity was soon enough conscripted into the army of promoters, marketers and fashion gurus. This self projection of the advertising yuppie generation is clearly stated in the ad print for the on line advertising contest Best Ads. The print, showing the hand of a possible creative copywriter as the hand of the Christ, only stabbed by a pencil, translates the secular taking over of Christianity. Advertising gurus identify their jobs with the Calvary and we all become the witnesses of this new religion. When Donatella Versace launched in the beginning of 2007 a new concept in fashion called clerical chick - concept based on the charm and stylish vogue of the personal secretary of the pope Benedict the XVIth, Georg Ganswein this fusion of popular culture and Christianity has come to an culmination. Donatella's autumn-winter 2007-2008 collection comes from the same set of mind that has produced the Coke Light advertisement internationally broadcast (and obviously very present in the Romanian media too). This ad shows a priest (catholic priest by garments) coming out of the waves of the sea (in a reversed mythological reference to Aphrodite, the goddess of love sprung from the froth of the sea). The priest is all wet from the waves and emerges is a very sensual posture, sees a young woman by the shore, and the young woman, admiring his bodily figures, is flirting with him in a very lascivious manner. The priest accepts this flirting game only to get the chance to sip from the woman's Coke can, then puts his priestly necktie and leaves to her disappointment. Since a Catholic priest could be a part of the promotion effort of an multinational company, the Romanian advertisers seem to have a predisposition of using this ability, by showing an insatiable appetite for church figures in their stories and fables. In a print ad for Connex, one of the most important companies in Romania selling GSM mobile services, a new product was promoted under the concept Connex compass (Busola Connex). This ad for magazines portrayed an Orthodox nun in a drinkery, staring between the legs of a stripper woman, who was dancing at the pole. The nun, surrounded by men with obscene gaze, was obviously scared and the logo went on saying: Do you have orientation problems?. If the nun was not confused enough, the slogan of this campaign demonstrates the central idea of such a transfer: ironic transformation of Christian figures for the benefit getting of customer attention. Unfortunately neither the nun could be considered a typical customer for a mobile phone, nor the drunken men around her could constitute the basis of purchasers so the target of the campaign appears to be more a symbolic social relation than the marketing task. The explanation could be found in the sociological aspect of things. In a society like the Romanian one where Christian Orthodoxy accounts for more than 90% of the credibility and trustworthiness of the general public, using signs and symbols of the Church is a no-brainer. The passion of the Connex marketers for religious contexts and figures is even more obvious in this outdoor print (foto Connex), where the company uses the image of an Orthodox monk, mimicking the body language of young generation users of mobile phone. In this very lively depiction of Romanian spirituality, with the background of a historical monastery and with the indirect support of a couple of saints, high technologies are described as available and accessible. Traditional depictions of faith and images of the people of faith that are shaped in funny and ironic ways are constructed so that they can be used in a subversive attention gathering, and the examples are numerous in the advertisement business in Romania. For instance Zapp, one of the three main competitors in the mobile phone market, has developed a promotional material that uses God himself for their advertising purposes. In this television ad for Internet services and data transfer we see the Good Lord as a computer hacker, using the latest technologies to perform his heavenly duties towards humanity. The connection between prayer and technologies is not just one of bad taste, it shows a predisposition for integrating spiritual activities into the commodities oriented culture. God, presented as the Old Father figure, that has accepted the blessing of new technologies becomes a promoter of trade goods, artifacts, services and manufactured objects. The same principle can be observed in another print ad, used by Fornetti, a chain that sells a franchise for a bake shop. For their special lent products they used the picture of an Orthodox priest, staring at the customer and approving the consumption of these fresh backed products. The priest looks very healthy, has a red colored face and doesn't look like somebody who has been fasting for quite some time. Pattiserie is falling from the sky, mimicking the coming of holy manna in the Bible, and church towers with the cross are the background of this secularist worship of worldly things. Adapted to the Romanian media sphere, the Christian Orthodox Church was integrated as a central endorser of mercantile exploitation of emotions because of its strong ties with people's imaginary. (foto Bucovina) This unholy union is more unequivocal in a social campaign that took place between December 2004 - November 2005. Bucovina Enterprises, the producer of the Bucovina mineral water, created a partnership with the Archbishop diocese of Suceava and Rdui to promote their product. The mineral water owner used the endorsement of the Church and started using Orthodox sites and monasteries as the background for its television advertising. By means of sponsoring a social campaign entitled Bucovina for Bucovina the

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company not only benefited from the support of His Grace Pimen, the Archbishop of Suceava and Rdui, it also used the spiritual life of their fellowmen to generat a sympathetic attitude for their liquid. The television ad showed people in prayer in monasteries, disfigured faces of saints and angels, all for the benefit of rebuilding the holiest of places in Romania, the northern monasteries. Unfortunately, while advertising industry has a tremendous impact on both our personal lives and on our imaginary existence, its role in dissolving religious symbols and images and that of creating another spirituality cannot be an understatement. Although it cannot be assessed by a single interpretative method, understanding this tendency in the general context of contemporary promotional practices is indispensable. In another ad (that was never aired, but was published on the Internet and the advertising agency used it for several competitions) created for the Teletech television sets, the priesthood is portraying a similar sarcastic context. In this television ad (that features Bogdan Naumovici, one of the most important opinion leaders in Romanian advertising) two individuals, dressed like mental hospital doctors are dragging by force another man dressed like an Orthodox monk (or priest). After they reach the top of a traditional cloister, they throw the priest down and, after they check if he has reached the ground, they comment: So you see, he wasn't Batman. The game and the image were taken from a popular joke, but the mental framework proves that Christianity has become not just as a source of fun and superficiality, but also a superficial conception behind it all. In this competition for triviality, PRO Tv, has developed a promotional for their programs where the theme of faithfulness is associated with the image of the journalists that work in the above mentioned network. Some of the most popular anchors appear on the building of the network, dressed in priestly garments (an eclectic mixture of all the worlds faiths, but mostly Christian), wearing papal tiaras and priestly mitres. Then, the singing anchormen and women are turned into angels that are flying over the city, spreading joy and happiness all over the place. PRO Tv, that has its own television show called You give and you win (Druieti i ctigi) a show where public display of charity is t urned into a public display for generating audience, pulls the same desensitization of the common man. Hosted by an television newscaster that has theological training (Cristian Tabr), the entire sho w is openly a copy cat for the spirit of Christmas. The same trivial shift can be observed in a radio ad for the Ford Fiesta, where we are witnessing a confession between a woman and a priest. The young woman is admitting that she is preparing herself for marriage and she exposes her desires to the clergyman. Her confessor hears her saying that she either wants a green car, or rather a red car. So, under the theological power given to her, the father comes to the conclusion that the woman does not want to get married, but that she desires a Fiesta of colors. Omitting the semiologic dimensions of this advertisement (where the relationship between the two is overtly ambivalent), this ad proves the mechanism assimilated to signs construction in advertising rhetoric: seizing spirituality and re-shaping it to the benefit of consumerism. 5. The Angels and Demons of Advertising As religious metaphors became exploited for commercial end, the mercantile rhetoric enclosed two of the most powerful emotional messages of the Christian imaginary: apocalyptic messages (together with the enclosed demons) and their complement, heavenly imagery and icons. The reification of these sacred spaces and the transfer of the homo religiosus imaginary could not have been complete without this agglutination. Since advertising is about selling happiness and pleasure, and because in the Christian mythology happiness is connected with eternal life, marketing strategies started promoting a new kind of eternal life and a new way of attaining eternal bliss. The discourse Coca Cola uses is, once more, archetypal for the process illustrated here. The TV spot called the Happiness Factory (Fabrica de fericire") is developed around the concept "happiness in a bottle". The images of material prosperity replace the representations of spiritual happiness, and the entire figurative resource of this symbolic space is used to promote a new reality, one that is an artificial promised land. This cardboard Paradise was used by the Kent campaign, where a young woman lighted a cigarette and then threw a pack of smokes to his colleagues and invited them over, from the working space to an Eden like world, where people were sunbathing and having lots of fun. Commodities will not only make us happy (Leiss 1976 p. 4), they will also give us a glimpse of immortality and a connection with divinity. On January 18, 2007, The National Council for Audiovisual in Romania has fined the National TV broadcaster because the station, owned by a producer of soft drinks, transmitted live a news report about the sanctification of the mineral water spring Izvorul minunilor (The Well of Miracles), which is the source of the product sharing the same name. The religious ritual of blessing the spring took place on one of the holy ceremonies of Christianity, the Epiphany. The network was fined because it used religious sentiments in order to promote a commercial good, but the mechanism remains into place. Epiphany or simple marketing Eureka, the producers of soft drinks seem to have an unsatisfied desire to incorporate into their products the notion of heavenly blessing. (foto Red Bull) Using visual clichs of the Christian symbolic order and putting into action negative stereotypes or positive sentiments of the faith is a commonplace of the marketing strategies in Romanian media and advertising business. Paradise and Hell, two of the central symbolic spaces of Christianity, are extensively mimicked. The campaign for the reinvigorating beverage Red Bull integrates the angels within the meaning production, death and life after are subject to jokes. The persons dying grow white feathers and they become in the Red Bull campaign, advertised under the slogan Red Bull gives you wings. Murfatlar, a local producer of wines, has developed a brand called Eden (Rai) and they promoted this brand by a series of television campaigns where an

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angel comes from Heaven and takes the place of his guarded human in several accidents. The angel dies in a car crash and ends up drinking wine with two other angels in a heavenly bar, the context being disrespectfully satiric to the Holy Trinity posture of Andrei Rublev's ikon. This mockery of Christian sacred space, by ways of a demystyfied afterlife, is used by another European Foods campaign for the Regal tomato sauce (the producer of ketchup and other edibles belongs to the same group that owns the Spring of Wonders). The company is trying to catch the attention of their customers by the following promise, one that twists the Christian promise of the after life: the tomatoes are fulfilled only in the life hereafter. Of course, the fact that the tomato is squashed by a hammer does imply a derisive bloody sacrifice. Tomi, the competition of Regal, a brand owned by Orkla Foods, asked McCann-Erickson advertising agency to come up with a television ad. This series of two ads is based on the Heaven-Hell opposition, where the tenants of the two spaces change behavior by simply consuming the Tomi ketchup. So the demons are turned into lovers of classical music, while the angels in Heaven are altered into heavy metal fans. There are also several milk products that use the heavenly syntax to position their solid food produce in this highly spiritualist marketplace. For instance Kraft Foods is selling its spread cheese Philadelphia with an ad that shows a she angel that puts her husband to work (in Heaven) while she enjo ys her heavenly breakfast and its divine taste. The ambrose like characteristic of milk by-products is to be found is the Brenac dairy products campaign, and their cream cheese is also promoted as divine food. (foto Lukoclean) At the other end of this process is, for instance Maxim magazine's type of advertisements, which is promoted in Romania by the slogan It's the naked Devil (E dracu gol). Its only natural that, if angels are active in this highly competitive marketplace, demons should follow closely in this race for attention. And, because the Devil is known in the Romanian popular lore as the Unclean one, it was a matter of time before some dry-cleaning company was going to take possession of its dirty characteristic. Only when Flanco, a distribution company specialized in household appliances, launched a campaign meant to stimulate the desire of their customers to get credit, and decided to build their message around the message of Apocalypse, the association between mysticism and marketing reached its rhetorical climax. The principle of the campaign was basic and the message was straight: since the End of the World is coming anyways, at least one should enjoy the pleasures of the consumption culture while one can, because nobody really knows for how long you are going to keep on paying for the products you get. Depicting images of the world destroyed by hurricanes and invoking specialists that announce the probable end of times next year, the customer still has time to buy new appliances, so the story goes. Using the message: One can never know what the next year will bring, one of deep Christian substance, this ad uses the entire Judeo-Christian jargon: global tragedies announce the inherent coming of the Apocalypse. Except that hurricanes, floods, and even the Tsunami that killed millions of people are transformed piece by piece into stimulants of consumption. Disasters are turned into platitudes, tragedies are incentives for credits and the message of the Apocalypse is primal for the consumption civilization. This is where the triviality of the disasters, the humanistic mimicking of the Christian spirit and the spinning of the theological into free-market consumption reach its peak. The materialistic idolatry and its simulacrum substituted the spirituality and generated a depletion of significance for the original signs.

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