“It’s the only way to guarantee bargains,” claims Arthur Blick, leader of a coven of black robed cultists currently preparing a huge effigy of a cash registered, fashioned from wicker, for their sinister annual ceremony. “If we don’t make a suitable offering to the gods of consumerism then we risk a fallow ‘Black Friday’ where we fail to get to the front of the queues and secure those annual bargains!” After two years of slim pickings at the annual shopping frenzy, Blick admits that this year he and his cultists will have to up their ante in the offerings stake. “A couple of years ago we burned some of our most expensive electrical appliances in the wicker till, in the expectation of grabbing bargain priced by even more upmarket replacements in the ‘Black Friday’ sales,” he explains, as he and his fellow worshippers at the alter of naked greed make their preparations in an abandoned shopping mall in Essex. “But we got absolutely nothing – other than trampled in the stampede of bargain obsessed maniacs. So last year we burned a huge stack of money as an offering, sure that such an offering would appease the gods but again, we got absolutely nothing!” Consequently, Blick and the cult are this year planning a human sacrifice. “It might sound extreme, but it has to be done,” he says. “If we don’t make a blood sacrifice, then ‘Black Friday’ could fail completely, sparking the complete collapse of consumer spending – it would be a disaster for the economy!”
Blick believes that a human sacrifice could even revive the shopping centre where it is planned to take place, which has been empty for five years, abandoned by retailers as sales fell. “It’s true, fresh blood is needed to reinvigorate our shopping experience,” he claims. “We here nothing these days but the media harping on about the ‘collapse of the High Street’, well, I say that with a few human sacrifices we can reverse that in a flash!” Blick admits that selecting a suitable sacrificial victim is vital to the ceremony’s success. “We can’t just grab anyone off of the street and burn them to death in a giant wicker till,” he muses. “It has to be somebody pure – a virgin. A ‘Black Friday’ virgin, someone who has never participated in this annual orgy of vulgar consumerism!” Finding such a person is, of course, not easy, as a large proportion of the population, having been bombarded by ads, flyers and e-mails from retailers offering tempting discounts for weeks in advance of the big day, having indulged in ‘Black Friday’ bargain hunting. Blick’s solution has been to organise a fake market research campaign across Essex, seeking participants’ attitudes toward shopping, consumerism in general and events like ‘Black Friday’ in particular. “As a result, we’ve narrowed it down to two possible candidates – a sandal wearing beardy weirdie lefty from Basildon who eschews the world of materialism and a poverty stricken disabled single mother existing on benefits in Colchester who can’t actually afford to buy anything,” he declares. “Once we’ve made a final decision, we’ll be making arrangements for their abduction.”
While the idea of sacrificing a human being in order to ensure good shopping, Blick believes that it is actually the most restrained response to two fallow ‘Black Fridays’ in a row. “Look, there was a faction of the cult who wanted to take far more drastic, not to mention direct, action this ‘Black Friday’,” he confides. “Their option was to work themselves up into afrenzy by spending forty eight hours window shopping until they were completely possessed by the spirit of avarice, then run amuck with knives in a shopping centre. Could you imagine that, a crowd of homicidal shoppers knifing their way through the crowds in order to get to the TVs, Hi Fis, washing machines, blenders and kettles? The aisles would have been running with blood! At least with my way only one person will have to die!” But just what is it about this completely made up shopping ‘festival’ that moves the likes of Blick and his cult to religious fervour? “It really is quite ridiculous,” opines Professor Jerry Mire, lecturer in sex and shopping at Ongar University. “It isn’t even indigenous, let alone relevant, to the UK – it’s been imported from the US, where it is the day after Thanksgiving, a holiday for many that traditionally kicks off the Christmas shopping season. As we don’t have Thanksgiving here, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for us to copy ‘Black Friday’. I mean, it isn’t as if people haven’t been buying like crazy for Christmas since October, at least!”
Mire speculates that the obsession with ‘Black Friday’ might be some sort of throwback to pagan events like the ‘Wild Hunt’, a way of weeding out the weak in order to strengthen the gene pool. “In this annual shopping frenzy, it becomes a battle of survival, in which only the fittest, fastest and biggest spending consumers will triumph,” he says. “Denied their bargains, the weak, the slow and the poor will be pushed out – unable to compete, shamed by their shopping inadequacies, they will be driven from the High Street, condemned to the loneliness of online shopping. Ironically, of course, this will eventually kill the High Street as fewer and fewer shoppers will be fit enough to buy there.” Blick agrees that part of the attraction of ‘Black Friday’ lies in the adrenalin rush it induces. “There’s nothing quite like it, as you punch, kick and claw your way through the mob to reach those shelves full of bargains,” he enthuses. “Online shopping just doesn’t have the same thrill – there’s no substitute for gouging eyes and biting off ears in order to get to that discounted big screen TV!”
Professor Mire believes that part of ‘Black Friday’s ‘ problem when it comes to establishing itself as an annual festival in its own right is its lack of an icon to personify it in the public consciousness. “Christmas has Santa, Easter the Easter Bunny and Valentine’s Day has Cupid and Halloween Micheal Myers. Even a regular, non-festival date like Friday the Thirteenth has its own icon in the form of Jason Vorhees,” he observes. “Maybe part of the problem is its lack of visibility in popular culture – all of the other dates I’ve mentioned have had films made about them, but not ‘Black Friday’. Perhaps that’s what it needs to cement it as a ‘proper’ holiday globally.” But what form could such a film take? “Well, obviously it would have to be a horror film – we’ve already got slashers about all the other dates,” says Mire. “I suppose that you could have a plot involving people trapped in a shop during ‘Black Friday’, hunted down by some bargain hunting psycho, hell bent on stopping anyone from getting to the bargains before him. A sort of capitalist satire spin on Chopping Mall, (which featured people trapped in a shopping mall, being menaced by malfunctioning security robots). Or maybe ruthless capitalist store owners plotting to create a population of perfect consumers by programming high-spending shoppers via their credit cards to spend, spend, spend. ‘Black Friday’ could be the day for their global activation, when they’ll stampede normal shoppers to death in their haste to get to the deals. Mind you, that might be mistaken for a documentary.”
