Issue date: 10/6/05 Section: Features

Media Credit: Elizabeth Stamp

For the broke, anti-consumer-culture activist, modern-day society is a terrifying nightmare. A local supermarket can be a deathtrap: it's impossible to avoid the most unscrupulous of corporations whose labor violations allow them to sell their products at cheap prices. And for many of us youngsters whose high ideals are challenged by small budgets, having to splurge on a $10 box of granola at Whole Foods just doesn't seem right. Some of us still believe in paradise, but if you travel in search of it, you'll undoubtedly find out along the way that corporate money is buying up every corner of the earth. Even radicalism has sold out: the image of Che (the ultimate symbol of revolution) got co-opted and bought up so that mass production allows you to now buy his face on an overpriced T-shirt. His determined expression has never looked as pathetic as on the chests of American teenagers in malls across the country.

To optimists, radical change is a sweet but very distant dream. To cynics, life in this world dominated by corporate culture may just be plain depressing. So what can you do when you've gathered your courage to confront a sense of powerlessness against the ever-growing and ever-expanding forces that be? Well, you can laugh.

Two films, "The Edukators" and "Take Out," use comedy to confront consumer culture and make light of a serious reality while still satisfying the desire for an original movie with a message.

"The Edukators," a German and Austrian production that was released in the U.S. this July, was written and directed by Hans Weingartner, featuring three young protagonists Jan, Jule and Peter who are played by Daniel Brühl ("Goodbye Lenin"), Julia Jentsch and Stipe Erceg, respectively. In the film, Jan and Peter are the Edukators, two anti-consumerism terrorists with a sense of humor, widely known for their sly acts of sabotage: they break into the expensive homes of local wealthy families and rearrange their furniture. They leave threatening notes that say, "Your days of plenty are numbered," to instill fear and upset the status quo, but never with the intention of true harm. When Jule joins in and a heist goes wrong, however, all three find themselves tangled up in a dangerous situation.

The hilarious opening scene of the film shows the victims of the Edukators' benign terrorism. A family comes back to their home after a vacation and finds their furniture meticulously stacked in the middle of the house. The intentionally over-dramatic opening-scene music and the terrified looks on the family members' faces start this film off as a farce where the viewer is in on the joke.

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