#133 Report on the Shadow Industry- Peter Carey
This is an interesting little story about the obsession with
a mysterious product called Shadows, that come in unmarked boxes or “large,
lavish boxed which are printed with abstract designs in many colors.”
It’s a commentary on consumerism, on our obsession with
things, our need for objects and our rationalization for why the damage they
cause is alright. The Shadow factory emits a possibly carcinogenic smoke, but
the smog it causes:
“are a wondrous sight, full of blues and vermillions and
brilliant greens which pick out strange patters and shapes in the clouds…others
say that the clouds contain dreadful beauty of the apocalypse.”
The satire is funny and truthful We are what we buy in
manner of speaking.
“this has been explained by those who hild that the shadows
are merely mirrors to the soul and that the man who stares into a shadow box
sees only himself, and what beauty he finds there is his own beauty and what
despair he experiences is born of the poverty of his spirit.”
The author offers one final thought, that even writing like
this is a form of shadow:
“For here I have manufactured one more: elusive,
unsatisfactory, hinting at greater beauties and more profound mysteries that
exist somewhere before the beginning and somewhere after the end.”
