Remember when the things we bought were just things?

In the last month, I’ve watched a movie about a shoe—or to be clearer, a meeting about a shoe (Air)—and a movie about the rights battle over a video game (Tetris). These were both, essentially, movies about meetings or negotiations, and my reaction to both was somewhere on a continuum between “bemused” and “pleasantly bored.” What’s next, “The Burp Seals in Freshness: The Tupperware Story”?

There is no mistaking the fact that I am the target demo for both movies. I’m in my 40s (ahem) and am perhaps the most nostalgic, past-oriented person who has ever lived. I am up for any experience that will allow me to re-enjoy the 1980s or ’90s, and I’ve said often that I would watch Stranger Things (and enjoy it more) if it had no evil monster A-plot and was just a story about a small Indiana town in the ’80s. I don’t need much.

And yet, these product-driven one-off dramas are an interesting trend. I wonder what it says about us, culturally, that there is such a demand for these stories? Are we so attached to our past consumer purchases that we’ll flock to movies about them a couple of decades down the road? Are we finally going to get some movies about cordless phones and waterbeds?

Air tried valiantly to make a hero out of the complicated (at best) shoe-and-basketball-executive Sonny Vaccaro (played by Matt Damon). They un-complicated him in the movie, which was the wrong move. Tetris seems to be about liberating the rights to a beloved video game from the clutches of an evil communist regime … which, speaking of the regime, is by far the most interesting thing about Tetris. The fact that what was supposed to be an exercise in equality (communism) became a race to see which corrupt government figure could profiteer the most off of one guy’s creativity was depressingly fascinating.

When I was in college (mid-’90s) and running in “occasionally trying to sound deep” circles, “consumerism” was the bogeyman. The worst thing you could be was “shallow” and “consumeristic” and the best thing you could be was someone who would read a Ron Sider book, feel bad about your affluence, and then bloviate to all of your friends about it.

Perhaps it is because the human experience in 2023 is so absurdist and apocalyptic that we actually long for the simplicity of materialism, Air Jordans, video games, etc. Maybe we long for some good, old-fashioned capitalism? Maybe we long for a simple world where somebody could have a good idea for a product, make that product, and then get paid handsomely for it. I want to feel like I live in a world where that could still happen.

I mean, I’d rather spend a couple hours thinking about the shoes I had in 5th grade than thinking about whether Target is going to continue marketing trans-positive swimwear in the Bible Belt. I’d rather think about an old handheld video game than debate whether a dude should be able to swim on a women’s swim team in college. If you had told me in 1988 that we’d be debating such things in 2023 I would have laughed you out of the room (and I was nicer in 1988 than I am now).

One great thing about both movies is that they were refreshingly devoid of the kind of virtue signaling that has become absolutely standard operating procedure of late. Also refreshing is the fact that these are character-driven, non-franchisable, non-comic-book stories. In this climate, I’ll take them both.

But more than anything, both movies stand as a tribute to creativity. To someone seeing things in a different light, and in doing so, bringing a great product into existence. And I think we long for a time when our consumer purchases weren’t a referendum on our politics. Budweiser was still just in the business of producing mediocre watered-down beer, and not platforming heroes of the trans movement. Nike simply made and marketed shoes.

Back then, the things we bought were just things.