Down With Us

BY FRANCES CROT

London. Chinwag’s enz. These monkeys want Coke! And they’ll do anything to get it! Tins are the best – grenade-snug, their darkling fizz packs more wisdom than a scroll or a roll of piano music. No wonder monkeys want it down their phiz. Cokesuckers. A truck slows at a corner, its interior slung with racks of the ebullient cobs. If these monkeys knew what they were doing they would pelt it with rocks. Together they could get what they want. Instead they get on the underground transport system etc. The roof would tear off the truck as easily as a tab off a tin.

Why do we want it so much, when it doesn’t really taste that good? One philosopher argues that “Its strange taste seems to provide no particular satisfaction. It is not directly pleasing, however, it is as such, as transcending any use–value, like water, beer or wine, which definitely do quench our thirst, that Coke functions as the direct embodiment of ‘IT’, the pure surplus of enjoyment over standard satisfactions [...] The paradox is thus that Coke is not an ordinary commodity, but a commodity whose very peculiar use–value itself is already a direct embodiment of the auratic, ineffable surplus. This process is brought to its conclusion in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke.” It’s not the case. In fact the first thing you taste when you lift a tin to your lips is the tang of aluminium. When your buds slosh with Coke you taste a nectar version of aluminium. That is what Coke is designed to taste like: yummy aluminium juice. So Coke gives you the impression that your spittle has dissolved thin metal into dark nectar. So you must be a god. Monkey long for godhead.

Monkeys pucker like cheese stretching from the roof of a lasagne. A monkey’s mouth is a pubic rubber band, quenching on ambrosia or no! On a “soul” level we want spittle as will melt metal, fingers as will pierce and tear friends.