light & warmth
by uzwi
There isn’t one of these pictures that doesn’t sum it all up perfectly. But I especially like the blood-snow in the first one, symbolising the end of the organic regime in the anthropocene–a paradoxical enough concept to handle in a book, let alone a window display. Happy Gifting to all teletubbies! Giant headphones! Your world mirrored back at you! The Harrods windows look as if they’ve been scripted by Ayn Rand: the 1% shows us its Christmas, the light falls on our upturned faces. Welcome back to 1856. Unless you’re actually in the 1% or exist as a corporate entity (see death of the organic in the anthropocene, above), in which case this is your politics, you should understand that your political affiliations don’t matter here: these displays celebrate a cross-political war on everyone. You may support the Randistas & their noncommissioned officers in government: but they don’t support you.
the m john harrison blog 
spot on! (as ever)
The last, though, might well be the climax to the Svankmajer adaption of that great Christmas story Robert Aickman never wrote – “Tinsel in Her Hair,” was it, or “The Singing Floor” ..?
But anyone who doesn’t twig the message in no. 15 deserves all that’s coming, I’m afraid.
Interesting that Harrods should have the same window designer as Ralph Lauren: are wealthy dummies a universal theme this year? And why is the Cook in the Fortnum’s window wearing a paper hat? Fair enough, a little informality can be expected at Christmas but the moment Staff begin thinking they’re Family is the moment society begins to crumble.
Hi Nigel Foster. How true.