Simons is a major Canadian fashion and home decor retailer. A month ago, it released this three-minute film aestheticizing the planned assisted suicide of Jennyfer, a sick Canadian woman (who has since killed herself). If you don’t want to watch the whole film, this clip going around on Twitter will give you a good idea of what it’s about:
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Here is a short video interview with Peter Simons, the CEO, who said the short film discloses the heart of the company’s values, and was made to help build “human connection” and encourage people to be moral, and to “help build the communities we want to live in tomorrow, and leave to our children.” He calls Jennyfer’s story one that can inspire “hope, optimism [and] generosity.” He praises himself for his “courage” (“I say that with humility”) for putting his company behind this message. “Our hearts are in the right place,” he assures people. My Lord. This man stepped right out of the pages of a Walker Percy novel.
This is so evil. They are making a sick woman’s decision to end her life into an occasion of beauty, and created a short film glorifying suicide … for the sake of selling fashion and home decor! And that’s the truly creepy part about it: that they’re using a glamorized suicide to encourage people to think sympathetically of their brand, so they’ll buy clothes and furnishings there. (Note: an ad like this doesn’t have to directly market the product; a Japanese luxury car brand in the early 2000s, I think it was, pioneered this kind of advertising, designed to associate a certain aesthetic vibe around a product or company.)
First Balenciaga, which its child sex chic, and now Simons, selling frocks and trousers by selling suicide. This is beyond Late Roman Empire stuff. A culture that glorifies death like this has lost its collective will to live. And it won’t.
