I read gruesome news from Peru where a team of serial killers, who probably smoked too much crack while watching Fight Club, have nicked (or influenced) Tyler Durden's macabre business plan, harvested the fat from scores of victims over the past 30 years, and sold it to the European cosmetics industry. Oh, yes, the victims had to be dead in order to extract every bit of fatty goodness from their cadavers.
And so capitalism crawls into its final decrepit stage where it's gone gaga as well as sclerotic. In Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk's magnum opus, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) finances his bid to bring down the whole sorry edifice by stealing liposuction fat from cosmetic surgeries. Not only the finest fat there is, but also one of the finest metaphors for what capitalism is doing to us.
"We're taking their own fat and selling it back to them," he gloats — posh hand-made soaps that he supplies to department store beauty counters at the silly prices silly women will pay.
The authorities have arrested the perps but are still seeking the middle-men who bought the fat off them.
So I cast a sharp eye over the rows of oils and unguents cluttering my vanity shelves and ask myself — who's in this? Puh-leaze don't let it be the Clarins ...
