A few months back this advert got lots of backs up in the UK. People started to bristle, to weave and moan. It's all over the place; a celebration of filth in the land of work work work... why should you sleep? Why eat? Why socialise? Why not die in the job, while doing the job?
It isn't new, of course, this absurd veneration of work, but it's never been more explicit... and this time it's not even tied to the ridiculous pin-striped mast of Gordon Gekkoes; money isn't even mentioned here, since that's not really the goal at all...
No time to spend money in this economy (the irony not lost on anyone)!
No, money isn't mentioned because it's regarded as irrelevant... work per se is where we are now; work for work, work qua work. Work has it's own rules and a logic that no one else can follow but everyone imagines they can follow. We all know that most jobs exist only to beget themselves, that they serve no 'real' function - are you a Butcher, a baker or a candlestick-maker? - but the narrative continues... there is vital work to be done in the 'city', as the London-based financial districts likes to call itself.
No one is doing anything BUT work... work on work, monitoring work, asking different work to comply, or to multiply. Work is a virus and this poster campaign explicitly identifies with that notion: work is not a means to an end - it is the end in itself.
And there's a damning sub-text to this too: no one care's if you can function at all as a human - to deprive is Divine. You have to let the work through. You must, you must.
Long Live The New Work, to paraphrase Cronenberg.