Jericho

I am a magpie, and rejoice in the fact.  It means that the world is eternally pregnant with possibility, teeming with strange gifts which it may at any moment throw into my lap.  All I need to reap this harvest is the wit to recognise it, even in the most unlikely places.

Next to the desk in my study there is a shelf where I keep the most prized of these finds.  They stand before me as a constant reminder that life is a surprise, and that an object, or fact, or experience, can make me richer than Croesus.  There is my plastic banana, perfect in its laughable, useless verisimilitude; the ragged half-moon of cartilage extracted from my knee, and now acting as token of my own physicality, and of the ambivalent way the concept of a tidy thinking “I” relates to the untidy matter-of-factness of the body.  There is the pamphlet entitled Sin: what it is, and how it came, no. 7 in the series of Dawn Booklets, and a sad comment on how Man’s brightest jewel – intellect – can reflexively cloud its own achievements.  And there is my Jericho.

Or rather there is the box which contained my Jericho.  Perhaps I should explain that Jericho is only the trade name: underneath it there is the further qualifying phrase “from the Dead Sea”.  The words under that define just what it is that comes from the Dead Sea: “Black Mud” – no more, no less.  The final words on the front panel tell us why we should be interested in the black mud: “from the Promised Land comes the promise of relief.”

Ah.  The back panel is more explicit.  “Since the time of king Solomon and Batsheva, millions of people have journeyed to the Dead Sea to enjoy the rejuvenating mineral-rich waters and mud.  Now, in the comfort of your own home, you can enjoy the same exhilarating experience.”  There then follow rather obvious instructions on how to apply this miraculous substance, plus the cautionary “for external use only” – as if people might be so convinced of relief that they would scoff the whole lot.

Here, then, is a touching example of one of those inextinguishable urges which mark out the human race, the one which we call marketing.  That is, that however unlikely the product, somebody can find a way of selling it.  Its fictional apotheosis occurs with the chocolate-covered cotton which Milo Minderbinder resorts to in Catch-22 to offload the entire Egyptian cotton crop he has carelessly acquired.

There is a certain grandeur in Jericho.  What could be more sonorous than its name?  What could be more touching than the invocation of wise Solomon and Sheba?  Subtly, the product manages to set up the equation Dead Sea = Old Testament = Holy = Miraculous by evoking names which have become part of Western Civilisation and its myths.  An adman’s dream.

As an example of merchandising, Jericho is innocuous enough.  But it goes deeper than that.  I acquired my Jericho box from a photographic studio which had been shooting a series of beauty products.  Jericho was among them.  However, at the end of the session, the agent for the black mud insisted on taking the product away with him, though he was happy to leave the box.  He at least clearly believed in his Jericho black mud.

(7.10.86)

Index