Intro
Greed can be viewed as the uncontrollable desire to achieve money or success done through irrational thought. Preconceptions of greed often do not match qualities of being calm, calculated and not letting desires fuel our obsession. Corporations embody this idea by presenting themselves in a benevolent light in order to maintain a positive reputation to consumers, all while the hidden ambition for profit is obfuscated in their constant attempt to appear good-hearted. Oryx and Crake exposes the deceptive nature of corporate benevolence, demonstrating how corporations resort to secrecy and extreme measures to maintain a flawless image that conceals their unethical profit driven motives.
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Corporations publicly associate themselves with possessing good morals while ulteriorly possessing the contrary. In Oryx and Crake, this contradiction is exemplified by how “‘The best diseases, from a business point of view would be those that cause lingering illnesses […] for maximum profit – the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It’s a fine calculation’” (Atwood, 211). The products in question are manufactured by the same corporation. Selling medicine connotes a notion of being humanitarian because it benefits consumers’ health. Conversely, the illness inducing product is the opposite to what Helthwyzer’s name conveys and what their medical products provide. Helthwyzer’s inhumane strategies share striking similarities to the sweatshops of corporations such as Nike, who operate low-cost labor factories while also promoting advertisement campaigns opposing the production of their own products being made in factories.
The Corporation, a CBC documentary, highlights some of the strategies used: “Wal-Mart is telling you if you purchase these pants, and Kathy Lee is telling you, purchase these pants, you’re going to help children. The problem was the people who handed us the label were 13 years of age.” (The Corporation 10.21.55). Similar to Helthwyzer, these corporations practice paradoxical actions to mislead consumers into believing they are morally just. Walmart sells clothing to ostensibly combat child labor while using the same exploitative practices to manufacture the clothing. This mirrors how Helthwyzer sells medicine to treat illnesses but spreads the thing that causes it, demonstrating how the two share the commonality of corporate duplicity. The inconsistency of corporations exposes their hypocrisy and how they denounce problems they allegedly combat but continuously perpetuate.
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The famous face endorsing the Walmart clothing helped to promote it highlighting how marketing plays arguably the largest role in selling a product. Corporations unethically advertise their products to convince customers to spend their money. In Oryx and Crake, this deceptive advertisement is accurately depicted as Blysspluss. The misleading image of how Blysspluss was advertised was done to sell the drug faster and to get it around to more people in order for the virus to propagate. Although the virus itself is worse, the deceitful marketing that promised the beneficial side effects of Blysspluss was a cardinal reason for how it reached main parts of the population enabling the virus to spread. Oryx and Crake portrays how exploitative marketing conceals hidden details with devastating consequences: “‘These three capabilities would be the selling points,’said Crake; ‘but there would be a fourth, which would not be advertised. The BlyssPluss Pill would also act as a sure-fire one-time-does-it-all birth-control pill’”(Atwood, 294). The virus implanted in the pill was the fifth side effect to Blysspluss. The tantalizing benefits of the drug concealed these hidden secondary effects. Within the brief time period of Blysspluss being sold prior to the virus being unleashed, the countless people that purchased it showcases how corporate control, in the form of marketing, affects consumerism. In that short period, the drug became ubiquitous because of advertising on a global scale. In our world, the opioid crisis acts as an apt counterpart to the Blysspluss pandemic. Oxycontin, an opioid drug, runs parallel to how Blysspluss was marketed:
The opioid crisis has its origins in the invention of Oxycontin by Purdue Pharma in 1995. Oxycontin was aggressively promoted and overprescribed, leading to a massive increase in opioid dependency. Opioid prescriptions were handed out for anything and everything, with no sense of the risks.(Conservative Party Of Canada, 2023) The intensive promotion of Oxycontin towards vulnerable people that require it for medical treatment or pain relief shares similarities to how Blysspluss targets a susceptible audience that is depressed and unfulfilled. They both advertise heavily with campaigns that entice consumers with hope that they will experience gratification or peace. The adverse effects of addiction, for Opioids, and sterilization, for Blysspluss, are deliberately hidden for corporations to capitalize on. The most vulnerable people in societies of our world and Oryx and Crake’s are regarded as being worth less compared to the profit created from the aggressive marketing done to ensure the customer deception.
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Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake gives insightful information on how corporations employ immoral and deceptive practices for their own gain. This novel teaches us to be cautious of many things such as even items stored on shelves that seem to be harmless but turn out to be malicious. These methods performed under a guise to appeal to customers for more profit act as a reminder for us to reflect on our subconscious decisions, for instance in a store, in our daily lives. Although these extreme examples from the novel are loosely fictitious, Atwood’s criticism is intentional, as it serves as a cautionary tale for the future of the corporate world and leaves us wondering if we are granting corporations too much power.