Nothing says 'communism' like this $165 poverty-chic plastic bag based on Disco Elysium, aka 'the level of greed that they talk about in the Bible'
What is Disco Elysium about? A lot of things, I suppose. It's about failure, about loss, about redemption, about being a mess of ungovernable nerves and hormones, and it's about communism—a struggle against a drab, alienating, and interminable now we've all inhabited since, oh, the '80s at least.
It's also, under its current stewards at ZA/UM, about lucrative merchandising. Thus, the €159 (about $165) Eternal Carrier plastic bag you can currently pick up at Atelier, based on the tremendously dernier cri 'Yellow Plastic Bag Frittte!' you can get in order to collect trash for spare change in the game. It's been brought to my attention by Rock Paper Shotgun, but it's been on sale for a couple of months now.
Atelier is the label that also put out these admittedly fantastic jackets based on Kim Kitsuragi's back in the salad days of 2021, and the bag is, apparently, «the last carrier bag you'll ever need». They're designed to be «exceptionally lightweight yet incredibly tough» (same) and are made in Estonia from «Dyneema® composite fabric.»
What is Dyneema® composite fabric, you ask? Well, Dyneema® composite fabric «is up to 15x stronger than steel on a weight-for-weight basis and provides the highest tear and tensile strength of any competing materials.» That's stronger than Kevlar, apparently. So that's handy. The next time I'm called to war at Asda I can just slot my arms through the handles and equip it as a kind of rudimentary hauberk.
It's such a patently ridiculous thing—a €159 replacement for those bags that cost me 30p a pop when I forget to bring an old one to Tesco—that I struggle to feel any emotion about it besides befuddlement. But let me try anyway. Yes, previous Atelier/Disco Elysium stuff hasn't exactly been sold at proletarian prices, but they were also made-to-order clothes crafted by holy artisans. These are plastic bags. Dyneema® bags, sorry.
And maybe I'd just chuckle at the absurdity of it anyway, but it's hard not to look at this through the lens
Read more on pcgamer.com
