Abundance Fantasies: Canoe-sized Banana Peels

In the Abundance Fantasies we explore how to activate a deeply rooted desire for abundance to unlock a desire for less. Rather then grow towards scarcity we could shrink towards abundance.

In a subplot to the 1973 Woody Allen dystopian scifi-comedy Sleeper, our hungry protagonists (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) encounter a futuristic hydroponic garden with canoe-sized bananas and gargantuan vegetables. Allen strips off a massively long banana peel when a farm-guard tries to catch him. In the comical scene that follows Allen channels his best Buster Keaton as he and the guard struggle and repeatedly slip on the giant banana peel.

The scene perfectly illustrates something we often overlook in our desire for growth: Big bananas create big banana peels. Eventually Allen knocks the guard unconscious with an oversized strawberry! A little later we see Allen and Keaton feast on a mammoth pieces of celery and banana. Allen: “I’d hate to see what they used for fertilizer.” Indeed. The short but hilarious scene revives century old embedded cultural imaginations of abundance from the Cornucopia, the Grapes of Canaan, to the land of Cockaigne. And as most of these misguided promises of abundance show the only things getting bigger are the banana peels.

Sleeper was added to the Shrink Film Archive.