Mariah Carey’s “It’s Time” Announcement This Year: A PSA for Christmas’ Marriage to Capitalism

Although Mariah Carey had already announced, “It’s tiiiiiiiime!” long ago at this point, on November 1st, as actual Christmas approaches, it bears recalling just how much the commercial, yes, commercial, she made for it speaks to the slave-driving of the average “boss” (whether man or woman—for capitalism is the great equalizer when it comes to rendering any and all genders and races into cunts; this includes Beyoncé and Rihanna). Particularly during the holiday season, when “Christmas spirit” is theoretically supposed to be at an all-time high, but is actually at an all-time low due to the demand for milking the most out of workers before they get, like, one full day off (unless, of course, one is an Amazon warehouse worker or delivery driver). Carey sought to “poke fun” at this very American reality with her “It’s tiiiiiiiime!” announcement being shoehorned into a Sephora commercial that involves an “elf” going on strike.

It begins with Carey entering what is supposed to look like some kind of stately room dressed as, of all things, an angel. She then gets “juiced up” about screaming her signature “dictum,” only to be interrupted by the sight of an overturned Sephora bag on her vanity table. Clearly, something is not only astray, but as the viewer is soon made to find out, something (well, a few things, really) has also been stolen: other Sephora bags filled with beauty-related bounty. This clocked when Carey whips around to ask, “Who’s the thief?” as Billy Eichner, dressed in elf drag, starts to stalk out of the room.

However, he hardly feels any sense of shame about it as he proudly declares, “Busted! Bad news, Mariah Carey, the elves are striking this year. Elf revenge for putting us through holiday hell! Santa’s helper quit, I’m pawning all this so I can afford elf therapy.” And yet, out of everything Eichner has just said, Carey is only moved by one thing: the sight of her “possessions” in someone else’s “grubby” (read: unmanicured) hands, asserting, “That’s my blush, Elf Boy.” Eichner doubles down on his thievery, returning, “Your lipstick? I’m taking it. Christmas is cancelled. No bells, no cheer…no glam. Bye sweetie!” Carey, through it all, remains skeptical of this “little person’s” (more in clout capabilities than stature) ability to do anything so grand, let alone summon the power it would take to “cancel Christmas.” Which, in effect, means cancelling capitalism. In other words, it’s ultimately impossible. And, more to the point, unfathomable for someone like Carey, who would likely subscribe to the aphorism, “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.”

Hence, her confident “retort,” “You can’t cancel Christmas.” Eichner, still feigning that he doesn’t grasp the full weight of both Mariah and the multibillion-dollar Christmas industry, chooses to conclude his big “storm out” with, of all questions, “Any last words?” Obviously meant to give Carey the opportunity to say, once more (and this time, without interruption), the catch phrase she had tried to commence this entire bizarre ad with. But before that, she affirms, “Yeah.” And, at that moment, the entire room starts to ice over (this in contrast to what Carey has done in the past, which is show herself being “defrosted” from the block of ice she’s been waiting all year to come out of during Christmas).

As Carey finally gets the full extent of her “It’s tiiiiiiiime!” in, the entire place transforms into a winter wonderland, with Eichner morphing, for whatever reason, into a snowman. Before that, Carey herself had a transformative costume change, going from her angel getup into her Santa cosplay. And as the opening notes to the by now extremely tired “All I Want For Christmas Is You” begin to play, Eichner-as-a-Snowman grumbles, “Can we not—oh!” Meanwhile, Carey is undertaking the endeavor of “making Christmas happen” herself (as if) by (wo)manning Santa’s sleigh, doling out Sephora bags into chimneys as she passes over them with her reindeer. Standing next to one of the chimneys is Eichner-as-a-Snowman, lamenting, “Oh, I’m a snowman now. Great.”

Carey continues to ride around the city of New York “innocently” waving at the camera as though everything she does is cute and charming, even oppression. And that’s the fundamental takeaway of this commercial (which is meant to be but a  “subtle” advert for Sephora): no matter how a worker is feeling, whatever the season or holiday, the capitalist show must go on. At any cost, whether physical or emotional. The seemingly random fact that Eichner is turned into an animated snowman against his will only adds to the not-so-underlying notion that workers have no agency, and are told/forced to wear whatever guise necessary in order to “exhibit goodwill and cheer” for the big kahuna’s customers. And yes, Carey herself has plenty of customers to cater to at this time of year, with her own official website (which is, in this case, set up through an Amazon shop for another layer of corporate filth) being chock-full of Christmas-oriented merch to help keep her most-wonderful-time-of-the-year cash flow going. From Christmas sweaters, socks and pajamas to Mariah-themed ornaments, stockings and earmuffs, the potential to cash in on her Yuletide goldmine knows no bounds the more the years go by. So yes, it’s no wonder she insists to Eichner-as-Elf that Christmas can’t be cancelled. And it has nothing to do with the “good cheer” she wants to help spread for the season, so much as it is a reflection of just how much Christmas and capitalism go hand in hand. How much profit there is to be made at this time of year—this being the true “reason for the season.”

To heighten the absurdity of Carey and co. trying to spin it any other way, the commercial concludes with the sight of her swirling around the Statue of Liberty in her sleigh, as though to further emphasize that buying power (de facto, the ability to gift-give during Christmas) is “freedom.” And sadly, that’s the truth as a result of the current system in place. One that is at its most hulked-out during, as Carey dictates, the dates between November 1st and December 26th. With Carey herself as the representative “Hulk” of Christmas. So while she might hide behind the “delight” that it brings to the masses for her to make a video announcing that “it’s time,” this year, she didn’t bother to conceal the true meaning of Christmas at all: keeping the wheels of capitalism churning even if and when the world is burning. Workers’ rights be damned, obviously.