Culture Jam

Dear American Association of Advertising Agencies,

I am writing to you as a concerned citizen in regards to the overwhelming favoritism and monopolizing of corporate sponsorship on television and radio. I have just finished reading the book Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn, and am deeply opposed to the constant rejection of civil human liberties that the Adbusters organization receives when inquiring the purchasing of air time for non-consuming promotion.

At the rate at which our culture is evolving to depend solely consumerism, I believe that the media experience needs to contain some kind of balancing alternative. With Adbuster’s cultural perspective, the viewer has a greater chance of broadening their knowledge on the ecological damages that are resulting from all of the consumption, which needs to preventatively change before we ruin our entire planet.

Although this is obviously an economic boundary that is uncomfortable for any corporate sponsor to cross, it is immensely important and the right thing to do. Although it is understood that you have the right to selective airing, you should enable that right to start allowing the right kinds of messages into the public’s attention. A lot of people are very concerned for the media that their kids are consuming, especially the psychological, physical, and ecological effects. Your selection process is the reason why I do not watch tv or listen to the radio and stay as far away from any corporate influences as much as possible, because I directly oppose the lack of democracy that corporate power demonstrates.

Any paying organization should have full rights to airtime just as any individual should be able to exercise the right to freedom of speech no matter who it effects because that is the divine right of all Americans. Otherwise, your advertising selection process is undemocratic. Once the desires of an organization of individuals gets pushed aside for the desires of an overpowered corporate machine, there’s no freedom of cultural expression, and the truth will grow and explode in your face.

“Fifty years ago Alabama blacks sat in the backs of buses and at their own end of the lunch counter without thinking twice about it. Many women once believed they didn’t deserve to vote… Today, we’re caught in the same kind of reflexive subservience to corporations. We think its normal for them to have more rights than we do. We think it’s proper for them to clear-cut ancient forests, influence elections, run our airwaves, take politicians on jaunts to the Bahamas and draft the world trade rules. But it isn’t, and once you’ve reframed the issues of sovereignty, power and privilege, you’ll wonder why you ever thought it was.” (Lasn, 155)

Sincerely,

Faye Iwata

The corporation:

Surprise: It gave me a new perspective on how important money is, when it’s all just so made up and unreasonable.

Agitation: That what these interwiewees are saying makes so much sense, yet so many people don’t agree or even understand their logic.

Significant item of new learning: reflection, rage and rebellion.

My question is… why has our economy grown so out of touch with ecological needs, and how do we make that connect for people who only care about making lots of money?

Although there was an attempt for a positive ending by exemplifying progressive movement in the world, overall, it made the future look very bleak. I only feel so negative about the situation because of how far our ecological damages have added up thus far, and the corporations in power have so much to lose that in order to stir up enough reflection, rage and rebellion, there will be a huge number of casualties. I think the world war 3 that is discussed in Culture Jam is a very possible outcome, and weapons of mass destruction will put our planet in danger. We’ve become so fake-culture obsessed that there is no alternative. People are comfortable with their immersion in their tv set and that’s enough satisfaction to justify the corporation’s stronghold on their money and self-branding. This is how the movie made me feel, but I hope we are stronger than that. I know that there are past successes in overthrowing of this large power, but this is global and connected to everyone’s life daily. As an individual I feel completely unprepared and maybe un-involved, although I do have the reflection and rage part within my scope I just don’t think that enough people do in order to work together to produce this kind of change. What I really mean is not that things will never get better, but I think they will get a lot worse first.

Culture Jam/The Corporation

Culture Jam 72-136

1. I really liked The New Activism (Fire in the Belly) chapter because it gave a nice contrast to old revolutionary movements and how culture jammers stand apart from them. I especially liked the feminist and leftist sections, where I found a refreshingly new viewpoint that Lasn expresses in this quote: “The Liberal Left has a way of co-opting every worthwhile cause. In the past few decades, it has hung its flag on the black movement, the women’s movement and the environmental movement… if we’re going to build an effective new social movement, we’re going to have to work not with them but around them.” (119-120) I thought this was powerful because it showed how important a role inspired creativity plays in revolutions with ideas that have never been tried before. This is mostly because of the numerous connotations that are attached to certain pre-stereotyped groups and ideas.
2. In the list of metamemes for culture jammers, I think adjusting the global marketplace with ecologically true costs is by far the most fundamentally impossible. There is no way any industry or nation of individuals; moreover a world of billions, can afford to pay the price of ecological sanctity. Whatever utopia we might’ve once had was long gone before human civilization became its irreversible corrupter. This dilemma appears in my everyday life whenever I eat tropical fruits, ride a plane, use Styrofoam… all irreversibly damaging, yet capitalistically de-valued, therefore undervalued in my consumer-dependent mind, and killing our planet.
3. In the “We’re Not Slackers” Lasn describes the typical North American undergrad conundrum; “There’s no real rush to finish a degree because what lies on the other side but debt, pavement pounding and the potential shame of boomeranging back home?” (155) If this is the kind of fear that is keeping us in school and from flourishing through creativity and independence, what am I doing? Why should I put myself in all this debt? Is this crazy?

4. “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” (177)

5. In “The Meme Warrior” I found the tactics of a culture jammer very interesting in that it challenges the persuasive skills of corporate media directly, because it must overpower it in order to succeed. “An effective TV subvertisement (or uncommercial) is so unlike what surrounds it on the commercial-TV mindscape that it immediately grabs the attention of viewers. It breaks their media-consumer trance and momentarily challenges their whole world outlook.”(133)

In all of Lasn’s refrences to promote ad busters and their ideas, I feel he is being hypocritical and basically advertising throughout the whole book.

My question is how can we trust Lasn’s huge solutions when it seems there is a bias and other intentions any author has in capitalizing off their work, and what adbusters as an organization does with its profit. As a media foundation their very motive is to sell their product, and although its supportive of revolutionary ideas and eye-opening literature, their campaigns seem less effective than the price of their zine would imply. I would say stop filtering money into the systems, Lasn has a huge obsession with television, the people who are watching however, are the corrupted. I think more exposure in community centers and on a more human level is where it is most important to get the message out to the appropriate and most effective audience. Why pay thousands to millions for airtime on a corporate news channel when you can channel those funds into worthy causes like charity or promotion of these ideas within the community or at educational seminars/ lectures. People who are going to attend and participate at these levels are the individuals who will make a difference.

The Corporation:

What really made an impact on me was the simplicity of the corporation. After all everything that is human-engineered, human-geared, and human-centered must have similar characteristics to that of a human. I really liked the psychological breakdown of corporate psychopathic tendencies, and thought it was very intuitively effective. All of a corporations connotations and ecological effects are in actuality just a reflection of humans as consumers, and it boils down to the savvy techniques of wealthy owners and their busy bee workers that are happening behind the scenes. I thought the most important part was in exemplifying the externalities of a corporate civilization, and that’s what most consumers fail to understand, or have concern for, ultimately being the destroyer of the natural world. The spy interview was pretty cool and I liked the optimistic quote: “In devastation there is opportunity”, although it can produce good or bad outcomes dependent upon who takes action first.

Culture Jam Free Write

“Honor your instincts. Let your anger out. When it wells up suddenly from deep in your gut, don’t suppress it- channel it, trust it, use it. Don’t be so unthinkingly civil all the time. When the system is grinding you down, unplug the grinding wheel.” (xv)

I think this book has been overwhelmingly cynical, which is sometimes a drag to have to read. Luckily I found my state of affairs to be going in a very different direction than that of the demographic that Lasn was discussing. However, I think that Lasn makes a lot of good points, which hold so much relevance in the way our society functions today, and his ethics are in line with what I agree with, therefore it was pretty captivating. It made me feel a deeper aversion to corporate culture and over-consumption of Americans than I felt previously. Going back home and seeing old friends made this aversion much clearer in terms of how my ideas have evolved, and the different directions that all of my old friends have gone in, in terms of their basic way of life. I found myself to be a singular minority in most of my views and actually got into a couple of heated arguments with some of them who dismissed environmental issues and openly immerse themselves into American consumer culture with full trust and loyalty. Although I have known these people for a long time, I never discussed these things in particular, and got to the root of the problem with them. Most of the conversations ended in a pathetic effort to assure themselves and me that when they “grow up” they are going to be wealthy on their own, as well as marry rich, have happy children, own a nice house and country house, indispensable money, cars and clothes…and hoes. I was pretty blown away by their solid self-assuredness that this was all going to work out for them. And they don’t care about the consequences, and admit to not knowing enough about it, and using that ignorance to make up for their not caring. Not to say that these are my closest friends, because it had been a long time since we had hung out, but no matter my protests at their blind commercial desires, they weren’t making up their mind. Damned hipsters!! I guess that’s what you get in NYC, where everything is so fast paced that no one bothers to think twice, or even once, and rely on being incredibly self centered. I just found it frightening because when growing up together I felt that we all had so much in common, but now, we are all specializing in completely different things and being self-centered in that way too. Which is why I think in some ways its important to be generally skilled in many areas, which would probably require me to drop out of college or at least take some time off to sharpen different skills. I realized that feel much safer in VT somehow, which is funny because I have always been so attached to NY, but it’s my own sense of self-preservation in surrounding myself with like-minded folks and in an environment that I can enjoy outdoor activities in and around. One of these arguments was with a close friend since elementary school who is now a business major and was completely denying the fact that global warming is a pressing issue.

The part about Princess Diana was intriguing as well, and reminded me of a time when my friend from elementary school cried because the singer Aliyah died in a plane crash. I remember being very curious to the reason she cried, because she wasn’t much of a crier, and I thought it was a little much for someone she didn’t even know when there was actually a whole plane full of people who died and tons of other random people who die every instant, and yet she was only crying for her. It strikes me almost every time a famous person dies, and people everywhere are devastated, and I wonder is it because of their inability to produce more pop music or be hunted down by paparazzi any longer? Why are they crying? I guess it’s the romantic image that they had gotten so used to adoring and caring for, and idolizing, and death in general is scary especially for something that you follow in a cult-like manner. That was another really interesting part of the book, which I agree with completely. Even though its an extreme correlation, all methods of persuasion use the same tactics, and its just the extent to which these tactics are used that make them different. I also agree that a lot of this corruption in our ethics cannot be uncorrupted, which goes to show how deep we have gotten ourselves into danger, and that action needs to be taken.