Resisting Consumer Culture
Culture Jamming can be understood from a variety of different perspectives. It is one new kind of activism, offering a new way of looking at how our society functions and a new way to change the way we interact with our world. It brings art, wit and creativity to the process of social and environmental change.
Here is one explanation:
"We are a loose global network of artists, activists, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to launch the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple exisiting power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the twenty-first century...It will alter the way we live and think. It will change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power, the way TV stations are run, the way food, fashion, automobile, sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, it wll change the way we interact with the mass media and the way meaning is produced in our society."
-The Culture Jammers Network, Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must by Kalle Lasn, New York, 1999, HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
What do culture jammers do?
Culture jamming is an expression of resistance to the authority of the commercially-controlled marketplace of products, fashion, and ideas. At its best, it is funny, surprising, clever and insightful. Jamming culture aims to interrupt the marketing messages that make everything a commodity. Some techniques:
- Remaking ads so that they say something different than the advertiser intended. Some people call this "subvertising" -- altering the original message to create a new one that makes people question what and why they buy. For example, substituting a word in an advertising slogan.
- Social satire that puts a twist on common practices or conventions. For example, parodying TV ads, creating over-the-top promotional campaigns for things that contribute to climate change.
- Using the same media as advertisers -- print ads, videos, radio, music -- to express resistance to consumption. For example, using images that pretend to make pollution beautiful and "acceptable."
