(no subject)
i was wondering if anyone knew anything about adbusters and if they had anything to say about what they know. i read a book about it. the following is from my other page:
I learned how to make a mocha today. Drinking it in my hot upstairs is making me all sweaty!
The first time I heard of adbusters was at a Courage Riley show in Columbia; it actually may have been at my first Nineteen Eighty-Four show. David Adedokun (something like that) held up a glossy, hip-looking magazine and, in sweaty between-song gasps, said something about consumerism and something about responsibility. Around this time, I was beginning to nurture my (also fashionable) distaste for hipsters and suburbs, so I dismissed the whole thing as something between an annoying "'zine" and those annoying "OBEY" stickers.
Now, two years later, I'm reading the book. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America(tm). Kalle Lasn is the author. The cover photo shows a guy with a bar code on the back of his neck. Awesome! Maybe I can read it while I listen to Fugazi! And while I vote Nader!
No, really, I read the book and I'm prepared to do an about-face of sorts now that I'm informed. Whenever I read a book for the first time, I fold down the bottom corners of pages I think are especially important, and I unfold the corners when I discuss them with someone. I folded ten corners in this book, and here they are:
-Page 18: Growing up in an erotically charged media environment alters the very foundations of our personalities. I think it distorts our sexuality. It changes the way you feel when someone suddenly puts their hand on your shoulder, hugs you, or flirts with you through the car window. I think the constant flow of commercially scripted pseudosex, rape and pornography makes us more voyeuristic, insatiable and aggressive--even though I can't prove it with hard facts.
-Page 53 says that almost all Americans belong to the "cult" of consumerism. Lasn bases this on the idea that we have adopted "roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose." (author's emphasis). He goes on to say that slackers who opt out of the consumer game are still buying in, still trying to prove their identities by what they wear, eat and listen to.
-Page 75: Half of all exotic dancers were once beauty pageant contestants.
-Page 102: I can't remember why I folded this down. Maybe it was a reminder to watch Before Sunrise.
-Page 128 unveils the "Culture Jammer's Manifesto." By this point in the book, you're definitely on Lasn's side; everything he says is true and demands action--but what can you do? "...uncool their billion-dollar brands with uncommercials on TV, subvertisements in magazines and anti-ads right next to theirs in the urban landscape." Oh, subvertisements! At first I thought this was ridiculous but, really, how else are people's minds going to change? Smoking didn't get its social stigma until anti-tobacco ads aired in the '60s. Maybe he's right and that's the only way.
-Page 143 happens to me all the time:
"...You can't stop watching as the bombs land on Baghdad. Your tears flow freely for Princess Di. You can't get enough news about President Clinton's escapades... Once in a while, in a flash of insight, you understand that something is terribly, terribly wrong with your life, and that a rude and barren future awaits unless you leap up off the couch right now.
"Then the moment passes. Your opening came and you didn't move. you couldn't muster the clarity of mind to figure out what to do, let alone the energy to do it.
"And so your rage remains underground."
-Page 161 taught me that corporations weren't always the biggest voices in America. In 1884 a public suit actually revoked the charter of the Standard Oil Trust! A past where corporations weren't considered persons with legal rights sounds inconceivable in a present where they enjoy more rights than any citizen.
There's more, but I've got to go to work, where I masquerade as a videotape-dispensing machine made of meat. Thanks for reading.
continuing: books like this (anti-tv, anti-consumerism, anti-corporate books) tend to have a lot of witty, emotive rhetoric that, to me, weakens the message. stuff like "you press snooze three times before you finally wake up, take a glance at your wife who you wish looked more like the supermodel on this month's COSMO. you make a cup of FOLGERS that was harvested by gun-toting children from the cartel before you scarf down an EGG MCMUFFIN, wondering why you feel so empty inside. you get out of your HONDA ACCORD and face another tedious, numbing day at WAL-MART working for slave wages. if only you could get home and watch FEAR FACTOR!"
that's fine for a pamphlet or an introduction, but in culture jam almost every point is made in this fashion. it gets a little old, and the impact doesn't last past the moment when you put down the book. while you're reading, this is your generation's great fight, but once the heavy rhetoric has run its course, it's just another thing to think about, maybe. while you puff on a MARLBORO and sip your BUDWEISER! still, what do you think?
I learned how to make a mocha today. Drinking it in my hot upstairs is making me all sweaty!
The first time I heard of adbusters was at a Courage Riley show in Columbia; it actually may have been at my first Nineteen Eighty-Four show. David Adedokun (something like that) held up a glossy, hip-looking magazine and, in sweaty between-song gasps, said something about consumerism and something about responsibility. Around this time, I was beginning to nurture my (also fashionable) distaste for hipsters and suburbs, so I dismissed the whole thing as something between an annoying "'zine" and those annoying "OBEY" stickers.
Now, two years later, I'm reading the book. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America(tm). Kalle Lasn is the author. The cover photo shows a guy with a bar code on the back of his neck. Awesome! Maybe I can read it while I listen to Fugazi! And while I vote Nader!
No, really, I read the book and I'm prepared to do an about-face of sorts now that I'm informed. Whenever I read a book for the first time, I fold down the bottom corners of pages I think are especially important, and I unfold the corners when I discuss them with someone. I folded ten corners in this book, and here they are:
-Page 18: Growing up in an erotically charged media environment alters the very foundations of our personalities. I think it distorts our sexuality. It changes the way you feel when someone suddenly puts their hand on your shoulder, hugs you, or flirts with you through the car window. I think the constant flow of commercially scripted pseudosex, rape and pornography makes us more voyeuristic, insatiable and aggressive--even though I can't prove it with hard facts.
-Page 53 says that almost all Americans belong to the "cult" of consumerism. Lasn bases this on the idea that we have adopted "roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose." (author's emphasis). He goes on to say that slackers who opt out of the consumer game are still buying in, still trying to prove their identities by what they wear, eat and listen to.
-Page 75: Half of all exotic dancers were once beauty pageant contestants.
-Page 102: I can't remember why I folded this down. Maybe it was a reminder to watch Before Sunrise.
-Page 128 unveils the "Culture Jammer's Manifesto." By this point in the book, you're definitely on Lasn's side; everything he says is true and demands action--but what can you do? "...uncool their billion-dollar brands with uncommercials on TV, subvertisements in magazines and anti-ads right next to theirs in the urban landscape." Oh, subvertisements! At first I thought this was ridiculous but, really, how else are people's minds going to change? Smoking didn't get its social stigma until anti-tobacco ads aired in the '60s. Maybe he's right and that's the only way.
-Page 143 happens to me all the time:
"...You can't stop watching as the bombs land on Baghdad. Your tears flow freely for Princess Di. You can't get enough news about President Clinton's escapades... Once in a while, in a flash of insight, you understand that something is terribly, terribly wrong with your life, and that a rude and barren future awaits unless you leap up off the couch right now.
"Then the moment passes. Your opening came and you didn't move. you couldn't muster the clarity of mind to figure out what to do, let alone the energy to do it.
"And so your rage remains underground."
-Page 161 taught me that corporations weren't always the biggest voices in America. In 1884 a public suit actually revoked the charter of the Standard Oil Trust! A past where corporations weren't considered persons with legal rights sounds inconceivable in a present where they enjoy more rights than any citizen.
There's more, but I've got to go to work, where I masquerade as a videotape-dispensing machine made of meat. Thanks for reading.
continuing: books like this (anti-tv, anti-consumerism, anti-corporate books) tend to have a lot of witty, emotive rhetoric that, to me, weakens the message. stuff like "you press snooze three times before you finally wake up, take a glance at your wife who you wish looked more like the supermodel on this month's COSMO. you make a cup of FOLGERS that was harvested by gun-toting children from the cartel before you scarf down an EGG MCMUFFIN, wondering why you feel so empty inside. you get out of your HONDA ACCORD and face another tedious, numbing day at WAL-MART working for slave wages. if only you could get home and watch FEAR FACTOR!"
that's fine for a pamphlet or an introduction, but in culture jam almost every point is made in this fashion. it gets a little old, and the impact doesn't last past the moment when you put down the book. while you're reading, this is your generation's great fight, but once the heavy rhetoric has run its course, it's just another thing to think about, maybe. while you puff on a MARLBORO and sip your BUDWEISER! still, what do you think?