February 08, 2004
Culture Jamming
A while ago I made reference to culture jamming without much explanation. Culture Jamming is the practice of challenging, countering, or critiquing popular culture by co-opting its images, language, and methods. Appropriately, the term ‘jamming’ is borrowed from radio culture, meaning to borrow or block signals. There is no universal philosophical doctrine culture jammers abide by, but there are a handful of interesting ideas floating around.
First, the failure of rational argumentation to win the minds of the public:
Once upon a time, the "Evils of the Establishment" were subject to rational critique by academics and revolutionaries. Most people still function under this rationalist model: "Change will come if enough people understand the problem rationally and intellectually." Without at all dismissing the importance of rationality and intellect, I would argue that these tools are no longer themselves adequate. Specifically, in the struggle to debrief people on the poisonous symbolic system called "The Media", the rules have been changed…"Culture Jamming" sticks where rational discourse slides off.Second, the need to liberate and humanize media:
WE HAVE LOST CONFIDENCE in what we are seeing, hearing and reading: too much infotainment and not enough news; too many outlets telling the same stories; too much commercialism and too much hype. Every day, this commercial information system distorts our view of the world.Third, the practice of meme-hacking to inspire social change:
It is, simply, the viral introduction of radical ideas. It is viral in that it uses the enemy's own resources to replicate iteself -- corporate logos, marketing psychology, clean typography, "adspeak". It is radical because--ideally--the message, once deciphered, causes damage to blind belief. Fake ads, fake newspaper articles, parodies, pastiche. The best CJ [culture jamming] is totally unexpected, surprising, shocking in its implications.Fourth, the need to cultivate skepticism in the populace:
“I think there's a brand of immunizing deception that helps us to expose and correct the lies we tell ourselves and the webs of falsehood that make up our societies. Harmless fibs can remind us that we've dropped our guard and let the Big Lies in.”
Posted by John at February 8, 2004 01:21 AM
Culture Jamming is an insightful phenomenon even if it's coming from a handful of outspoken individuals. I also really like the jpg you posted. Back in college I did a project to study and explore the space between billboards and researched a lot on dimensions and types etc. Check out this page for more funny looking billboards.
Posted by: wings at February 8, 2004 12:47 AMIf you think about the media and culture infecting peoples minds and dispatching them to buy products or vote certain ways or to think something important is going on half-a-world away, (when in fact the truely important thing is the thing that is missing) You can imagine these ways of subverting this system of influence. but to what end. How do you really free people from this without actually just replacing it with a different message? (like the interchangable king problem presented by Dr. Waterhouse.)
Is there an inherent problem with the cultivation of mistrust to help protect people from lies?
Posted by: Elex at February 8, 2004 01:58 AMAh, it is just several sets of mind virus struggling in the cultural wilderness. The culture jamming virus is predator that eats other ideas.
And to the second bit, yes that is problematic. If people don't trust each other, then it does stifle learned inquiry and the raises the cost of dispersing knowledge.
Posted by: ~o at February 8, 2004 03:23 AMElex,
The point is not, I think to erase the issue by going back to some romanticized precultural state. Rather, it is to take control of the culture (insofar as that is possible) to serve humane ends. Some ideas are better than others and are worth engineering to survive.
Posted by: John at February 8, 2004 09:38 AMRight...no Rousseau allowed here...
Don't know the interchangeable king problem, but assuming it's about exchanging one master for another.
I look at culture jamming as a sort of luddite survival mechanism. (Funny how luddite has in this instance become a positive descriptive in my mind.) As advertising and corporate presence spreads, and begins to pervade previously public places (note...I don't set out to be an alliterative asshol...aw fuck it.) it seems natural to fight the trend.
Perhaps culture jamming is an admission of defeat, that new ideas are best expressed by subverting old ones rather than on their own merits.
Posted by: SlackBastard at February 8, 2004 09:49 AMCJ is bigger than that. It isn't just the corporate-media and material consumption ethos that is hijacked, so are the equivalent symbols and expressions of non-commercial but no less distorted alternative cultures.
It isn't cultivating mistrust, it's the art of sales resistance. The sales pitch might come from a vendor of widgets or a luddite creep, it's all the same, the attempt to deceive and persuade rather than inform or engage.
It's good to point and laugh at those who betray the basic social contract and parasitize society.
Posted by: back40 at February 8, 2004 06:23 PMThe thing I didn't like about fight club is that people were drawn out of thier "worker bee" world to join this subversive organization, but they are still just mindless drones that are infected with a new ideology. Every subculture based on subversion seems to be filled with regular everyday people who are loyal to ideas, and celebrities. True culture jamming is probably something that can't be done as a group, but needs to be an individual point of view or at least encourages you to come up with one on your own. I think a person should be asked questions. "What do you want?" Not, "Polititians Lie." I don't know how to make it work. MTV broadcasts revolution everyday. It's amusing, and makes money. It sells magazines. Nobody really takes much notice because we live in a society of noise and propaganda. Either you have to have enough money to launch a major campaign to compete with "the media" or you must be satisfied with lots of contradictory messages from the masses creating a cacophony. I think efforts might be better spent trying to create a work that endures a bit longer then a billboard. A work that people actually want to keep around as thier alternative to what is being offered by mainstream culture.
Posted by: Elex at February 8, 2004 11:32 PMFunny, that was my favorite part of Fight Club. It's a good joke against any idea that some revolution will bring about a "real" individualism. That's one of the old problems with liberalism of any type. We are groupish animals and both liberals and libertarians cultivate an intense mistrust of groupish behavior, the majority of which is harmless and positive.
Cj does seem to be mostly for laughs, anyways.
Posted by: ~o at February 9, 2004 01:24 AM