Culture Jam Response

Culture Jam Response

Swimming pools represent key failings of American culture. They symbolize the American dream, along with the family, the house, the white picket fence and the golden retriever. When we picture our future swimming pools we see summer afternoons barbecuing with the family and relaxing with floaties in the pool. We tell ourselves to work hard so we can achieve this level of comfort and happiness. Some of us will fail and lament the life we never got to live, while others will achieve this dream, only to be too busy to actually enjoy the swimming pool. Several of my family friends have spent tens of thousands of dollars building swimming pools and maintaining them, only to have the pool sit empty day after day, its obnoxiously blue water glinting at them as they sit inside working -- a reminder of the excess of wealth they possess and the lack of time to enjoy it.

In Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn heavily criticizes American culture and consumerism. He believes that consumerism is at the heart of what’s wrong with America today, and it ultimately causes unhappiness in most people, because advertising brainwashes people into wanting things they can’t have or things that won’t actually make them happy. He believes corporations are the ones to blame and that individuals must take back power from corporations by .

    While commercials and corporations are annoying and often despicable, free speech is a right and don’t think we can stop advertisers from making whatever ads they want, and we can’t force TV stations to play Lasn’s radical messages. Lasn’s criticism are accurate, but some of his solutions are too radical. Additionally he’s very passionate about this cause, but it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to take it up as their own cause, because it’s not the only issue in the world or the US. The most important thing is that people are educated about these problems so they can decide how to live for themselves rather than let corporations dictate their desires. Additionally there are some concrete things we can do, some at a government and legislative level and some at a more private individual level.

The first things we should do  is continue to educate people about the dangers of over consumption and the different ways that advertisers try to brainwash us. After we are educated, individuals have the responsibility to make sure they live responsibly in this increasingly commercial world. We might not be able to act radically, but we can make sure that we do use our commercial interests to support ethically sound companies and ones that don’t use brainwashing advertising techniques. We also have to cut down on energy consumption and try to reuse rather than constantly buying new things and contributing to waste. We can also cut down on TV watching and make an effort to connect to nature.

The second is related to Lasn’s idea to make corporations more responsible for the laws they break. We could make shareholders personally responsible but this might be hard because they could claim to not have known anything about the transgressions. What I suggest is actually holding the corporation responsible. If a corporation is found to be breaking laws or violating human rights then it should not be allowed to operate. Existing as a corporation should not be a right but a privilege. But maybe this will be hard to pass in our free market loving society. Instead the government can  give tax breaks to corporations who meet certain human rights and environmental standards and heavily tax the ones that don’t. Also if we create a world wide organization that will impose heavy tariffs on corporations who don’t meet the standards it will make it in the corporations economic interests to act humanely.

However, the existence of corporations at all poses a problem. As soon as a corporation exists, the goal is to make profit. The leaders of the company are incentivised to make money by the shareholders and the shareholders don’t feel the same sense of responsibility. So maybe we should make shareholders more responsible. Maybe the whole problem is with the stock system, which is where citizens gamble with large companies that have huge effects on our world, rather than thinking about how these corporations act. If we can’t get rid of the stock system all together we should definitely completely restructure it. Right now the disadvantage to going public is that you have to release financial information so theres even more pressure to make profits every quarter. In addition to this companies should have to release information about all their decisions and exactly how they are making their products and where they are being made as well as the benefits and salary they offer to all their workers. They should release information about who they are giving money to for advertising and product placement as well. The more transparent companies have to be, the more ethically they will act.

The third thing that will help to combat consumerism and advertising is something that Lasn is already doing -- ad busting. We need every ad to be analyzed and shown for what it really is. The facts need to be checked and the truth needs to be shown. And not just the hard facts that the ad gives because ads tend to be very vague. Ad busting needs to show how the subtle connections that ads try to draw are not true. A good example of this is the Inhumane energy campaign that was a response the Chevon’s human energy campaign that attempted to show how ethically and environmentally sound Chevron was. Inhumane energy disputed all of Chevron’s claims with specific events that showed how Chevron had messed up. If ad’s facts are checked and manipulative ads are exposed, then advertisers will be pressured into making truthful and helpful ads.

We can also approach the problem from another angle. Advertising tries to plant ideas inside our heads so that we will buy products, but it does this by exploiting our already existing weaknesses and desires. In Discipline and Push-up: Female Bodies, Femininity,  and Sexuality in Popular Representations of Sports Bras Jaime Schultz examines the problem of over sexualization of females in relation to sports bras, and how this has shaped the image of female sexuality. From reading this article, one can see how advertising and the issue of female sexualization have influenced each other. This article talks about the response Brandi Chastain taking off her shirt to reveal her sports bra when her team won the World cup in 1999. Even though this was common in men's soccer the media oversexualized this event and cheapened her athletic victory. Schultz uses this as a jumping off point to talk about how sports bras marketing has developed from about function to being about a woman's sexual attractiveness. However even before the age of consumerism, women’s undergarment were used to control women and try to mold them to an image of ideal femininity. Schultz give a history of women’s undergarments and at one point describes the corset: “Corsets reached the pinnacle of their populrity in the Victorian Era, when they served to discipline the entirety of women’s torso’s including the hips, abdomen, and the breasts” (Schultz 6). Before advertising had taken over o completely, the corset was used to confine women and make their bodies look as men wnted the to. This was because sexism already pervaded the culture before advertising took over. Sexism and the over sexualization of women has always pervaded our culture so perhaps it would be wise to dig deeper than just advertising when examining and looking for solutions to these types of problems.

        In response to Culture Jam this shows another way in which consumerism changes the way we view ourselves and can create unhealthy ideas about body image. However what this showed me is that the problem is not created by consumerism but rather accentuated by consumerism. Sexism has existed for thousands of years before this age of consumerism. Consumerism only gives a new outlet for the sexism. Targeting marketing is a good way to combat sexsim, but it’s also important to educate individuals so that we don’t perpetuate sexism ourselves.

    One of the most important things that needs to change in our culture is transparency. In Salespeak, Roy Fox tells a fictional story about a world where consumerism has completely taken over daily life and education. Immediately we can tell this is a strange world because the main character is named Pepsi. Then Fox goes on to say that “most of what happens to Pepsi in this scenario is fact” (Fox 7). The creepy world he described already exists, and Fox gives examples to show this is true and although it’s  not as apparent, consumerism affects us just as much as it does Pepsi.

Its scary to realize that consumerism has seeped into our culture without our realizing. In some ways this hidden consumerism is almost more scary than the blatant consumerism within the fictional story. At least when you know what ads are being used on you, you can try to differentiate your own thoughts from the ones that they are trying to force on you. But when it’s so hidden and subconscious you start to not know why you want certain things and whether they are really things you should aim for or just desires placed in your head by corporations. That’s why we need things like adbusting and forcing corporations to be transparent so we know how they are trying to influence us. If we’re aware of the methods they’re using, it’s easier for us to sort out our own desires from the ones they try to force onto us.

Kalle Lasn, the author of culture jam, started the occupy movement and by examining the death of that movement, it helps explain where Lasn goes wrong in his thinking. In “What Happened to  Occupy?”  Doug Rossinow examines why  the occupy movement ultimately failed. Rossinow says the occupy movement failed because it didn’t have any concrete goals and was more about celebrating activism than achieving anything. But the article also gives another view point, that protesters ultimately can’t do anything more than spark a movement towards change. It has to be the government and politicians who do the real work. This feeds into Lasn’s idea that people are complacent and think that whatever they do won’t really have an effect. Most people don’t bother protesting or getting angry because the system of corporations and the government have all the power. He suggests that we act radically and fight the system. This contradicts with what Rossinow seems to be saying -- that we work with the system to influence our government. Both advocate for progressive change, but that we get them in different ways.

Both Rossinow and Lasn have good points and by compromising they can work together to achieve real progress. It’s never a good idea to give up and say that by protesting we can’t achieve anything. Protesters can make really positive changes, and often leaders of cultural movements can become politicians themselves. Being a politician is ideally about speaking for the people and leading them in the right direction so in some ways protesters are the ultimate politicians. However, it’s best to work within the system, rather than to try to “jam” the system as Lasn wants to do. There are many legislative changes and legal things that we can do to change the culture rather than just mindless and directionless anger. Each of us needs to work to become active and engaged citizens who are mindful of their own power and corporations power within culture, and people who are especially bothered by the problem can try to achieve some of the solutions detailed in this essay. Consumerism is an entrenched part of our culture but if people are able to step free of the ideas that advertising has placed within their head, they can direct culture in which ever way they desire.                                                     

Works Cited

Fox, Roy. “Salespeak” Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture. 6th ed. ED. Michael Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure. Upper-Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009. 155-167. Print.

Lasn, Kale. Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge-and Why We Must. New York: Quill, 2000.

Rossinow, Doug. What Happened to Occupy. Christian Century. 7/10/2013, Vol. 130 Issue 14, p22-27. 4p.

Schultz, Jaime. “Discipline and Push-up: Female Bodies, Femininity,  and Sexuality in Popular Representations of Sports Bras” Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture. 6th ed. ED. Michael Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure. Upper-Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009. 155-167. Print.