From class I have come to understand that culture jamming is when you take a component or advertisement from popular culture, like a car, and create an advertisement that represents the actual message of that component or advertisement. For example, McDonalds advertises that they have apple slices in order to appeal to children. When in reality they want to appeal to children in order to get their parents to take them to McDonalds. Advertisers also don’t care whether a product is good or bad as long as it sells. In this poster I created an ad for the new Escalade by Cadillac. It is a popular car but it is also a gas guzzler. The Escalade is a very large car that is bad for environment but you don’t realize that when you look at their actual advertisements or commercials. I think that culture jamming is very important because it allows audiences to see what they are really paying for or what they are doing to the environment.
According to the article, “Pranking Rhetoric: “Culture Jamming” as Media Activism” by Christine Harold, “This movement (culture jamming) seeks to undermine the marketing rhetoric of multinational corporations, specifically through such practices as media hoaxing, corporate sabotage, billboard “liberation,” and trademark infringement. Ad parodies, popularized through magazines such as Adbusters and Stay Free! and countless websites, are by far the most prevalent of culture jamming strategies.” This means that culture jamming was created by divergent voices who believe that a lot of popular culture advertisements are sugar coated. The messages that we are constantly bombarded with often sell a bad lifestyle. Often we don’t even realize that we are being sold to. We often don’t realize the hazards that come along with that. Cars like the Escalade or the Hummer are so bad for the environment but are still advertised in the mass media. Adbusters is at the forefront of an insurgent political movement known loosely as “culture jamming” (Harold, 2004). Adbusters create advertisements that represent the true nature of a product that is never revealed to the public by the advertising companies. Culture Jamming isn’t just a term is has become a movement in which people are determined to reveal the inner workings of corporations and the advertising industry.
Adbusters and similar companies use sabotage as a form of culture jamming. A good example is when “The Gap’s infamous appropriation of the likenesses of counter-culture heroes Jack Kerouac and James Dean to sell khaki pants. [It] inspired a response from the adbusting community. To the Gap’s claim that “Kerouac wore khakis,” a group of Australian subvertisers responded with the likeness of another 20th century icon who wore khakis as well—Adolf Hitler. As such, Gap khakis were recoded as a means not to rugged individuality but genocidal totalitarianism— the conformist impulse writ large” (Harold, 2004). This means that sometimes in order to get their point across Adbusters used bad icons that represent the products that are being sold through the mass media. I think that it is important for people to understand that corporations and advertisers do not have our interests at heart and that they only care about how they can make more and more money. Like Michael Moore said, “No Such Thing As Enough” Advertising companies won’t be satisfied until their products are everywhere no matter who they heart. I feel like because of this attitude the environment is suffering the most. This is why I choose to do the Cadillac Escalade. In commercials it looks really cool but in reality cars like this are destroying the Ozone layer. Without the Ozone layer we wouldn’t be able to survive so it is important that people in their fancy cars realize this before it’s too late.
Works Cited:
Harold, C. (2004). Pranking rhetoric: "culture jamming" as media activism. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21(3), 189-211
