Redemption, Adbusters #76

I often imagine what it would be like to wake up to a clean mental environment, one that it is without the toxins of advertising. But then how can someone expect to maintain a clean mental environment in today's modern world? A friend of mine, a professor at Western Washington University, captured the problem thus, "even if you were to wake up in a new mental-clearing, within minutes of waking we are all exposed to dozens of commercial messages and you'd dragged back into your previous way of being before you had left your own front door." His essential critique was that fundamental mental-shifts are impossible to sustain beyond a moment because the structure of the world and the encouragement to consume make it impossible to exist not as a consumer. My friend's comment struck me as so true that I shuddered at the nihilistic consequences and suddenly understood why advertising is the multi-billion dollar industry it is today.

Advertising has reached the point that affluent consumers are exposed to thousands of corporate messages each day. These toxins pollute our mental environment by tugging at our desires for pleasure and happiness and skewing our intuitive gauge of what is reasonable consumption. Advertisers work on the principle that while an average person may be able to consciously resist one or two ads a day, they cannot repel an onslaught of hundreds. Increasingly, we have seen evidence of the effects of their approach: many of those individuals who are exposed to this level of mental toxicity develop depression or other negative mental states. If resistance is possible only in the non-corporate moments, then we've been pushed into the ever-shrinking interstices of uncommercial space. Non-commercial communities have nearly become an oxymoron in today's world where everyone is in someway beholden to the whims of corporate capital. The situation appears futile. So, why does it matter if I consume wantonly?

I am pulled out of this despairing path of thought by the example of culture jamming. I see the culture jammers' ethical commitment to a detachment from consumption as a response to the predicament that my friend brought up. Culture jammers practice resistance every time they jam an ad, mentally or otherwise. The moment we become aware of our mental environment, we see mental pollutants for the first time. These mental pollutants largely take the form of graphic advertisements whose message is one of reckless consumption. By drawing the connection between the pollution of our mental environment and the desecration of our physical environment, culture jammers point to a new avenue of practice: begin by identifying, targeting, and obliterating corporate messages for the good of the planet. At the most complex level, these jams take the artistic form of subvertisement. The power of advertisements is diverted through parody and social commentary. Absolut Vodka becomes a sign for alcoholism; MySpace for MurdochSpace; Nike-Converse for sweatshops. Jammed ads become impotent - by no longer passively consuming, we actively create our own meaning.

Culture jamming turns the exposure to pollution into a life-affirming event. Pollution becomes pollination. If standing in the midst of an overwhelming barrage of corporate communication - such as being stuck in a subway car that has been plastered on every surface with an ad or required to sit quietly during Channel One's commercial television before each school day -- we are able to maintain a detachment from consumerism then an escape route is possible. It's kind of like Ju-Jitsu: the situation is suddenly reversed in our favor and each message that tells us to buy only makes us consume less.

But over time culture jammers have learned that while subvertisement may be an effective way to target the image it does not create a viable alternative that can replace the critiqued company or product. It's too easy to say that if we just jam some ads and de-cool Nike then all will be saved. We, and a few billion others, still live in a world over-exposed to advertising. The fact is that we live in a world that has been structured to produce a society of consumers and that even our inconsequential actions or desires are thereby implicated in the desecration of the physical environment. The ease of consumption and the nonstop encouragement that we receive to consume makes it nearly impossible for modern society to attain a detachment from consumption sufficient to think differently enough to create a viable alternative. What is needed most is the application of culture jamming principles in defense of the nascent viable alternatives we imagine. It is not that living without television, consuming local products, and avoiding excessive consumption is not viable, but that our attempts are too weak, for the moment, to hold off the corporate onslaught. Here is where culture jammers must turn their creative efforts: to celebrate a new aesthetic that cherishes subsistence over surplus, local over national and play over work. The fundamental myth of consumerism that our efforts will shatter, and upon which the entire corporate illusion is based, is that 'more is better'. But to this lie, we will with great strength respond that only by consuming less can we live more.

Additional Articles You May Enjoy

"The Birth of Altermodern", Adbusters #88 (Feb/March 2010)

"Philosophy at Zero Point", Adbusters #87 (Jan/Dec 2010)

"Campus Uprising", Adbusters #83 (May/June 2009)

"Philosopher Profiles: Nancy, Žižek and Connolly", Adbusters #82 (March/April 2009)

"The Politics of Youth: Interview with Michael Hardt", Adbusters #82 (March/April 2009)

"Blackspot Poem", Adbusters #80 (November/December 2008)

"Commit Facebook Suicide", Adbusters #77 (May/June 2008)

"Redemption", Adbusters #76 (March/April 2008)

"Blackspot the Future", Adbusters #75 (January/February 2008)