Malaise (n.) 1. an indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health often indicative of or accompanying the onset of illness. 2. a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being
There is "the idea of consumerism and the media making us more detached and less considerate towards nature. Technology has detached us from nature." -Laura Gillmore
Commentary and Questions by Laura Gillmore
The reading begins by describing how our generation is made of culture jammers. But what are culture jammers? Pg.xi “we’re a loose global network of media activists who see ourselves as the advance shock troops of the most significant social movement of the next twenty years”. In other words culture jammers are people who observe our culture, analyze it, and creates solutions of adjusting to the how we will survive in this 21st century. Culture jamming will change the way we interact with the mass media by finding sincere meanings in our lives as oppose to what the media tells us is our meaning.
Basically the book discusses why we need culture jamming in our American culture. This is because America is no longer considered a country but a “multi-million dollar brand”. It explains that decades in the past had certain events which triggered social movements such as the civil rights was in the 60’s, feminism in the 70’s, and environmental activism blossomed in the 80’s – but now our country has become almost entirely focused on selling products, music, television and other commercial items. Lasn goes on to explain that we no longer have an authentic culture, ritual, or tradition because America has been branded. This branding has prevented our culture being created by the people. Overall, we are hypnotized by the media.
Quotes/Interesting Pages
“If the self is expanded to include the natural world, behavior leading to destruction of this world will be experience as self-destruction.”- An interesting idea which was brought up in A Sand County Almanac yet at the same time Lasn doesn’t necessarily agree because he describes consumption as a sickness. – We have this “seperation anxiety” from nature “when you cut the flow of nature into people’s lives, their spirit dies” – so consumerism, media etc. is causing this anxiety (pg 6).
“The US has a higher rate of depression than almost every other country etc..” – see core point (stuff doesn’t necessarily mean happiness and America has the most). But at the same time Lasn says we could be “suffering “ not because of scarcity or deprivation but because of plentitude.- nothing ever hardwon when everything is at hand (pg 10).
An example of the media hypnotizing us (see core points) is using Jolts (different camera angles, abruptness,), shock, and selling fear causes us to be in fight or flight mode which keeps us alert.
The way institutions use their power and televisions stations run are similar. They allow certain commercials to be on TV. British Columbia being told that their forests are being taken care of but the industry was balatanly lying and the environmentalists had the money to buy the airtime but couldn’t so they were basically censored. This is because the sponsor is the “king” and can make choices of what is on TV and what is not (pg 30).
QUESTIONS
•This book was written 10 years ago and this maybe an obvious question but has our culture worsened in terms of buying into commercialism and the media? How?
•Read quote on XVI: Follow up question: It has been 10 years since the book, and culture jamming still hasn’t “begun” as Lasn says it would. When do you think this will happen and what kind of events would cause us to change/start culture jamming?
•What do you think of this idea of America suffering because of plentitude?
•Do you agree with all that Lasn has to say? If not, what?
Danielle Battaglia
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement 5
This week I want to talk about mainly about Culture Jamming. There were some very strong points made in Culture Jam that I want to address. First, I was overwhelmed by how our world is not only run by large corporations and sponsors such as Nike and McDonalds, but they possibly affect our moods. The statistic that intrigued me was that depression rates in our country have slowly been increasing since 1940. Shouldn’t it be that the more successful our country becomes and the more resources that are invented to make our life easier make us happier? Or else make life easier and therefore make us happier? Indeed it seems that it is the opposite. Lasn talks about how the buzz and technology of everyday life is slowly driving us all crazy and personally I tend to agree. My personal take is that for years we were living without countless wireless waves, computers, T.V’s, GPS and other technology that has boomed in the last fifty years or so; most in just the last ten years. As humans we adapted well to living off the land and off of each other and ourselves, and now there is this sudden dramatic shift of overabundance of easiness in the form of technology that we are overwhelmed. What I mean is that life is not very simple anymore and it is almost impossible to keep up with the flow of the technology boom. And when one tries to keep up and experience the new technology they become immersed in it as Lasn said with either chat rooms, TV programs or ads etc. One can’t just dip one foot in to try the newest products without being bombarded to try more of it either with ads or other form of propaganda. This is seriously distressing to the consumer because you either have to ignore it all which is nearly impossible in the world we live in today, or do your best to stay afloat in the sea of technology and products that corporations and sponsors drown you in. That alone is exhausting and can cause mood disorders, whereas other less advanced countries don’t have all that thinking and decision-making. They are still living the way humans initially adapted to living, which is off the land. Where there are simple answers to questions and one tool has a purpose, not five- hundred purposes. Now I’m not saying that our technological product advancement is bad, but the way it is marketed is less than truthful and the products sold can be harmful to our mental and physical health. This is why I am interested in Adbusters because it exploits all the secrets that these corporations want to keep hidden from us for fear of losing financial gain, but that we have a right to know about because it affects our health. I have no problem with advertising, as it needs to be done to keep a successful economy running, all that is simply asked is that the truth is told about what we are really buying, and if the truth will wreck the profit then perhaps it should not be advertised until the truth is safe to tell. The issue also arises about products that are not unhealthy physically, but can become mentally addicting thus affecting ones physical health in a round about way such as video games. In this case it is up to us to do our best to enjoy ourselves without becoming zombies or addicted to a certain product. It is not really our fault that we are being exposed to this boom of products, but it is still up to us to rise to the challenge and decide how we want to live our lives in this propaganda filled world.
The depression statistics didn't really suprise me all that much. We have a free psychological clinic at school, there are countless anit-depressants avaliable; all around there are signs that people aren't really all that happy. It seems like the old cliche "money doesnt buy happiness" really is true, with the ammendment that "things don't buy happiness" as well. I wonder if it's not just that our recreational time is spent in virtual worlds (chat rooms etc), which seems to be Lasn's focus, but that our work is less tangible. To me, it seems like part of the problem is that trade jobs are horribly looked down on in our society. People asipre to the white-collar jobs, whereas a kid that just wants to be a mechanic is viewed as not living up to his potential (at least in the area I'm from). It seems like our societial values set us up to be discontent with our lives.
ReplyDeleteI think this book addresses all aspects of our modern society – from culture to economics to our surrounding environment. It’s definitely a breath of fresh air even though some of the information presented is actually not new. The book has that rude awakening that our generation has needed. What makes it even more in point is that the author actually executes his own advice through either his magazines, movies or actions. Whenever he questions or calls up companies asking for the truth or to shed light on a certain situation is him taking a stand against the status quo which is as of late, what everyone follows (in the economical sense). If there is nothing to gain, there is no reason to do.
ReplyDeleteI don’t agree with all statements within his book and now it is even hard to imagine his ideal world that he describes, but definitely a lot of the points he brings up are valid and need to be undertaken at least to some extent. He does say he is a leftist and a more extreme authentic one – not the recent leftists who merely talk (if even that) but don’t do. It is hard to imagine our world without any advertisements or corporate influence. Even the small companies or the organizations lobbying for “good” things such as saving the environment or ensuring better food quality, one can say that their advertisements could begin a brain washing movement of their own. So regardless of good or bad don’t large companies have just as much right to advertising and marketing as these smaller do-good organizations? In our land of free speech, we cannot diminish the advertising of large companies, we can only increase the presence of smaller organizations’ advertising. Also, in our modern times, how are we to communicate without advertisements? If an eco store opened down the street, how would it let the people know that it exists without the help of flyers or the likes?
I agree that corporate America has a iron hold over the American psyche, but we cannot get rid of them entirely. It is up to the American people however to be skeptical – which we have extremely failed at. We are not skeptical of anything especially if it has been branded or marketed worldwide. We take everything in that corporate America gives us without questioning. So much so that we do not realize the harm being done to us. I am in accordance for change but I am of a more moderate standpoint than Kalle Lasn who is more extremists and other conservatives who rather keep digging their own ditch. We do need change but not everything should be scrapped but more like improved upon.
It was one of the most interesting reads I’ve had so far for my college career and it definitely is an eye opener along with the AdBusters magazine that teaches to question our lives and not become merely couch potato zombies who follow. Not only is that zombie lifestyle ruining our psyche but our planet as well. So it is of even more importance now that we take some kind of action..
Weekly Statement #11
ReplyDeleteFor this entry, I’d like to talk about a few passages from the “spring” section in “Culture Jam” that caught my attention.
The first is the idea of “peak experiences” on page 106. The gist here is that every time consumer marketing “sells you its brand name cool”, that you loose a sense of real living. He puts real living in very touchy –feely terms like “oneness with the world” and “self actualized”, and while these make the argument a little on the granola eating hippie side, the point seems quite valid. While I can’t make any claims to “oneness with the world”, I definitely think that my experiences that have felt the most genuine have happened while removed from the technological bubble I usually live in. In this passage, I feel that Lasn and Aldo Leopold would completely agree.
In discussing the Situationist movement, there was a passage that I found a little troubling. Lasn describes the “detournements” undertaken by the Situationists in order to reroute the ideas and environments surrounding them. This is all well and good, but he gives an example of a man who walked onto the altar of a Catholic church during mass, and proceeded to give a speech culminating with “God is dead”. Regardless of your personal thoughts on the Catholic Church, I feel like this example has nothing to do with the consumer culture that Lasn seems to be arguing against. Religions aren’t like corporations where they are trying to make a profit by hawking a product; they are for providing a route to the “real living” Lasn mentions a few pages later. An example about attacking a set of beliefs seems entirely inappropriate in book condemning consumerism and branding. If he wanted to make the case that a highly structured system of belief like Catholicism hinders personal spiritual growth in the same way corporations limit personal growth, I could see that being an interesting point. However, the example he provides seems very misplaced given the context of the book.
Another passage that got me thinking was around page 150. Here, Lasn talks about the general apathy on American college campuses and academia in general. In summary: “We just talk. We don’t actually do anything”. Part of me got really uncomfortable with this. Here I am writing pages and pages and pages that more or less agree with Lasn, but that’s been about it. True, I have made a considerable effort to watch what and how much I consume (completely changing grocery stores, actually), and I’ve brought up a lot of what we’ve discussed with my family and roommates (to varying degrees of success). I feel like a lot of us are probably about in this same boat. In part, this could be due to the overwhelming nature of what we’ve been learning about in class. Even coming in with quite a bit of prior knowledge, this information has been a lot to digest. But should we be content with that? Should we just say that it’s all too much to take in and continue on with our lives as before when we walk out of the final exam? I’d like to think not, but realistically, that’s probably a likely scenario. A trend I’ve noticed in all that we’ve studied is that real change can’t happen unless it’s created on a large scale. Here we are, a class of a hundred-odd young adults, blogging away about what we’re learning, what’s shocking us, what is making us re-think. Is there a way we could harness this group energy to actually make some sort of difference as has been proposed either in this book or earlier in the semester? We have a group project assigned, but I wonder what would happen if the entire ADP class made one group project, if we tapped into the potential of a hundred people and actually did something that would have a greater impact. We managed to march twenty-foot tall puppets down Main Street for ADP II— I think we could rise to the challenge.
Week 7
ReplyDeleteThe Winter chapter in Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam is about the way society thinks it is supposed to act as a whole. Lasn says, “We have been recruited into roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose.” By this, he means that there are no actual/official rules that tell us how we ought to be behave, but we, society, are indeed a cult because we made up our own rules and abide by it even though we’re free to roam and recreate. “No one seems to be forcing us to do anything we don’t want to do,” but we wear uniforms of brand names and what is socially acceptable and trendy.
We also all dream of the same American dream. All of us strive for the same things, we grow up looking up to heroes and watching TV. We enter our rebel years, go to college, graduate, buy a house, buy a car, and take part in cult rituals like Christmas, Easter, the superbowl, Mother’s day, Father’s day, etc. Lasn asks “What does it mean when a whole culture dreams the same dream?” I don’t think it’s necessarily “wrong” that we, as Americans mostly all strive for the same things. Most of us take different roads to get there, and most of us are happy when we get there.
I do agree with him, however, when he points out that there has been a huge shift in power in America and it should be reversed. In earlier America, corporations played an important but subordinate role, and therefore the people were in control. Today, corporations and big brand names are in control, and I think it should be reversed. He makes a good point when he uses the example of body image in the media controlling what people think today: “they didn’t wish they were thinner, they thought they should be thinner, as if being thin were a kind of cultural law.” I think we, as society, need to gain back control of letting people think whatever they want about their bodies and how it “should” look. It’s not the media who should be telling insecure people such as teens and gym rats how they should look.
Connie In
Connie Huang
ReplyDeletePost #8
I believe that many students go to college just to go to college. They’re just doing what everyone else is doing. I see it in many of my friends. Even in their junior year they’re still struggling to find out what they want to do. Many of them are terrified to pursue a career they’re passionate about because the media has made them or their families believe they would be unsuccessful with hat career choice. In Culture Jam it says, “The US has a higher rate of depression than almost every other country etc..” Perhaps, it’s because starting with childhood we’re just doing what everyone else is doing? Are we just passing through day-to-day events without taking a look at what they really mean? We’re programmed to learn math, English, and science for the bulk of our education. But what if our interests lie elsewhere? I think that’s why the US has such a high depression rate. Many people just become these robots and get caught up in a life they never wanted but just went on with it because that’s what everyone is doing.
I remember growing up with everyone telling me or my class in elementary, middle and high school you can grow up to be anything you want. Not only that but you will be successful. But what they didn’t say is you will only be successful if you go to college and get good scores on your ACTs. As a kid I remember all my friends and I were sort of pitted against each other to get better grades. This was all in preparation for college. Who says you have to go to college to be successful? College isn’t for everyone.
The idea of America suffering because of plenitude is a really great topic. I think it’s true for most of the population. I think many kids/students forget what it’s really like to earn something and feel good about it because our parents provided everything for us since we’re little. Growing up we go through so many material good that are forgotten an lost within a year. We’re constantly looking for the next upgrade and distraction because nothing is really that satisfying or earned.
I agree that television, movies, and the media in general have a big impact on our views of success and the way we should live our life. The jolts, shock, and fear with different camera angles and abruptness definitely affect a consumers view on things. But I think a lot of consumers forget that sometimes a movie is just a movie or reality TV is not so real after all. I don’t think that all jolts and shocks are bad. For pure entertainment purposes I think they’re wonderful for creating a lively experience.