Culture Jamming

In the chapter “Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertising” in Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising, Anthony John Paul Cortese describes a type of ad deconstruction he calls “subvertising”. According to Cortese, this type of advertising “overthrows or subverts mainstream ads” and “uses the power of brand recognition and brand hegemony either against itself or to promote an unrelated value or idea”. Cortese uses another phrase to describe this approach: culture jamming.

Author and cultural critic, Mark Dery describes the origins of the term and concept of culture jamming in his book Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs (available for free on his web site under a Creative Commons license). Dery describes the early uses of the phenomenon, beginning in 1984, using phrases like “media sabatoge”, “guerrilla warfare”, “artistic terrorists”, “vernacular critics”, and “the joyful demolition of oppressive ideologies”.  A Google image search result for culture jamming includes a variety of examples. The Wooster Collective web site, described as a site “dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed in streets and cities around the world” includes more such images.

Culture jamming has been and continues to be used as an alternative to mainstream advertising images that support racism, sexism and other power hierarchies. In an article published by the Center for Civic Engagement, the authors describe an interview with Kalle Lasn, one of the founders of Adbusters: “For Lasn, the best culture jam is one that introduces a meta-meme, a two-level message that punctures a specific commercial image, but does so in a way that challenges some larger aspect of the political culture of corporate domination.”

Advertisers continue to seek out ways to learn more about what appeals to consumers. Neuromarketing is a growing field where in which companies try to learn more about the connections between visual images, the subconscious, and desire. This video below shows the brain’s response to a highly-rated VW television advertisement:

Some scholars in psychology have done research on the impact of logos on our brains and consumers’ decisions. Even babies can’t escape attempts to market to them; according to a September 2011 article in Adweek, babies are a new demographic that marketers are “hell-bent” on reaching. One effect of culture jamming is to interrupt the connections our brain makes with a logo or iconic brand image. For example, the following images force the viewer to see a familiar image differently.

Image Credit: http://raxraxrax.com/2009/03/31/culture-jammin/

Image Credit: http://yourstrulyak.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/more-culture-jamming-amusing-photos/

If one of the intentions of advertising is to create a positive emotional response to a particular brand, it would make sense that culture jamming would cause some emotional dissonance by associating something negative with a brand. This ideas I reminiscent of Bell Hooks’ idea of spectatorship as resistance, of actively resisting “the imposition of dominant ways of knowing and looking”. While most images of culture jamming on the internet are focused on consumerism and corporations, there are a few that have issues of sexism in mind. The following is one example.

Image credit: http://wsjigsaw-wsd.blogspot.com/2007/09/fashion-industry-made-me-slave-to-my.html

There are others that are focused on manipulating a brand image and and more on just directly pointing out sexist advertising. The following images are much like the "Rape" stickers placed below the word "Stop" on stop signs in the U.S.

Image Credit: http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/tag/objectification-of-women/

Image Credit: http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/tag/objectification-of-women/

Many of these culture jams point out the objectification of women that Jean Kilbourne highlights in her criticisms of advertising (in "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising" for example). The following two images portray a fairly direct criticism of women as things.

Image Credit: http://femaletalk.com/news/feminist-culture-jamming

Image Credit: http://wins.failblog.org/2010/11/07/culture-jamming-graffiti-treat-her-like-the-object-she-is/

Culture jamming can be an effective way to change the positive feelings consumers associate with certain brand images. Culture jams also can point out incidents of sexism. It's interesting that there's isn't more culture jamming that focuses on sexism, racism and homophobia. As advertising becomes and more present, more opportunities for culture jamming arise.