Culture Jamming - Literature review Example

Culture Jamming Introduction Culture jamming is a tactic employed by several anti-consumerist social organizations or movements to subvert or disrupt the media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions comprising of corporate advertising. These movements purport to disclose domination methods of mass society to promote progressive change. Culture jamming is mostly perceived as a sort of subvertising. This is a portmanteau of subvert and advertising. It is the habit of developing parodies or spoofs of political and corporate advertisements. Several culture jams have an aim of exposing apparent debatable political assumptions at the back of commercial culture. The common tactics constitutes re-figuring logos and product images among other things, as a means of challenging the idea of what is good alongside the assumptions concerning the personal freedom of consumption. The following essay reviews literature on cultural jamming. Meanwhile, the biggest query is how to box with shadows. In simpler terms, the shape an engaged politics takes in an empire of signs. Discussion The answer to the above query, perhaps, lies in what is referred to as semiological guerrilla warfare, which was brought about by Umberto Eco. The message receiver appears to possess a residual freedom, the freedom to interpret it in various manners. He proposes that one medium can be used to communicate various opinions to other media. Consequently, some groups of communication guerrillas who would restore a vital dimension to passive reception would patrol the Technological Communication universe. He later takes a priori, visual literacy’s radical politics, an idea that is eloquently discussed by Stuart Ewen who is a critic of the consumer culture. He says that nowadays, the image has developed to a predominant form of public address. It eclipses all the existing forms of addressing the public in bringing out the meaning in a clear manner. Yet little in people’s understanding prepares them to formulate sense of the historical and rhetoric development or the social significance of those images within people’s lives. A society of electronic and light poltergeists calls for visually literate ghost busters (Soar 570). “Culture jammers” is a term referred to those practicing the illegal act of culture jamming, though the term is slang. By contrast, culture jamming is aimed against an ever instrumental and intrusive techno-culture, whose operant manner is the production of consent via symbol manipulation (Harold 191). The phrase “culture jamming” was initially employed by collage band Negativland to illustrate billboard alterations as well as other sorts of media sabotage. A band member once asserted that even being aware of the way the media affects their inner lives, people still tend to resist some proficiently reworked billboards that guides the public viewer to a contemplation of the previous corporate strategy (Sandlin & Milam 347). Partly artistic terrorists and partly critics of vernacular, culture jammers initiate noise into signals as it is transmitted from the transmitter to the receiver. They encourage idiosyncratic and unintended interpretations. Intruding on intruders, these jammers invest in advertisements and newscasts. They also invest in several other media artifacts that include subversive implications. Simultaneously, these jammers decrypt them and by this, they render their seductions impotent. These people present irrefutable evidence indicating that the right possesses no copyright on the war that is waged with simulations as well as incantations. Similar to the cultural cryptographers described by Ewen, these people refuse the task of the passive shoppers who renew the concept of the public discourse (Harold 210). Inveterate prankster Kennedy asserted that a large difference exists between the creative crime and the simple crime as kinds of expressions. The creative crime is rather uplifting to one’s soul. He states that abusing the mass media that generally sedates the public is a better technique to survive the anthill society (Downing 33). In various states like the US, the factory capitalism has been outdated by the information economy that is characterized by the decrease of work force to the introduction of computers that control the manufacturing processes. The industrial production engines have actually slowed, resulting to a phantasmagoric capitalism, which generates intangible commodities like the jingles, images and some financial transactions that are flickering through fiber optic bundles. Futurologists forecast that the flagship technology of the future might be virtual reality (Soar 587). In an elastic category, this habit constitutes numerous sub cultural practices. Such as outlaw computer hacking. This could be done with an intention of disclosing corporate or institutional wrongdoings. The other is textual poaching or slashing. Transmission jamming, which includes pirate radio as well as television broadcastings are possible modus operandi for culture jammers. The camcorders counter surveillance, whereby there is application of cheap consumer technologies to document brutality made by police or corrupt behaviors by the government, are also latent modus operandi for these jammers. There are also the media activisms, for instance, the cheery immolation of many televisions at the entrances of the CBS’s Manhattan offices (Chapman 34). A section of the protest, which was against the media bias, advocated for the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) at the era of the Gulf War. There is also the wrenching of the media, for instance, the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour’s disruptions in protest of the infrequent coverage of AIDS. A more convectional strain of this habit is the media watch projects, like the Paper Tiger Television, which generates segments that appraise critically the information industry. There is also the Deep Dish Television. Finally, there is the academy hacking. These are simply cultural studies that are performed outside the walls of universities mostly by insurgent intellectuals (Warner 29). Cultural jamming takes several guises. The more typical manifestations of cultural jamming are discussed below. Sniping and subvertising Subverting the dissemination as well as the production of the anti-ads that deflect various attempts of the Madison Avenues to convert the attention of the consumers in a certain direction could be regarded as a kind of jamming. It is like sniping. That is, illegal attacks on the public space by some operatives who are armed with brushes and posters. Adbusters, which is based in Vancouver, criticizes the consumer culture and enlivens its pages with some acid satires. Some people indicated that it is totally nonsense suggesting that the advertising campaigns have led to alcoholism as well as domestic battering (Ott & Mack 37). Media hoaxing The fine art of hoodwinking the journalists into wrapping some exclusively researched and elaborated stage deceptions is another form of culture jamming. Several conceptual con artists dramatize various dangers underlined in a press that fails to recall the differences between the public good as well as the bottom line. That is, between the obligations of enlightening and the need to entertain. Joey Skaggs, who is known for flimflamming the journalists, emphasizes the self-replicating and almost viral condition of the stories in the news in a wired universe. He states that the trick is to look for someone who does his newspaper coverage outside that region to come and run a story on an issue on sight unseen, then Xerox the story and consider it in a second mailing. The journalists observe that it has come out printed and feels that there is no need to conduct further research (Dery 49). Audio Agitprop Audio Agitprop is a more innocuous manifestation that employs digital samplers to actually deconstruct the media culture as well as challenge the copyright law. Likely suspects constitute the Sucking Chest Wound (Warner 36). Billboard Banditry This phenomenon motivated the coinage of the Negativland. The BUGAUP of Australia usually undertakes hit and run demotions and anti-promotions. They scrawled graffiti on liquor and cigarettes. The name of the group is actually an acronym for the Billboard-Utilizing Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions (Soar 592). Conclusion This essay has addressed the issue of tactical innovation in the repertoire of the culture jamming. Various approaches to the examinations of social movements and the contentious politics have attempted to refine dispositional accounts of action. Not all cultural producers or artists are culture jammers. Additionally, not all culture jammers possess advanced creative or experimental repertoires. The people, whose sociopolitical satire, as well as media criticism, in most cases had a sharp edge, applied this scheme of jamming to billboard banditry. Previously, jamming was a joke-y before advancing to the habit of disrupting conversations of other users with numerous nonsensical interjections. Works Cited Chapman, Roger. Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2010. Print. Dery, Mark. Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs. Westfield, NJ: Open Media, 1993. Print. Downing, John D. H. Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Los Angeles [etc.: Sage Publications, 2011. Print. Harold, C. “Planking Rhetoric: “Culture Jamming” as a Media Activism” Critical Studies in Media Communication,21.3. (2004). 189-211. Ott, Brian L, and Robert L. Mack. Critical Media Studies: An Introduction. Chichester, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Print. Sandlin, J. A. and Milam, J. L. “”Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”: Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as Critical Public Pedagogy”. Curriculum Inquiry, 38.3. (2008): 323-350. Print. Soar, M. “The First Things First Manifesto and the Politics of Cultural Jamming: Towards A cultural Economy of Graphic Design and Advertising”. Cultural Studies –Andover-, 16.4. (2002): 570-592. Print. Warner, J. “Political Culture Jamming: The Dissident Humor of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart””. Popular Communication, 5.1 (2007). 17-36. Print. Read More