Culture critical
by Ben Winters
"Manifesto" is strong enough a word to describe the tone and intentions of "Culture Jam," but it isn't broad enough. This extended essay by Kalle Lasn, the supremely disgruntled Canadian publisher of Adbusters magazine, is more of a multi-festo, a many-festo: You name the aspect of our fin de siecle existence, and Lasn will tell you what's corroded about it.
Lasn lashes out against the psychic effects of ubiquitous background noise (negative), the policy ramifications of neo-classical economics (very, very negative), the massive role that the massive corporations are playing in modern life (massively negative). Lasn is the Magellan of wrath: Not content to direct his anger at one facet of our cultural geography, he ranges over the whole bleak landscape, planting flags of pissed-offedness wherever he comes to port. In a scant 200 pages, Lasn proves himself a living encyclopedia of radical discontent.
On automobiles: "I don't like the way cars, over the last half century, have eroded our sense of village and the vitality of our neighborhoods." On big money: "Corporations, these legal fictions that we ourselves created two centuries ago, now have more rights, freedoms and powers than we do."
As evidenced in the above, Lasn is fond of the first and third persons, suggesting a certain desire to be seen as a spokesman, a movement leader. That movement is the Culture Jammers; as described in the book, they're descendants of the Situationists of mid-century France. Like that group, Culture Jammers desire to seize control of "the way meaning is produced in our society" from big business and the mass media. The first battle, Lasn explains, came when he made a documentary short about deforestation and couldn't find any TV station that would air it, even as a paid advertisement. He's since formalized this effort: "TV jamming," the art of creating short film pieces and fighting to get them on TV next to sleek ads for Banana Republic and Volkswagen, "is a win-win strategy: If you are able to buy time and get your ad aired, you win... if the networks refuse to sell you airtime, you publicize the fact."
Some of Lasn's ideas for fighting the culture war are less appealing, but what's nice about "Culture Jam" is that it at least is full of solutions, not just complaints. One can agree or not with Lasn's diagnosis and his planned cure for North American culture, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore the symptoms.
"Culture Jam"
by Kalle Lasn
Eagle Brook, $25, 251 pages
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.