Culture jamming, or sniggling, is the act of using existing mass media to comment on those very media themselves, using the original medium's communication method. It is based on the idea that advertising is little more than propaganda for established interests, and that there is little escape from this propaganda in industrialized nations. Culture jamming's intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art's sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable.
The phrase "culture jamming" comes from the idea of radiojamming: that public frequencies can be pirated and subverted for independent communication, or to disrupt dominant frequencies. The Situationist International first made the comparison to radiojamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within the dominant culture. (Kalle Lasn, the founder of AdBusters magazine, wrote a book entitled Culture Jam, but the term predates his title.)
Billboard modifications, done in the style of the original billboard.
The appropriation of corporate logos for evangelical purposes. Christian groups have appropriated the 'Cover The Earth' logo of the Sherwin-Williams paint company, and modified the Coca-Cola trademark to read, 'Jesus, he's the real thing.'
Modifying slogans to create political statements. For example "Just do it... or else!" was used as a modified slogan to comment on Nike's alleged sweat shop practices.
Google bombing, a widespread effort to purposely influence the automated association of specific keywords with results produced by internet search engines, especially Google. One practice of this has been associate the names of public figures and public institutions with humiliating and denigrating keywords, such as the phrase, 'miserable failure (http://www.google.com/search?q=miserable+failure),' which, when typed into Google, yields the White House biography of U.S. President George W. Bush. The title of Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 was later also connected to the term in the same way. When entered into google, Rick Santorum's name comes up to website dedicated to spreading the neologismsantorum, which was penned by sex advice columnist Dan Savage. Technically, Google bombing works because the hyperlink has the address of the target, with the text being the keyword that the Googlebomber wants to have associated with the target.
The Who's classic 1967 album The Who Sell Out, featuring satirical faux commercials on the cover and between the tracks.
The band Negativland's Dispepsi album, in which recordings related in some way to soft drinks are used to comment (in a negative way) on the beverage industry and its marketing practices.
The Church of Satan's ad featuring founder Anton Szandor LaVey holding a snake in the style of Apple Computer's "Think Different" campaign.
The producers of culturejamming, if we think of actors such as those from the magazine adbusters, for example, who partly have day jobs in the advertising industry to carry on their deconstructions at night, profit from the fact that they are successful in the logic of the predominate attention economy: they hit a "nerve".
If the culturejammers want to communicate "oppositional readings" of advertising too, they are assured of the respect of the advertising technicians, to the extent that an attention kick promising to animate the market like a new drug is admirable.
The incipient rule-breaking in the act of culturejamming, whether it is an aesthetic or social intervention in "alien material", is not a technique that is limited to the actors of culturejamming.
It is as though the frozen ritualisms of advertising technique were suddenly brought to life through the intervention of culturejammers and become "uncanny" in the Freudian definition of the term: the alienation points to the familiar that has been left out of everyday experience, the experience of public space blocked by advertising.
It has been demonstrated that the surprise coups of the culturejammers first attain significance as political intervention, when their social use is designed to penetrate into fields that are "obedient" to advertising technique.
In this sense, the culturejammers' intervention is also to be seen, in addition to the communication of an alternative political message, primarily as an attack on the "sacred" facts of the consumer society.
Feeds |
Contact