102 oppositional, xvii Culture Jammer’s Campaign Head- quarters, three one lifestyle jamming: assertiveness teaching workshop for, 145-155 as direct action, 129-136 as moral critical, xv residing in the instant and, 106 manifesto of, 128 overviews of, xvi-xvii, one one 1-1 13 practitioners of, xi-xii, 111-112 in innovative continuum, 99 social possible of, 135-136 as halting the movement of spectacle, 107 «culture of simulation,» forty six Culture Trust, 1 fourteen «slice,» a hundred seventy five cyberfeminists, 117 cyberjamming, 132-133 cyberspace, see Internet cynicism, xv-xvi, 25, 141, 143,211 Dadaists, 99,100,102 Daly, Herman, 89, 206 Debord, Guy: on revolution, xvi suicide of, 102, a hundred and five writings of, 102-103, 104, 106, 214 Declaration of Independence, sixty six Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 186 demarketing, 124, 149-150, 164, 165-183 description of, 166-167 detourningmd, 168 uncooling and, 169-183 democracy, 185, 188 «democracy of wrong motivation,» 104 260 Index Denver, Colo., 194 Denver, John, 34 «depatterning» experiments, 19 melancholy, 9, 10 derivatives, 93 derive, 102-103 detournement, 108, 146,214 definition of, xvii, 103 demarketing and, 168 understanding to, 147-148 subvertising as, 131-132 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), 6 Diana, Princess, 39-40 Diesel denims, 23 Diet for a Small Planet (Lappe) ,172 direct motion, 129-136 acquiring leverage details for, 130-131 pincer technique for, 134-136 subvertising as, 131-132 television and, 133-134 disinformation, 24 Disney, 186, 193 dissociative issues, forty four distancing, 172-174 Dominguez, Joe, 169 doomsday meme, 124 Doordarshan, 25 Douglas,WilliamO.,68 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 93-94 downshifters, 53, 169-172 Dunn, Seth, 179 Dylan, Bob, 102 Earth summits, 116 Eastern Europe, 90-92 taking in issues, seventy three ecocide, xiv ecofeminists, 117 ecological economics, 86-90, 202-203 Ecology of Commerce, The (Hawken), 154 ecology of thoughts, 9-27 advertising and, 18-21 environmental motion of the thoughts and, 26-27 erosion of empathy and, 22-23 details overload and, 23-24 infotoxins and, 24-25 jolts and, 15-17,22 media-induced shock and, 17-18 psychological ecosystem and, 1 3 noise and, 13-15, sixteen psychological ailments and, 9-10 quantifying outcomes of psychological pollution on, 16-17 unreality and, 21-22 economics, see global financial system «eco-rage,» 141 eco taxes, 181 education, 189 Eisner, Michael, 140 electricity meters, a hundred thirty Elgin, Duane, 169 «emoticons,» forty six empathy, erosion of, 22-23 Enrages, 213 environmental problems, xiv, one 3, 26, 82, 203 academics and, 115-1 sixteen ecological economics and, 86-90 Nobel Prizewinners’ warning about, 201 radical remedies required for, 112 environmental foyer, 153 environmental movement, xi for mental pollution, 26-27 E.R., 169 Ernst and Young, ninety three Esquire, 44 Estonia, 33 EX, 38 European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), 70 Evans, Ga., 70 excellence, 113 exotic dancers, 75-76 expansionist economics, 86-88, 94, 202-203 Extra, 118 Exxon, 158 Exxon Valdez, 88-89, 203 Fashion File, 178 vogue sector, xi Adbusters critique of, 3 one uncoolingof, 131, 175-179 Index 241 fast food items, 78, 79, 131, 133, 150-152 uncoolingof, 172-175 faxes, 147 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 187, 189, 193, 194 Federal Reserve, 94 Feldstein, Martin, 209 feminism, xi, one 17-1 eighteen fight-or- flight reaction, fifteen movie commune, 29 Finch, Peter, 141 First Amendment, 194, 196-197 «flaming,» forty four foods, 78-80 chemical additives in, 13, 78-79 cigarette business ownership of, 151 see also quick foodstuff «Forests Forever,» 30-31 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Mander), 15 Fox Tv, 70 «framing,» 44-45 France, xvi, 102,186,213 Frank, Tom, 114 free speech, 68, 185-186, 187, 194-196 Freud,Sigmund,212 Gablik,Suzi,117 Galbraith,J.K.,213 Gandhi, M. K., xv Gap (store), 102 Garfield, Bob, 22, 176 GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 88-90, 91, 112,203 General Electric, 158, 186 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), ninety Germany, 89, 90 Gibson, William, 24 Ginsberg, Allen, 118 Gitter, Richard, 32 worldwide economic system, 71, 85-96 as doomsday meme, 124 expansionist vs.
6-7 Adbusters, 31, 117, 119 Adbusters Media Foundational CBCsuedby, 194-196 magazine and web page of, 3 one television campaigns of, 31-33, 56, 58, 62,95, 126, 142, 170, 177, 193,206,207 web page of, 132 A.d.i.d.a. s (All Day I Dream About Suicide), 1 fifteen advertisers, media power of, 33-35 advertising and marketing, 18-21, 22-23, 24, one 19, 166, 167, a hundred seventy five subvertising and, 131-132, 133-134 television prices for, 184 Advertising Age, 22, 176 «advertrocities,» 22-23 Alabama, 155, 160-161 Albania, 90-92, ninety four alcoholism, 9, ten Allen, Woody, 22, 52 Alternative Economics Committee, 208 ambient sounds, 13-14 America™, 146,215 interesting and, 113-114 corporate control of, xii-xiii world-wide impact of, xiv uncooling of, xvi-xvii unofficial heritage of, 65-71 American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), 187 American Convention on Human Rights, 186 American Dream, end of, 59-63 American Medical Association ( AMA), 188 America’s Funniest Home Videos, 37 Amusing Ourselves to Death (Postman), 24 «Anarchy in the U.K.,» 100 anger, xv, 12, 139 «anti-language,» 2 1 antitrust legislation and lawsuits, 67, 193 anxiousness, 9 Apple, 102 Areata, Calif., 161 Archer Daniels Midland, 34, 172 Asian «tiger» economies, 94 Asphalt Nation (Holtz), eighty two Australia, 20,21 authenticity, «kidnapping» of, 101 car market, 82-83 «Autosaurus» tv campaign, 31, 126 Ayres, Robert, 88 Babette’s Feast, 79-80 «bads,» 89 Baffler, 114 lender charters, 67 banking companies, disputes with, 148 Banks, Ferdinand, ninety Barings Bank, 93 Barnes & Noble, 34 «batwing dysfunction,» 75 Baudrillard, Jean, 40 Beatles, 101 Beattie, Ann, 44-45 Beatty, Jennifer, 70 «beautiful functions,» 6-7 Before Sunrise, 102 Bellow, Saul, 10-11 Benetton, 22-23, 26 Bentley, David, twenty 238 Index Berisha, Sali, 92 Bertelsmann, 186 Bestfoods, 20 Beverly Hills Bar Association, 197 bicycles, bicycle lanes, 179, one hundred eighty Big Enemies, a hundred and five Bill of Rights, sixty eight bioeconomics, 86-90, 202-203 Bird by Bird (Lamott), 4-5 Black, Conrad, twenty five Black Friday, 94 Black Monday, 93, ninety four «black shakes,» 24 Blanton, Brad, 143 body graphic, 12, 73-74, seventy five Boeing, 79 Bonn, 213 Borderline Personality Disorder, 9 boredom, a hundred and five Boston, Mass., 193 Boston Tea Party, sixty six bovine development hormone, 70 boycotts, 158, 163 Bradbury, Ray, 169 mind, one sixteen brainwashing, 19 Brando, Marlon, 139 Brave New World (Huxley), 197-198 «breaking the old syntax,» 107 Brennan, William J., a hundred and sixty British Columbia, 30-3 one British East India Company, 66 British Petroleum, 179 Brown, Willie, 179 Buddhism, 11, 106, 107, 108, 143, 157, 191 Bulgaria, ninety bulimia, 73 Bunkyo University, 157 «Buy Nothing Day,» 32, 33, 62, 95, one 32, one hundred seventy Byrne, David, 52 CAA (Canadian Advertising Association), 187 California, 4-6, 161 Calvin Klein, 23, 131, 175-179 Cameron, Ewen, 19 Cameron, Mike, 70 Canada, 25, 75,92,119,178 Canadian Advertising Association (CAA), 187 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 29, 31, 32, 194-196 Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), 30, 187,193, 194 capitalism, customer, see client capitalism Cargill, 172 Carnegie Mellon University, 46 Carpenter, Edmund, forty five cars and trucks, 80-83,131,133 uncoolingof, 179-181 Carson, Rachel, 26 «cashing out,» 169 Catholic Church, 103 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), 29, 31, 32, 194-196 CBS, 32,33,35,196 censorship, 1 19 Center for Psychology and Social Change, six Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 19 CFAX, 190-191 channel-surfers, fifteen online Adult chat rooms teams, on Internet, 43-44 Chicago, University of, 209 little ones, television’s outcomes on, 3-4, 12 China, 94, 115, 192,211 Christianity, 212 Christie, Linford, 20 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, nine Chrysler, 35 cigarette providers, 119, 131, 151, 160-161 uncoolingof, 13, 125-127 citizens’ groups, 134-135 civil disobedience, xv civil legal rights motion, xi, 155, 21 1 Civil War, U.S., 67-68, 69 Clinton, Bill, 192 Clockwork Orange, A, one 1-12 CNBC, 188 CNN, 32, 95, 133,178,186 Index 239 Cobain, Kurt, 52 Cobb, John, 89 Coca-Cola, 21, 25, 39, 70, 79, 174 «Coke Day,» 70 Coleman, Ronald, 89 higher education college student apathy, one fifteen «commodity indicator benefit,» 40 communism, 140 Condon, Richard, forty confronting companies, 149-150 Congress, U.S., 159 Constitution, U.S., 68, 161 customer capitalism, xvi, 106, 140 cartoon about, 36 as cult, 51-57 diminished anticipations and, 51-52 flavor fading from, 212 programming of buyers in, 37-41 uncoolingof, 169-172 unethical mother nature of, xv interesting, 38,63, 106,212,215 company manufacture of, xiii cynicism and, xv-xvi definitions of, one 13-1 14 as international phenomenon, xiv see also uncooling corporate trusts, sixty nine businesses, 73-83 evolution of, 66-71 grounding of, 157-163 authorized «personhood» of, 68-69, 124, 157, 161 lawful obligation of, 158-160 political and cultural ability of, xii-xiii, xvii, 67-7 1,145 revoking charters of, 160-163, 162 seizing regulate from, 145-155 social deal in between buyers and, 76-78 «corrections,» in stock current market, ninety three cortex of brain, 116 Cosio d’Arroscia, one hundred Costanza, Robert, 206 Council for Tobacco Research, a hundred and sixty crime premiums, sixty CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Commission), 30, 187, 193, 194 Cruise, Tom, 38 Crystal Cruises, 34 culthood, shopper capitalism and, 51-57 lifestyle: corporate management of, xiii, xvii excellence and, 113 global homogenization of, 25-26 lateral vs.
And then we keep the networks’ toes to the fire.» Grossman is evidence that a dedicated unique can climb the lad- der of truth of the matter, but his dilemma points to a disturbing absence of democracy at the heart of our mass media. Nor is Tv violence the only issue much too taboo for the networks to contact. Think of Tv addiction, arguably North America’s variety one mental wellbeing difficulty. Or unsustainable overconsumption by the affluent folks of the First World. When is the last time you saw a network demonstrate (or a citizen-manufactured advocacy advertisement) on these subjects? Here’s the stage: The ideas, expressions and problems of unique citizens no extended issue quite significantly. Culture is not developed from the bot- tom up by the persons any more — it is fed to us top-down by corpora- tions. Under existing disorders, genuine discussion is difficult. Real democracy is impossible. Real alter is impossible. Media Carta is a media reform movement to acquire back the cultural energy to which all citizens are entitled — to reclaim our airwaves and one hundred ninety Culture Jam the relaxation of our psychological ecosystem so that we can begin telling our have tales and find out how to talk to each individual other yet again. Occasionally, we get a glimpse of how this new paradigm may function. In December 1996, the worst snowstorm in a century hit the Pacific Northwest. In Victoria, British Columbia, dwelling to Canada’s mildest weather (imagine Seattle with half the rain), 5 ft of snow fell. A useless relaxed settled over the paralyzed city. Victoria was about as well prepared for this as Troy was for the Greeks. The town had only a couple of snow- plows. For times, no automobiles moved. People were trapped in their residences. Virtually no shops were being open up since the staff could not get to work. The brave ventured out, pulling materials on sleds. A town of 300,000 was effectively plunged back to pre-Industrial Revolution days. I mention this simply because a fascinating media story grew out of that storm. What occurred at a community radio station identified as CFAX emerged as an case in point of the opportunity use (and long-forgotten earlier use) of general public airwaves as a democratic medium. A few of CFAX workforce who experienced been marooned in the constructing by the snow determined to open up up a variety of jungle telegraph of emergency info. Any citizens who could trudge to the station were being place on the air, to convey to the city what they had witnessed out there: some- one desired aid in saving a greenhouse on the Island Highway. An old few was stranded and in trouble on Pandora Avenue. A relatives har- tedious two dozen refugee motorists in Fernwood was managing out of meals. Soon anyone knew that CFAX (and, to a lesser extent, the Inter- web) was the source of breaking information, shipped by personal sets of eyes and ears. Every newscast contained information beneficial to some- one. Every broadcast, in the widest feasible perception, served the community desire. It struck many Victorians that this was the way the environment was meant to function. The non-public voices that arrived more than the Victoria air- waves may well not have been broadcasting-school sleek, but they rang with the clarity of the authentic. They weren’t flacking some tale that com- mercial passions required to propagate. They experienced anything to convey to and Media Carta 191 almost nothing to market. The citizens responded. Isolated people suddenly felt aspect of the more substantial chain in the Buddhist sense, anyone turned enlightened. The CFAX case is of course a exclusive a single — you could not repeat it, wouldn’t want to repeat it, on a national scale. But it does incorporate the essence of what we are seeking to reclaim right here. Victorians never felt a lot more component of a local community than they did all through that storm, when, for a quick time, the media fulfilled a social agenda and everyone’s two cents have been welcome and equal. I ponder how lots of of all those men and women, when the snow had melted and their life experienced returned to typical and the professional pap was back again on the air, appeared at radio — or media in common — in another way. I surprise if any of them imagined, This is the way our mass media could be if they experienced taken a diverse evolutionary fork in the street. I instructed the CFAX tale to a close friend of mine who plays devil’s advocate to many of my thoughts. «So what is actually your place?
When a jury sees the unassailable evidence, we have gained.» Grossman imagines a team of individuals who have currently been victimized in a substantial-profile incident like the just one in Jonesboro banding alongside one another and launching an motion that merely can not be dismissed. «Parents of the shooter and the mothers and fathers of the victims have to equally concur that just one of the criminals right here is the Tv networks. You do have your rights, but you are not able to diminish their legal rights in buy to implement yours.» I informed him I imagined my appropriate to speak out on Tv was rather standard, provided that these are general public airwaves that legally belong to all people. «I feel that is a fiction,» he stated. «The air may belong to you, but not the studios and broadcasting facilities of ABC. » I positioned a contact to one more attorney, this time a substantial-profile Los Angeles media lawyer and previous president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association, who turned out to be similarly circumspect. «Networks have the appropriate to quality manage,» he said. «They have a appropriate to say, ‘We will not likely carry a concept that would be offen- sive to the other sponsors, because we never want to reduce people sponsors.'» That’s the way it all boils down: The broadcaster’s right to run a commercial enterprise stands in direct opposition to my appropriate to freedom of speech. I was on the lookout for an advocate who believed that my bring about — the trigger of the individuals — experienced at the very least equal advantage. The Beverly Hills lawyer gave me the selection of a different attorney to try out, and he cordially hung up. The hunt for the First Amendment grail carries on. Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only people who are regularly and intelligently on the place can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic methods. A soci- ety, most of whose customers invest a great offer of their time not on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and cleaning soap 198 Culture Jam opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will obtain it hard to resist the encroachments of these who would manipulate and command it. Aldous Huxley was on the mark in the foreword of his revised 1946 version of Brave New World, which potentially much more than any other get the job done of twentieth-century fiction predicted the psychological local climate of our wired age. One can draw an uncomplicated parallel in between «soma» — the pleasure drug issued to citizens of Brave New World — and the mass media as we know them nowadays. Both keep the masses tranquilized and pacified, and retain the social buy. Both chase out explanation in favor of entertain- ments and disjointed thought. Both stimulate uniformity of conduct. Both devalue the previous in favor of sensory pleasures now. Unlike the people today in Orwell’s 1984, who resent being controlled by Big Brother but truly feel powerless to resist, residents of Huxley’s realm will- ingly participate in their manipulation. They fortunately just take soma. They’re in the loop, and, by God, they appreciate it. The pursuit of joy becomes its possess finish — there is certainly countless consumption, free of charge sex and excellent temper management. The folks are enraptured. They imagine they dwell in Utopia. Only you, the reader (and a few of «imperfect» figures in the guide who by some means ended up with genuine personalities) know it can be Dystopia. It’s a hell that can only be regarded by these outside the house the sys- tem. Our possess dystopia, too, can only be detected from the outside — by «outsiders» who for some unusual motive did not watch far too substantially Tv when they have been younger who browse a several excellent textbooks, met a number of great people, invested some time living in other cultures, and by some lucky twist of fate have been not seduced by The Dream and recruited into the con- sumer cult of the insatiables. Although most of us are nevertheless stuck in the cult, our taste for soma is souring. Through the haze of produced joy, we are acknowledging that we must cease the clearly show, that our only escape is to halt the move of soma, to break the conversation cartel’s monopoly on the produc- tion of that means. Media Carta 199 Media Carta is the good human-rights battle of our information and facts age — a wonderful individual, mental, social, cultural and lawful examination. The infrastructure for this battle is now in put. Culture jammers all around the planet are preparing for the showdown. In the early several years of the new millennium, we will spearhead a media reform motion to enshrine the right to communicate as a elementary human correct in the constitutions of all no cost nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We will help you save the most precious of all our natural means: the peace and clarity of our personal minds. REDEFINING Progress Fifteen hundred eminent researchers, like the greater part of all dwelling Nobel Prizewinners, signed a Warning to Humanity in 1992, and fifty- 8 world academies of science launched a equivalent doc in 1994, warning that the human experiment on Planet Earth is veering out of regulate. Population expansion, overconsumption, inappropriate techno- rational programs and relentless economic growth are destroying the daily life-support devices on which our upcoming is dependent. Meanwhile, strangely, our politicians, economists and company leaders are sporting banana grins. «We’re expanding,» they beam. «We’re putting up additional factories, advertising more goods, making much more prosperity than ever before in the record of mankind.» Never-ending substance growth is the cornerstone of our recent financial system. There’s no this sort of point as a zero-development design within its framework. In reality, nothing at all significantly but materials development seriously mat- ters, economists have decreed. And nonetheless, continual progress in finite terrain is the ideology of the most cancers mobile. It’s insanity. It’s a madness propagated 20-4 hrs a working day by the company-managed mass media, which are structurally 202 Culture Jam incapable of featuring us the root-trigger analyses of our existing predica- ment. So we are caught hoping to reconcile potent mixed messages. For most of us the financial system stays a mysterious summary procedure. As with our microwave oven, we really don’t know how it will work and we don’t really want to know. We just retain pushing buttons and warm dinners continue to keep com- ing out. We consider of markets owning their individual guidelines that we split at our peril. And we assume that economists are uncovered researchers who, with their arcane but irrefutable logic, are someway taking care of the full affair. The real truth is that we have handed our ecological and economic perfectly-staying more than to an elite group of professional policymakers who have, at most effective, only a obscure idea of what they are carrying out. Their «scientifi- cally» managed cycles of «expansion» and consumption are wiping out the pure earth, while if you place it to them that way, they would deny it. Their concept of «progress» is to market off the planet’s irreplaceable normal funds and contact it money — however they would deny that also. Is there a way out of this social lure — this crisis of meaning? The economics profession is not going to confess its models are flawed. First World people continue being blissfully unaware of the havoc wrought by their lifestyles. The business broadcast media will never offer airtime for citizen-made wake-up phone calls. Governments refuse to acknowledge the astronomical ecological credit card debt we have presently accrued to foreseeable future gen- erations. Most every person is in denial. Deep down, we all «know» the earth is dying, but nobody needs to talk about it. Of program there are ways to get the dialogue heading — techniques for jamming the worldwide economy back on to a sustainable path. First, we eliminate all the economists (figuratively speaking). We establish that inspite of the almost religious deference culture extends to them, they usually are not untouchable. We challenge their authority, dilemma their creden- tials. We start a world wide media marketing campaign to discredit them. We show how their economic versions are essentially flawed. We expose their «science» as a harmful pseudoscience. We ridicule them on Tv. We enlist our very own, similarly embellished ecological economists to debate them Redefining Progress 203 point for point. We pop up in sudden places like on the local busi- ness information, on professional breaks throughout the midnight motion picture and ran- domly on nationwide key time. At the exact time, we lay a lure for the G-7 leaders. Our marketing campaign paints them as Lear-like figures, deluded kings unaware of the harm their deepening insanity is performing. We demand to know why the problem of overconsumption in the First World is not even on their agenda. In the weeks foremost up to their annually summit meeting, we obtain radio and Tv places on stations around the earth that dare our leaders to answer the Big Question: «Is Economic ‘Progress’ Killing the Planet?