Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge--And Why We Must (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Imagine that you are a member of a typical postmodern family, living in a typical house, in a typical neighborhood, in a typical North American..." (more)
Key Phrases: meme warfare, meme wars, global automakers, New York, Philip Morris, Calvin Klein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

America is no longer a country but a multimillion-dollar brand, says Kalle Lasn and his fellow "culture jammers". The founder of Adbusters magazine, Lasn aims to stop the branding of America by changing the way information flows; the way institutions wield power; the way television stations are run; and the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music, and culture industries set agendas. With a courageous and compelling voice, Lasn deconstructs the advertising culture and our fixation on icons and brand names. And he shows how to organize resistance against the power trust that manages the brands by "uncooling" consumer items, by "dermarketing" fashions and celebrities, and by breaking the "media trance" of our TV-addicted age.

A powerful manifesto by a leading media activist, Culture Jam lays the foundations for the most significant social movement of the early twenty-first century -- a movement that can change the world and the way we think and live.

About the Author

Featured in the PBS documentary Affluenza, Kalle Lasn, whose documentaries have been broadcast on PBS, CBC, and around the world, has won 15 international awards, and has been profiled in Time. As publisher of Adbusters magazine and founder of Media Foundation and Powershift Advertising Agency, Lasn has launched social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week. He and his wife, Masako Tominaga, make their home in Vancouver, Canada.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (November 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688178057
• ISBN-13: 978-0688178055
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #141,936 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

132 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I Hope This Is Part One, July 23, 2002

By	Kevin L. Nenstiel "omnivore" (Kearney, Nebraska) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

If you're looking at this book, chances are you've already come to the conclusion that there's something deeply, seriously wrong with modern American culture. Community is disrupted, economic principles favor the wealthy few over the working many, and government is unresponsive to our demands. The environment is in freefall, education is a joke, and you can't talk to your loved ones because they're too damn busy watching the idiot box. Now you want to do something about it.

This book consistently fails to tell you how.

For the greatest part of the book, public-interest advocate Kalle Lasn holds forth on the problems with our society, from the small (mindless TV addiction) to the medium-sized (allowing fashion companies to dictate our ideals of beauty) to the monumental (destructive, unsustainable economic practices). All this is useful, enlightening stuff to know, but let's be frank, we wanted to read this book because we already had an idea of these facts. Now we want some ideas of what to do about it.

The subtitle on the front cover promises to tell you "How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge." Good luck finding that. Lasn is fond of patting himself on the back for his past efforts in that direction, but he doesn't really tell the reader what an individual, with an individual's budget of money and time, can really do. He says something at one point about things that can be done, but he speaks of really big options. Take media conglomerates to the World Court? If I had that kind of budget and know-how, I wouldn't be reading this book, now would I?

In giving us the detailed information on the flaws of society, we are having the gaps in our knowledge filled in, and that's handy. However, by telling us what's wrong and not what to do about it, it's as though we're being given bullets without a gun. This book is excellent if you're looking for a position piece, an explanation of what Lasn thinks and why, and of course that's always helpful. However, if you actually want to weigh in and suggest what somebody could do about it, you're woefully on your own. Here's hoping this is simply Volume One and more information will be coming later. However, it's been three years without a follow-up. It looks like us would-be revolutionaries are on our own from that side.

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fighting MTV While Becoming MTV, December 23, 2002

By	James Schulze - See all my reviews

I nearly jumped out of my chair while reading the first few pages of this book. No one had expressed the current state of the American mental environment or the break-down of personal and family relationships as well as Lasn had. There is nothing quite like the feeling of thinking you were isolated in your opinions, and then realize that someone else believes passionately in the same things. Lasn's descriptions of a media-saturated world in which family life has become a dull joke, where self-esteem is in a constant state of assault by advertisers, and our culture is being stolen are very, very powerful. Unfortunately, Lasn ultimately fails in his search for meaningful ways to deal with these issues.
For starters, I found myself cringing slightly when he used the phrase "Culture Jammers" to describe those who participate in anti-media action. For someone who wants to "uncool" America, that phrase is a little, well, *cool*. Even if I did paint over billboards, I'd never want to be labelled a "Jammer." Isn't labelling part of the problem?
Lasn also despises television and it's numbing parade of images and commercials, yet he combats this by...making more commercials? He speaks of "meme wars," but television memes are inherently hollow and disposable, and I fear the more Lasn tries to participate in the logo and opinion-in-less-than-30-seconds culture we've gotten ourselves into, the more anti-media activism will be reduced to, ironically, another media fad.
Ultimately what Lasn doesn't touch on enough are the personal solutions to these problems. Turning off the television and the CD walkman are a lot harder than I thought, but in the end it feels great to minimize those things in one's daily life. Most importantly, I'd like to see Lasn encourage silence instead of shouting, writing over soundbytes, and individualism over labels. In a nutshell, he should turn off the television instead of being part of it.
I do not mean to come down too hard on Lasn. I greatly admire the work being done through Adbusters, and the messages it is sending out. Nor do I believe that media exposure for these issues should be frowned upon. I just believe that rather than combating soundbytes with more soundbytes, as Lasn seems to suggest, that he resists the labelling and noise that we all have come to despise.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Raving review, February 10, 2003

By	Elissa Chasen (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews

If, for some reason, I was able to create a law whereby everyone was required to read the book Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn, I strongly believe that the world would be a better place. In his book, Lasn points out to his readers all of the errors that our society has made in the process of creating our culture.
He touches many of our culture's problems (consumption, poor body image, environmental issues) and examines how the media has had its affect on each of them. The media has become the people. By this, I mean the people live through "brands, products, fashions, celebrities, entertainments." These things "are our culture now. [The people's] role is mostly to listen and watch-and then based on what we have heard and seen, to buy (p. xiii)." The media has turned us into lean mean buying machines-always striving for the newest and the coolest item on the market (which isn't even cool until the media says so).
People have separated themselves from their natural environment, and now live mostly through a consumptive, technology based world. In many ways this impacts the environment negatively, but mostly because "If the Earth felt less like something out there and more like an extension of our bodies, we'd care for it like kin (p. 6)." With all of the problems in our natural environment, people still pretend not to acknowledge or care about it.
The way the media works, Lasn explains, is first by creating fear; fear of not fitting in, not being cool, fear of traveling to foreign places (terrorism), and fear of corruption. "Fear breeds insecurity-and then consumer culture offers us a variety of ways to buy our way back to security (p. 17)." The fear implanted on the people guides their actions everyday. People have become "mediated self-constructions (p. 44)" at the aid of our media. We don't have to think if the media shows us everything from how to fight with our friends to how to have sex with our lovers.
Lasn's book is about "wanting to live `not as an object but as a subject of the story' (p. 100)." He inspires the reader to create their own world and offers a variety of ways to help it along. If people were tuned in to how the media downplays one's own identity, perhaps they would turn off the TV and go outside for a walk or talk with a friend.
Lasn's book has been the most effective that I have read on this topic. He puts things into words that I had only scrambled thoughts of. He pulls the man out from behind the curtain and points his finger. "You are the cause of our suffering" he says to corporate America. He addresses old issues and concerns with a new twist. For example, instead of just fewer cars on the road, Lasn suggests to create "cities designed chiefly with pedestrians, bicycles, and public transport in mind. Not just new ecofriendly products, but new consumption patterns and new lifestyles (p. 112)."
Lasn says it all in a manner that demands the reader's attention, thus really getting his point across. The voice in the book becomes the voice of a charismatic speaker in the reader's mind. The book reads conversationally with the use of different literary devices. He uses repetition to create rhythm and really leave an impression on the reader.
Culture Jam really hit home for me. Everywhere I look, I relate the book to what I see. When I was reading it I couldn't put it down, and now that I've finished the book my mind still obsesses with it. The themes of the book are so prevalent in our culture- it's impossible to ignore.