Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I bought this book thinking it was going to briefly spell out what I already know--that our advertising-soaked world is toxic--and then get to the heart of the matter: what I personally could do to make my own life saner. It did not do that. It was mostly a diatribe against "the way the world is today" and how "things were better in the old days."

Well, hold the phone, because (a)Things aren't 100% hellish now and (b)The world is no worse than it ever was, it's just crummy in a different way. This is one great argument that IT IS IMPERATIVE TO KNOW YOUR HISTORY! So here goes:

Life up till the 1950s was not all one big back-to-nature love-in. Most people have been unable to build a fire without using matches since at least the Industrial Revolution. Nobody but an idiot would have drunk from a stream in the Middle Ages; the water was polluted (albeit with feces rather than mercury), and that's why they all guzzled ale instead. Life on the land basically meant you were one crop away from starvation and you worked yourself pretty much to death just to get by. And if you want to talk about long hours and fast paces, how about 7-year-olds toiling in textile factories and mines for 12 to 15 hours a day--less than a century ago?

Yes, we are inundated with advertising to a ridiculous degree. And yes, it breeds cynicism. And yes, the levels of noise and chatter have become deafening. These are Bad Things. But the book really doesn't give any positive steps for turning these things down in your own life...and I thought that was the point? I can bemoan the state of the world quite well on my own; what I want is some ideas other people have tried that worked. Like another reviewer, I'm hoping for a sequel that would deal with these things--plus not leave me so depressed I want to stick my head in the oven. Maybe it could be titled: *Okay, the Sky's Not Falling, Let's Lighten Up*?

I am a 22 year old University Dropout / Self-Employed Small Business Web Designer. This book took everything I ever felt about corporate North America and gave it a name. The hopeless feeling I used to experience while flipping past MuchMusic (MTV to our American counterparts) or cheesy (no pun intended) McDonald's commercials has now turned to rage with a strong sense of hope. Kalle Lasn presents the problems of our current corporately dominated culture and corresponding solutions in a clear and powerful way that is impossible to ignore. I read the entire book in one sitting because it was like my gut feeling left my body, went and wrote a book, published it, and then got my best friend to shove it under my nose until I finally read it. I now consider myself a soldier for the coming revolution. I will use all my power of web production, word of mouth, billboard liberation, bus and subway ad rearrangement, etc. to help the cause that will free our souls so we can get back to the real human experience as whoever created our universe intended.

P.S. To the person complaining about Kalle Lasn's notion that he shouldn't buy his favourite brand of peanut butter anymore, I really can't belive that you took post-secondary english and managed to completely miss the point of the book.

P.S.S. Please excuse the run on sentences.

I found it a bit ironic to be reading these ideas on a wad of pricey newsprint produced by corporate publishers and sold through a corporate book chain.

I went to adbusters.com. I didn't find the ideas from this book expressed on the web site ( though you can buy his products there).

IMHO it is pretty tough to start a revoloution, especially one based on changing the flow of information when you don't make such ideas freely available.

If the author means what he writes why isn't he on college campuses giving free lectures on this material and organizing campus groups?

If the author really believes in the message of this book I challenge him to make it freely available in downloadable and printable form from his web site.

Maybe this book is itself just another consumerist amusement.

I had bigger expectations for this book. I am familar with Kalle Lasn's Adbusters organization and agree with what they stand for. However, Lasn's attempts to start a revolution and change the world in this book are a laughable failure. Granted, he does have some good stuff early in the book about the pernicious effects on society caused by corporate propaganda and saturation marketing. Especially good are his descriptions on how this has caused low self-esteem in girls, aggression in teenagers, and the unhealthy sedentary lifestyle of modern Americans. I also enjoyed his section on dealing with telemarketers.

However, the book fails when Lasn tries to come up with ways to change the situation. First his inflammatory writing style with his use of adjectives like "chicken-ass", "lamebrained", and other attention-grabbers makes him guilty of some of the mass media behavior he's criticizing. Meanwhile, he fails to deliver any concrete ideas for changing the current situation, and can only give vague sloganeering like "take back our lives", "change the world", "rise up" and other vague polemics that sound like the ravings of a teenager who's mad that his parents won't let him go out on Saturday.

Worst yet is Lasn's use of a group called the Situationists as an inspiration for his hoped-for revolution. This group's only claim to fame was a few small riots in Paris in 1968. Their leader was trying to change society so there would be true intellectual freedom, and an economy where nobody would have to work and would spend their time discussing philosophical ideas. This man seemed to think he was already living in that world and refused to work, and begged off others instead. You can't live in your desired world until you have created it. The Situationists caused a little fuss then disappeared, though Lasn portrays them as a major revolutionary movement with society-shattering ideas. They weren't revolutionary, and neither is this book.

If you're interested in the effects that corporate propaganda has on our society and culture, and would like to learn about ways to possibly make a change, then I still recommend the work of Lasn's Adbusters organization. Go to their website and check it out, but read this book at your own peril.

Even though this book is only about five years old (published in 1999,) it reads like something of a relic from a bygone era. Lasn has a lot of good things to say - he targets cultural institutions and influences that are ripe and overdue for deflation and I will look for ways to contribute myself to the campaign that he's been waging. But he writes with the kind of populist idealism that doesn't always match up too well with our experience of reality. His predictions made throughout the book about a revolution about to break loose across the culture didn't really pan out too well.

Take this quote: "They (American consumers) will tire of the egocentric life of ungoverned consumption and the media hype that fuels it. When a stretch limo glides by in 2003, the pedestrian reflex won't be to peer through the smoked panes for the celebrity inside, but to curse and mock this ridiculous symbol of decadence and environmental harm."

Hmm, it doesn't seem to have really turned out that way now, has it? I know that a lot of people do get what he is saying and are living that way, but it seems like the "bling bling" culture is quite alive and well. That's not too surprising and I'm not even sure that Lasn really expected it to go away so quickly.

But if one can look beyond some of the dated premillennial (and pre-Bush, pre-9/11) enthusiasm, there is still a lot to recommend for anyone interested in getting a sharper insight into the problems of consumerism and mass-production/consumption that more or less define Western societies. His writing is easily digestible, not especially dense with jargon or unclarified assumptions, and punctuated with some good examples of his subversive takes on advertising.

For folks like me who were raised on Mad magazine and other forms of satirical nose-tweaking, Culture Jam takes us to the next step of deconstructing the brainwash we've been swimming in most of our lives and inspires us to exercise our own freedoms and potentials within the media outlets we have at our disposal. One has to be a bit naive and idealistic, as well as alienated from the mainstream, to appreciate a book like this, but that's not such a rare personality type these days. The key is to do something about it beyond just being an armchair griper.

I found Kalle Lasn's book to be a very good introduction on the topic of anti-consumerism. He points out what is wrong with the current Western way of life and gives very good reasons why we should actively seek change. This book gave me flashbacks to when i was a cubicle dwelling consumer drone. It also served as a good reminder to why i actively avoid that lifestyle now. It also motivates me to be a more active culture jammer, and help deconstruct other people's obsessions with labels, fashions, and other consumerist dreck. I found this book to be quite inspirational and an incredibly easy read. I gave it four stars because i found Naomi Klein's book No Logo to be more informative (and enjoyable) on the subject, although much longer and not as easy to read.

As my title indicates, Culture Jam is a very important book for our times. Not many people are happy these, days, and most people are quick to point out that there's just something "wrong" with the way the world works.

In Culture Jam, Lasn identifies many of the wrongs of the world in this critique of American/Multinational corporate and media power. If you've ever been treated unfairly by a large corporation, or if you're worried about the unchecked power and billions of dollars that every corporation (from Walmart to Viacom to Rupert Murdoch's News Newtwork) uses to change the world in its own image, then get this book.

It's broken into four parts (named after the seasons), and shows exactly how bad the world has gotten and provides a light at the end of the tunnel. Lasn gets you fired up in the first half of the book, pointing out social injustices, and he proposes some ideas and hope for solutions at the end.

This book isn't a cure-all. It's a call for action. It's a call for fat Americans to wake up, take control of the horrible world we've let come to be, and streamline the system. For the sake of your self, your family, and your planet, start with this book and look deeper for ways to effect meaningful change. For more ideas and an overview of Lasn's philosophy, visit his website. Do a search for adbusters.