Customer Reviews

Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I currently live in Japan where I have seen the dark side of the American Cultural Machine. Thousands of years of tradition have been swallowed up in a couple years by a dominant American system that uses insidious and underhanded techniques to sell its products and become rich. This is a wonderful attack on the current dominant paradigm- Work Work Work Buy Buy Buy(and if this continues unabated we are asking for a global environmental nightmare). I am not an environmentalist but this book uses solid arguments and puts forth interesting ideas. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. It will give you a chance against the mega-corporations. Take back your mind and free will! This book is fun, interesting, and it could one day be seen as the book that started the newest counter culture: The Anti-consumer.

Having followed Adbusters.org (Lasn's organization) for a number of years I was pleased to see this book consolodate, organize, expand and clarify a number of the articles from the last couple of years worth of AdBusters magazine. It is not a "self-help" book to teach you how to particiapate in the next WTO protest. For a manual like that you will need to pick up something like Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."

What you can expect. A book that is rich in imagery, metaphor and illustration. It is backed up by 214 end notes (that range in credibility). I would suspect that:

a) those actively engaged in downshifting will find it a rich and thoughty re-enforcement for decisions already made,

b) those moderate consumers with the dull recognition that something is not quite right with our corporation saturated environment will find it a provocative reading that will contribute to a range of subtle to significant mental and/or life changes,

c) those radicals committed to the overthrow of corporate america will find it either disappointing (for not going far enough) or as permission to use bent coins in vending machines, and

d) those not wanting to think about themes of environment, corporate responsibility and media saturation will find it excellent fodder for re-enforcing stereotypes of "those wacko liberal leftists"

In my case, it was gentle yet challenging prose with enough in the book for me to question, debate or aspire to learn more about. I was glad that it was not simply preaching to my previously self-realized reality.

This is one of the most frustrating books I have come across in quite some time. Frustrating because I WANT to agree with the author, but his disorganized hodgepodge of romantic philosophy and counterculture deifying devoid of any sort of firmly constructed reason or definition has rendered his position impotent and ridiculous. Since I'm a longtime fan of clever "culture jammers" who confront corporate hegemony and the public who condones it--such radical satirists as Michael Moore, Negativland, etc.--I thought that I would enjoy a book describing this movement and the reasons, ideas and people behind it. What Kalle Lasn has presented, however, is a half-baked melange of ranting and whining, riddled with vaguery, self-contradiction and utterly subjective fragments of ideology presented as absolute truths. There are perhaps ten pages of startling, valuable and well presented information in this 215 page book, the rest is an unfortunate muddle which says nothing more original than "corporations are bad" and "think for yourself." At one point, Lasn paraphrases Bradbury, saying that a culture jammer "Jumps off cliffs and builds his wings on the way down." With "Culture Jam," Lasn has jumped off the cliff, thrown a few handfuls of feathers into the air and left a big mess at the bottom.

Kalle Lasn's book is clever, funny and sparklingly insightful. He is talking about the way the world can be, unmediated by the forces of marketing, and in touch with what counts. This is a handbook for revolution of the funnest kind!

If Daniel Quinn's Ishmael brought out the thoughtful part of my rebellion against Mother Culture, this book gives me a real kick in the rear to get out and do something. I think the book is rich, diverse and concise, and organized well enough to make clear the author's reason for writing it. After reading this book I'm all fired up, wired and inspired! There is hope for life beyond the shopping paradigm!

A brilliant diagnosis of what's wrong with the consumer-capitalist lifestyle, and what we can do to opt out of the madness -- one jammer at a time. With the same energy and passion that can be found in the pages of Adbusters, this book is a call to action for anyone who's ever felt beaten down by "The Man". Lasn conveys his unique vision of turning the system against itself in a way that can inspire even the most jaded and cynical consumers to rediscover their idealism and become activist-citizens once again. Viva la revolucion!

It was torcherous trying to finish this book. First, let me be clear, and say I agree 150% with the author's agenda and basic analysis. However, his choice of style demands too much from the reader. Long diatribes do little to engage the average reader that is unaware of the dominant social and political role that corporations play in our society. Instead of catch-phrases and cliches, the author would better serve the reader by dishing out a deeper analysis of the problem. Kudos to him for offering a plan of revolution, but he overestmates the future movements' powers and of his book. The rantings and raving of this author, although correct, are simply a detail in the larger problem of capitalism as practiced in America. I would avoid this book and read One World: Ready or Not for a better understanding of globalization and the cultural dominance of the corporation.

This book is a call to arms for all the people who feel that the overconsumptive ways of our consumer culture have become overbearing. Kalle Lasn has a lot of good ideas and a couple of cool ways to resist authority and corporate domination in our everyday lives. I think anyone today can relate to his arguements on some level. It is time we reclaim democracy and think about the long term affects that our actions will have in the future. My critisisms of the book are that sometimes he takes a simplistic view in terms of the good guys/bad guys ideology. He calls for revolution but he doesn't give viable alternatives to the capatialist society that we live in now. A must-read for anybody who is fed up and desires change!

As a founder of the Adbusters organization and prominent activist himself, Kalle Lasn examines modern American society, media, and corporations and just how intertwined they all are in his 1999 work Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America.
Written in an interesting narrative style, Lasn describes many of the afflictions today's typical American suffer from and how we have become so accustomed to finding salvation in many different ways, essentially, in Corporate America.
He then delves further and demonstrates how Corporate America is not here for us, to provide us with all of the latest and greatest, but rather how it shapes us and exploits us.
All the while, he proposes that, due to the constraints of modern society, we are so disconnected from nature and the world at large that we are much more psychologically and physically affected than we may even be aware.
Lasn acknowledges the discouragement that many have when fighting for a change in society, but he offers up the fundamental idea behind this next revolution as "culture jamming" and provides some hope.
Culture Jam offers up new perspectives that are not always readily made to us in this society; the bottom line Lasn conveys is that we need to fight fire with fire and anybody can contribute, even in the most seemingly miniscule way.

I found Culture Jam a good reference to the culture shock many Americans go through each day. The main argument refers to our lives as consumer and therefore media driven.
In reading Kalle Lasn's book, my eyes were opened by how consumer and media driven our lives are. Although, I already knew of this aspect as a consumer, the examples given had much reflection on what I consider an average middle class American life.
I wish that there were more information that did not reflect a great amount on the examples given. In this I mean that the author should give examples of the outside world.
Lasn opened the book with "Autumn", to assess the current damages of our consumer driven lives. The point that if we cut nature out of our lives that our spirits die is right on in a sense. When we totally rely on materialistic things, we do indeed lose our spirituality. We indeed have also become more virtual rather that relying on our "real" lives.
Classifying advertisements as "mental pollutants" was also a good analogy. We go through the motions of work everyday to earn money for the products we see advertised everyday in the media. Our lives are totally shaped by the media.
Huge corporations have become dominate by serving their own interests when they consistently put their products on the airwaves. But haven't those interests become our interests? Why isn't this explained? I think it is a major part of why we are like we are as consumers.
I didn't agree with the concept of the Situationists in the "Spring" section of the book. Why do they think the spectacle has been kidnapped? This is never really explained and doesn't bring any clear meaning to the page. By the way, the whole Situationists theory, if you can call it that, is a farce. I couldn't even read through this part in the book. It's just repeating itself over and over again.
I also did not find any meaning in the "We are not" sections of the book. Look at what we are for once. I don't really care for some negativity with no backup. It is just too much. If you really would care to look into it, everything still has the same meaning, it just depends how each individual looks at it. Why do we keep blaming others for the uncertainty and change? I am still cool!
The close of the book seemed to ramble on about thinking and doing things for yourself, which I feel left a lot of ends untied. I think the ending was just a way to get more pages in the book and very unhelpful. I think we can figure out on our own that we must "demarketise" our lives in order to be a greater society.