A writer and activist investigates corporate America's inroads into—and alliances with—the cultural underground.
"There's an industry around you that works, whether you agree with it or not."—Alec Bourgeois, Dischord Records label manager
For years the do-it-yourself (DIY)/punk underground has worked against the logic of mass production and creative uniformity, disseminating radical ideas and directly making and trading goods and services. But what happens when the underground becomes just another market? What happens when the very tools that the artists and activists have used to build word of mouth are coopted by corporate America? What happens to cultural resistance when it becomes just another marketing platform?
Unmarketable examines the corrosive effects of corporate infiltration of the underground. Activist and author Anne Elizabeth Moore takes a critical look at the savvy advertising agencies, corporate marketing teams, and branding experts who use DIY techniques to reach a youth market—and at members of the underground who have helped forward corporate agendas through their own artistic, and occasionally activist, projects.
Covering everything from Adbusters to Tylenol's indie-star-studded Ouch! campaign, Unmarketable is a lively, funny, and much-needed look at what's happening to the underground and what it means for activism, commerce, and integrity in a world dominated by corporations.
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A work of honesty and, yes, integrity. -- Kirkus Reviews
An intelligent, funny, and frequently dispiriting study....that everyone who cares about any culture should read. -- Bitch
Contains the frisson of a murder mystery. While that mystery is never solved, the questions Moore raises are basic and uncomfortable. -- EyeWeekly
Conversational, intellectually curious, and charmingly ragged, an anti-corporate manifesto with a difference: It exudes raw coolness. -- Mother Jones
Emphasise[s] how 'integrity' and 'emotional connections' are increasingly being sought from independent artists by large corporations at a knockdown price. -- The Guardian
Five stars. -- Time Out Chicago
Offers something distinctly more radical than merely protesting against consumerism: a total rejection of the competitive ethos that drives capitalist culture. -- Los Angeles Times
Real-life examples pack a punch, as do her irreverent and occasionally salty language. Engaging to read. (Booklist -- REVIEW
Sharp and valuable muckraking. -- Time Out New York
Still, it is getting harder to trust that which looks or sounds independent. -- Forbes
About the Author
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the co-editor of Punk Planet, The Best American Comics series editor, and the author of Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People. She has written for Bitch, the Chicago Reader, In These Times, The Onion, The Progressive, and Chicago Public Radio WBEZ's radio program 848. She lives in Chicago.
"One of the sharpest thinkers and cultural critics bouncing around the globe today" -- Razorcake.
Anne Elizabeth Moore is a Fulbright scholar, Truthout columnist, and the multiple award-winning author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007) and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Co-editor and publisher of now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and works with young women in Cambodia on independent media projects. Moore exhibits her work frequently as conceptual art, has been the subject of two documentary films, and her work appeared on the radio program Snap Judgment and in the Progressive, Bitch, and on Truthout. She has written for The Onion, Feministing, The Stranger, In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, and Tin House. She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading series. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Today's Chicago Woman, and Print magazines, and on GritTV and NPR's Worldview. She recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Her latest book for Cantankerous Titles, Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, recently received a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism.
Unmarketable articulately and wittily outlines how corporate America utilizes strategies of the underground for to market both underground and mainstream media. In this process, the corporate somehow manipulates the underground into the destruction of its own underground culture. The sad truth is that its probably only going to get worse. In fact, Entertainment Weekly in issue #984 Mar 28, 08 just ran a "Special Bonus Edition Entertainment Weekly: The Indie Rock 25" supplement, a saddle-stitched book that pulls out of the magazine separate from the rest of the issue, full of information about bands like Radiohead, Spoon, Yo La Tengo, the Pixies, and more, interspersed with ads for Toyota's Yaris, the ads themselves illustrated by the talented graphics artist and show poster designer Nazario Graziano, which lets us know just how subcultural a Yaris is supposed to be. And no doubt, a Yaris is a cute car. But let's not fool ourselves. Toyota ain't no small mom-and-pop business. They're out for your dough. And they're out to get your dough especially if you're young, subversive and into cool illustration. Ads like this supplement in EW have become more and more common, and unfortunately this is just going to go on and on. Moore's book is full of examples like this (OK, not the particular example since the EW Yaris ad is newer than the book), just like the bug zapper that nobody wants to look at. Thankfully, Unmarketable is a totally fun read.
Ms. Moore is the perfect author for this book because she's an experienced media critic and writer on a variety of topics relating to activism. She was the co-editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet. She's written for a whole slew of magazines including the Onion and Bitch. She's even been on Chicago Public Radio. Anne Elizabeth Moore continues to be at the forefront of making quality media and marketing observation.
I found this to be interesting and ultimately useful.
The style is concise and witty.
Any book which heps the reader to emerging insidious marketing techniques is worth reading. The fact that this one is well-written makes what is essential a pleasure.
If the price is beyond your means, try your local public library.
Some very interesting insights into the growing seamlessness between indie and corporate culture:
-If you try to control the discourse about a piece after it's out there, you must admit that it's become intellectual property and is no longer art (compensation is another matter) -Work for hire is not yours, no matter how hard the corporation tries to sell it that way -Corporations have destroyed the myth of the aesthete by selling it to everyone else -transparency is the best way to encourage integrity on all sides, even if it destroys the illusion of uninhibited expression
I was struck by how many times the participants in these faux-DIY campaigns used "really organic" or some variant to describe the experience. Ummm, I know reading the stipulations of the contract might "totally strangle my muse, man" or something else to the effect of shattering the illusion of autonomy, but it's entirely necessary, as Ms. Moore points out. Once you know the boundaries in which you are expected to perform, you know exactly where those boundaries are best exploited according to your own (hopefully admirable) ethos. That, to me, is the most important lodestar in punk, which has been subsumed by its more immediately profitable counterpart, the myth of the aesthete and the hyperreal cult of hyper-individualism.
One of the most surreal examples in the book is where she details the "graffadi" wars--and just how much of a zero-sum game they are. No one wins, and no one emerges looking good--not the artist collectives, not the corporations or the artists in their employ, not the reactionary taggers, not the city, nor the business owners that sell the wall space.
One of the more sobering examples is the war between Minor Threat and Nike. They actually arrived at the most "punk" solution to a thorny ethical dilemma about appropriation, only 10 months after the fact. It taught me this: appropriation is inevitable. But it's also a golden opportunity to force the corporation to act ethically. They found a clever way that would've increased brand cachet for themselves while minimizing same for Nike. That's very punk. But even more punk to do it. Something I'll keep in mind.
