Criticisms
Although I enjoyed Culture Jam thoroughly, there are a few
issues that I wish were covered, or better represented.
Firstly, the "Culture Jamming" movement seems to be largely a
"middle-class" sort of thing. Lasn doesn't mention how consumerism
affects the lower class and those below the poverty level, and he also
doesn't mention what kind of effect "toppling" companies
(e.g. revoking their charters, etc) would have on the lower class.
For instance, while putting companies like Philip Morris out of
business is good in a lot of ways Lasn describes, it could also be bad
in the sense that a lot of the company's low-income workers could lose
their jobs and have nowhere else to go. Also, how do we know that the
economic repercussions of such activities won't raise the price of
certain necessities to the point that, although middle and upper class
sectors of society can still buy them, the lower class can't? Reading
this book reminded me of the 1905 Swadeshi movement in India when a
group of grassroots activists pushed the public to ban all British
goods in an effort to stop colonial influence and monopolization of
the market. Although benevolent in intent, the result was that only
non-British goods could be sold, which were much more expensive than
British goods; thus poor people couldn't afford to buy their
necessities and poor merchants in low-income areas suffered because no
one bought their goods. (Aside from that, the movement didn't even
scratch the British economy, which kind of sucked.)
Although the particular implications of the 1905 Swadeshi movement
might not actually apply in today's "Culture Jamming", what I am
saying is that Lasn should have at least briefly examined the way
Culture Jamming can affect the lower-class. It could be the case that
anti-corporate movements don't affect the lower class at all, but if
that is the case then I still think the reasons for such a conclusion
should be covered.
Secondly, there are a few quirks in Lasn's thinking (either that or
his writing is a bit ambiguous). At one point in the book, Lasn asks
the following:
"Take stock of your life. Look around at what you drive, wear, eat,
smoke, read. Are these things you? Would an anthropologist, given a
pile of all your material posessions, be able to assemble an accurate
portrait of your personality?"
I'm not sure if this is meant as a rhetorical question or not.
Regardless, my answer to this question would be a definite "yes."
Much of my personality could be described by the music, films, and wall
decorations I own, and to a certain extent the clothes I wear and the
kinds of food I eat. And yes, a vast majority of these items were
manufactured by corporations trying to attract a certain type of
consumer. I suppose this is part of the "virus" of consumerism
because whenever I see something that I think describes my personality
or interests (like a Bjork t-shirt), I feel compelled to buy it. But
at the same time, I strongly feel that whatever I do buy does in fact
help describe my personality in a material way. This makes me wonder
exactly what Lasn's getting at. His message throughout the book seems
to be that all commercial products are vapid and devoid of meaning,
yet I find that many of the commercial products I own help define me
as a person. Perhaps I'm just another drone that needs to be
liberated from consumer culture; but if I'm not, then I would be a
counterexample to Lasn's implied statement that "buying stuff doesn't
help describe who you are."
Finally, I think Lasn sometimes blurs the distinction between a medium
and its content, or its way of being used. For instance, although the
majority of what's on TV is bad, Lasn seems to ignore TV channels like
The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, Bravo, and The
Independent Film Channel that actually impart useful information,
provoke thought, and don't really adhere to the "tune in, drop out"
mentality that most stations have. Similarly, when Lasn uses Sherry
Turkle's book "Life on the Screen" to describe the phenomenon of
Multi-User Domains (MUDs) on the Internet, he portrays it in an
extremely dysfunctional light. He does this by selecting only those
cases in which individuals use the MUD as purely an escapist solution
and usually end up hurting themselves by becoming too immersed in the
world, essentially using the MUD as an interactive kind of "tune in,
drop out" TV. But Lasn ignores the cases in which--due to the mindset
of the MUD user or the format of the particular MUD--the MUD is used
as an instructive environment rather than one of escape, and ends up
improving the user's life instead of nullifying it. I suppose it's
not really Lasn's job to extol the positive uses of things like
television and the internet, but by presenting only the negative
aspects of these media he ends up making it look like it's the medium
that's the problem: but it's not the medium, it's the way the medium
is being used. I think this is where the primary deception of "Turn Off
Your TV Week" lies, because the event's name implies that the problem
is TV itself, not what's on it.
Along the same lines, Lasn blurs the distinction between the general
act of shopping and the mindset with which one consumes goods. I
think Lasn's "Buy Nothing Day" is ultimately misleading because it
implies not that the commercial imperative of "buy more and you will
feel better" is bad, but simply that the purchasing of material goods
is bad, which is an absurd statement. For instance, I bought clothes
on November 24 not because I thought "Oh, there's a big sale! That
means I have to buy stuff!" but because I really needed new clothes
and I wanted to get the clothes cheap so I waited for November 24 to
come.
In other words, the slogans of "Turn Off Your TV Week" and "Buy
Nothing Day" don't convey the right kinds of messages, because they
accuse the wrong activities of being harmful: the idea of watching TV
isn't bad, but watching it to escape from "real life" is;
the idea of shopping isn't bad, but shopping to feel better about
oneself is. If these Culture Jamming events were modified to convey
these more
accurate messages, perhaps the general public wouldn't be nearly as
resentful of them as they are now.