Resources

Carducci, Vince (2006). Culture Jamming: A Sociological Perspective. Journal of
Consumer Culture, 6, 116-138. Retrieved October 2, 2009 from Academic Search Elite.

Klein, Naomi (2000). No Logo: taking aim at the brand bullies. Toronto: Random House
of Canada Ltd.

Micheletti, M. and Stolle, D. (2008). Fashioning Social Justice Through Political
Consumerism, Capitalism, and the Internet [Electronic Version]. Cultural Studies, 22:5, 749-769.

Milam, Jennifer L. and Sandlin, Jennifer A. (2008). “Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”:
Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as Critical Public Pedagogy. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, 38:3, 323-350. Retrieved September 30, 2009 from Academic Search Elite.

Wasserman, Elizabeth (March 9, 2005). Rebel Without a Cause. The Atlantic Monthly.
Retrieved October 1, 2009 from: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200503u/int2005-03-09

“Joe Chemo” image website: http://elrodenglish101.wikispaces.com/Joe+Chemo (via Creative Commons)

Criticisms of Jamming

Rebels Without a CauseJoseph Heath and Andrew Potter, the authors of Nation of Rebels, on how the myth of a counterculture derailed the political left
By Elizabeth Wasserman


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/03/rebels-without-a-cause/3865/



Criticisms: Ironically, critics of culture jamming point to the fact that the ability of jammers to jam is “facilitated in part by the desktop publishing hardware and software readily available to consumers at relatively modest prices” (Carducci, 117), meaning that jammers are dependent to a degree upon goods made available to them by the capitalist system they are opposing.

More fundamental criticisms of culture jamming object to the inherent philosophy behind the practice — the idea that “industrial capitalism has turned the masses into mindless cogs in a great corporate machine” who conform unthinkingly (Wasserman, 2005). Canadian philosophers Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of the national bestseller The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture can’t be Jammed, argue that the pursuit of non-conformity is both an ineffective and ironic objective. Heath and Potter posit that the “quest to distinguish [oneself] from the masses through . . . enlightened, hip, or just plain rebellious consumer preferences” does not free an individual from the capitalist machine — it merely reshapes their consumer practices, creating a new niche market within the capitalist system (Wasserman, 2005). Of greater concern to Potter and Heath is the “loss of faith among progressives in the very idea of political reform” (Wasserman, 2005). They argue that disillusionment with traditional modes of political activism on the part of jammers such as Klein — and the insistence on abandoning political reform in favour of an ill-defined, “wholesale revolution” — has “turned the American Left into an increasingly impotent political fringe, even as it seems to gain cultural status” (Wasserman, 2005).

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies

Naomi Klein

“The Branded World”

“Cool Hunters”

“A Tale of Three Logos”: excerpt on Nike controversies


Adbusters
http://www.adbusters.org/

Culture Jamming: macro-level criticism of ads, brands and consumer culture

Culture Jamming 101

Whether or not the average Canadian secondary student would be able to define “Culture Jamming,” a somewhat nebulous term believed to have been coined by the audio-collage band Negativland in 1984 (Klein, 2000, 281), it is likely that at least some of these students may have come in contact with various forms of culture jamming at some point. While culture jamming is not without its critics, it does promote a high level of media literacy, which gives it an inherent educational value.

Naomi Klein, the Canadian author of the international bestseller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, describes culture jamming as “the practice of parodying advertisements and hijacking billboards in order to drastically alter their messages,” framing the issue in terms of a reclamation of public space (Klein, 2000, 280-81). Others extrapolate the idea of a general resistance to consumerism, and see culture jamming in less advertising-specific terms and as more of an “act of resisting and re-creating commercial culture in order to transform society” (Milam & Sandlin, 2008, 323). However, the term “jamming” is a reference to the technique of “electronically interfering with broadcast signals for military or political purposes,” and is generally understood to be “the appropriation of brand identity or advertising for subversive, often political intent” (Carducci, 2006, 117).


Klein states that the best culture jams “are not stand-alone ad parodies but interceptions” which “hack into a corporation’s own method of communication to send a message starkly at odds with the one that was intended” (Klein, 2000, 281). This “turn-around” then becomes the “perfect tool” to express dissatisfaction with multinational corporations that have dealt unjustly with both consumers and workers (Klein, 284). One example of a “jam” Klein gives is that of taking a “Joe Camel” advertisement and turning it into a “Joe Chemo” advertisement (282). Another example features a thirty-by-ninety-foot Levi’s billboard jammed with the image of Charles Manson’s face over top of it — using Manson because the Levi’s were “assembled by prisoners in China, [and] sold to penal institutions in the Americas” (281).


The Vancouver-based magazine Adbusters is known as a “chronicle” of jamming efforts, and the internet is also a significant tool for culture jammers. Also, the “Culture Jamming Encyclopedia” can be found at Sniggle.net (Carducci, 2006, 117).

The Persuasive Techniques used in Advertisements

Here is a great handout from ReadWriteThink that goes over the persuasive techniques in advertising.
-- pathos: an appeal to emotion
-- logos: an appeal to logic or reason
-- ethos: an appeal to credibility or character

A great discussion might evolve out of the question of Tiger Woods' ethos before and after the scandal.

What do ads say about gender roles?

This perfume ad ran in Glamour magazine in 1972. Its knowing reference to women marching for equality suggests that feminist activism was a widespread phenomenon in this period that required no explanation. The message or story of the ad, however, makes a blatant pitch for traditional gender roles, positioning the product as a way for women to undercut their own political assertiveness.










Check out more historical advertisements here

What makes an effective advertisement?

Old Spice - The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Watch the commercial here.

-- Is this advertising effective? Why or why not?
-- What does it say about the roles of women and men? (i.e. who is the advertisement really directed at?)

how-to deconstruct an ad

Looking for guidelines on how to deconstruct advertisements?
Check out this PowerPoint.

Where to start?

Check out the first five lessons for our unit plan on advertisements!

Senior 4 English Language Arts - Language and Literacy

Parameters of the Transactional Focus:

Emphasizes pragmatic purposes and texts

Listening, Reading, and Viewing
-- texts to which students listen and those they read and view are approximately 70 percent pragmatic in purpose and 30 percent aesthetic.
-- pragmatic texts range from technical communication to biography and documentary.
-- aesthetic texts used within the transactional focus can be used for pragmatic purposes (e.g. a novel can be used for historical info or a music video can be analyzed as a marketing tool)
-- texts are selected not because they are pragmatic in mode, but because they can be approached for pragmatic purposes.
-- demonstration of metacognition in employing reading strategies.
-- texts that are pragmatic in purpose may invite a narrower range of responses than aesthetic texts, however, readers are still engaged in constructing meaning.
-- students examine the meaning they make of a text by analyzing the elements that contribute to it; meaning is shaped by the reader's affective response, prior knowledge, prior experience with texts, and cultural values in addition to the medium, purpose, and context of the reading experience.


Speaking, Writing, and Representing
-- students can produce texts that are pragmatic in purpose.
-- texts can represent a wide range of forms & media (e.g. documentaries, reviews, memos, speeches, feature articles, essays, debates, web sites).
-- texts can maintain a pragmatic purpose while using an aesthetic language.
-- the requirements of audience and purpose shape all aspects of the texts students produce: content, form, medium, organizational structure, voice, language register, and diction.
-- students learn to express themselves clearly, logically, and with an intended effect, and to select a tone and language register appropriate to their purpose.
-- students learn elements of design and formatting, including the use of sidebars, graphics, diagrams, maps, tables, and glossaries.

Lucille Ball and the six modes of ELA

Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, Viewing, & Representing


image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28567825@N03/3498227586 (via Creative Commons)