According to the article written by Christine Harold, “Culture jamming is a movement in which seeks to undermine the marketing rhetoric of multinational corporations, specifically through such practices as media hoaxing, corporate sabotage, billboard liberation and trademark infringement.” Advertising is one of the key components in the media today. Culture jamming mainly deals with ad parodies that attempt to have a ‘true logic’ behind its reasoning. In the article, Harold used a parody of a Calvin Klein advertisement that featured a female model. The people behind these advertisements create the ads in a way that they know how the public eye will view them as, and what type of message it portrays. Throughout the article, Harold showed that through culture jamming a different point of view could be seen by the ad parodies some of the advertisements revealed. “Parody and irony are the dominant motifs of many successful mass-marketing campaigns.” According to the article, culture jamming is usually associated with the term of contradicting rhetorical messages in effort to create a change.
We all see advertisements differently based on how we are looking at them and where we are coming from; however, all advertisements have the same meaning in mind and that is to catch the public eye. While I was searching the web for an example, the ad that caught my eye was an ad of Coca-Cola. Below is one way that culture jammers used the power of brands ‘against themselves’. Aside from the company’s ad for Coca-Cola being associated with ‘love’, there is the word ‘profit’ written in graffiti. This is one of several examples that show culture jamming type of messages.
Another example, similar to the one shown above that is also a Coca-Cola ad it is associated with Capitalism. This is another way to show how consumer jamming message is trying to portray another view for the public eye to see, and by doing this, it forms the perception of how the audience is going to view this particular ad.
I thought this article was very interesting because it showed a side to advertising that I was not aware of. It was also interesting to see the examples Harold picked out to go along with the article about culture jamming.
Yih-heng Wang says
I think you did a good job explaining what culture-jamming is and identifying examples that further explain what the purpose and goal of culture-jamming is. I find your use of the term “true logic” interesting and I wish you could have elaborated on that. I agree that culture-jamming often comes in the form of parody and that culture-jamming activists take what advertisers think the public will see/feel and tries to change it by raising awareness. I like the examples you used with Coke and how culture-jamming makes these corporations “brand against themselves”. “Love Profit” and “enjoy Capitalism” are both very good examples of culture-jamming but I feel you could have provided a bit more discussion about what the goal and purpose of culture-jamming is. Perhaps in relation to societal ideologies or consumer cultures influenced by big corporations such as coca cola.