Editorial 11.9, September 2009, by Deirdre Helfferich

Toast and Jam

I like bread and butter, I like toast and jam,
That’s what my baby feeds me,
I’m her loving man.

Got home early one morning,
Much to my surprise,
She was eating chicken and dumplings
With some other guy.

—The Newbeats, “Bread and Butter”

Perhaps you’ve heard of them: The Abbie Hoffman Brigade. Abrupt. Adbusters. Billboard Liberation Front. BUGA UP. Critical Mass. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Church of the SubGenius. Cult of the Dead Cow. Electronic Disturbance Theatre. The Evolution Control Committee. Graffiti Research Lab. Guerrilla Girls. How to Make Trouble and Influence People. Joey Skaggs. Memefest. The Onion. Pirate Bay. ®™ark. Sniggle. Subtervise. Wikileaks. The Yes Men. Zapatistas in Cyberspace. These are all examples of organized civil disobedience, satire, and brand and media manipulation in the cause of personal freedom, as variously defined by each: culture jammers, hacktivists, musicians (the term “culture jamming” was coined by the band Negativland, which creates mashups), artists, political activists.

An article on culture jamming at the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement describes it as

an intriguing form of political communication that has emerged in response to the commercial isolation of public life. Practitioners of culture jamming argue that culture, politics, and social values have been bent by saturated commercial environments, from corporate logos on sports facilities, to television content designed solely to deliver targeted audiences to producers and sponsors. Many public issues and social voices are pushed to the margins of society by market values and commercial communication, making it difficult to get the attention of those living in the “walled gardens” of consumerism. Culture jamming presents a variety of interesting communication strategies that play with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to make consumers aware of surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences that warrant their attention.*

Culture jamming has been described as “semiotic banditry” by Jan Lloyd,** who points out that it’s been around for a while: the Surrealists, the Dada movement, and the group Situationist International are examples of the artistic and cultural continuum that has developed into the modern culture jam. It can be much more direct than appropriation and repurposing of commercial icons or copyrighted materials; sometimes it is simply making them available for public review, as in Wikileaks. The cultural element being jammed in this case is government or corporate secrecy leading to corruption.

Techniques include subvertising (satirical ads that look like corporate ones); shopdropping or droplifting (inserting extra products onto a store’s shelves); guerilla art (amending public artworks by adding items that subvert the original); guerilla marketing (unconventional marketing that is so entertaining or original that people seek it out); performance or street art; the flash mob (a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse); sousveillance (recording an experience or activity from the point of view of the participant); pieing (Pie Kill International and the Biotic Baking Brigade were famous for this, performing hits on such luminaries as Ralph Nader and Anita Bryant); street or guerilla theatre; and the old classic, streaking.

A recent example of a massive culture jam was perpetrated in New York on September 21, with a special edition of the New York Post featuring the front-page headline, “We’re Screwed,” and focusing on Climate Change Week in New York city (Sept. 20-26). Articles are drawn from an official city government report on the effects of global warming on New York and other sources. They detail the use of alternative energy by the military, NYC urban agriculture, and so forth. Many of the stories were previously released, but received little attention from the media, and some were new. The edition was not produced by the New York Post, however: it was published by the Yes Men and distributed by more than 2,000 volunteers. According to www.theyesmen.org, close to “a million New Yorkers were stunned” by its appearance. An important feature of culture jamming is that it highlights facts that the jammee may not want you to know (as in Nike corporation, which has been subject to culture jams exposing its use of sweatshops in the manufacture of its athletic wear). Spoofery combined with the clever use of fact can, in the words of the Yes Men, “publicly humiliate [big-time criminals]” and make the public aware of their crimes. The Yes Men aren’t about to let the inertia and timidity of the political reaction to global warming make toast out of New York.

The power of culture jamming is that it makes people think about the way their own ideas are influenced and shaped; it is “fighting the Man” with humor and creativity. It is playing the fool on a massive, populist scale: opening the eyes of the public and leveraging those in positions of power and authority by thumbing a metaphorical—and sometimes literal—nose at them.

* See the full article at http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/CultureJamming.htm

**“Culture Jamming: Semiotic Banditry in the Streets,” by Jan Lloyd, www.hums.canterbury.ac.nz/cult/research/lloyd.htm.

For examples of culture jams, look at www.adbusters.org, artoftheprank.com, nothingness.org, sniggle.net, www.woostercollective.com/culture_jamming/, or Google “culture jamming.”

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