Educational Media Reviews Online

Culture Jam: Highjacking Commercial Culture is a thought-provoking video that is, itself, an example of the culture jamming the producers of the video capture and define by example. At the beginning of the film, the narrator asks a culture jamming activist: “To someone who has never heard of (culture jamming) before, how would you describe it?” His answer? You don’t describe it, you do it. Culture jamming is an activity. Later another activist defines it as “jamming the machinery” and reconfiguring the (corporate) logos” (while a businessman is being pied in the face in the background). Another time it is “semiological guerilla warfare” (with girls in gorilla suits in the background). It is also “drive-by cultural criticism.” Another spokesperson sees culture jamming to be similar to exhalation. We breathe in all the corporate logos around us. Culture jamming—challenging, confronting and making fun of these icons—is a way of breathing some of the toxins out.

The video, like the culture jammers themselves, aims to make people aware of and think about the omnipresence of corporate culture. The filmmakers trace the activities of three types of culture jammers as they go about their chosen paths. “Media tigress” Carly Stasko pastes stickers saying “enjoy debt” or “forget poverty” on ATMs, and talks to students about the concept of “mind share” and why brand names mean so much to them. Through her eyes, we see the ads in the streets, on the subways, on t-shirts, and even on a commercial video over a urinal (on which she writes in marker “There is no escape”). She asks, “What is out there that is not influenced by corporate interests?” She argues that stickers and jamming are “about having a dialogue where there isn’t one.”

The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) demonstrates another type of culture jamming. Several BLF activists in various disguises describe and show how they reconfigure billboard messages. The video shows several of Apple Computer’s “Think different” ads that feature Picasso, Gandhi, Emilia Earhart and the Dali Lama selling computers. The BLF changes the message on Earhart’s from “think different” to “think doomed,” and the Dail Lama’s to “think disillusioned.” A PEPSI ad becomes DISPEPSI, and a mustachioed man in a Camel ad promoting “one of a kind,” wears a bra. The BLF argues that the way to protect oneself from “insidious corporate culture” is to take the classic expressions of that culture and “sort of add a twist that redefines their meaning in a revolutionary direction and send it back.”

Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping demonstrates a third kind of culture jamming. Bill Talen uses activist theater to create this religious preacher who, accompanied by some apostles carrying 2 large crosses-- one with an impaled Mickey, the other with an impaled Minnie Mouse--confronts shoppers at the Disney store on Times Square and asks them not to buy from a company that uses sweatshop labor. Some customers are outraged with the religious iconography and attack on Disney, while others are willing to check to see if Disney uses sweatshop labor. The Reverend Billy has made someone think.

Just like Reverend Billy, this video may offend some people, yet the producers clearly present some of the ethical and legal issues culture jammers raise. A spoksperson for Infinity Billboards is treated seriously, and issues of vandalism, trespassing, and law breaking, in general, are raised.

Culture Jam: Hijacking Commerical Culture is well-made and fun to watch, with creative camera work and editing. It would work well in educational settings where its message of personal over corporate power should provoke thought and discussion. Highly recommended.