Advertising in our own hands
Well, more accurately,
our faces, and apparently other body parts. Yes, that's right - if you love our consumer culture so much that you want to play the biggest possible part in it, you can lease your body out as a billboard. If you want to be commodified more than we already are, you can get an advert tattooed on your forehead. (only a temporary tattoo, mercifully - although this may be more about adverts getting out of date than anything else) I can see a lot of significance in the fact that the pioneer of this advertising approach is a waitress at Hooters - her body is already public property, a commodity, so why not go that one step further?
Freedom is more than another word for nothing left to lose
Picking up random threads from Blu's post yesterday.
"Half of Europe now has ‘freedom’, where it didn’t have ‘freedom’ before. So why has such a momentous change made seemingly very little difference to the way in which globalisation functions?" There is so much i want to say about 'freedom' and related issues. First i guess i must point out that i don't hate freedom - i'm not a fascist, a communist or a religious fundementalist. I'm an anarchist. That entails a desire for real freedom. I will post more on the technicalities of anarchism soon, i promise. Right now, Blu has started a story that i feel inclined to add to.
Anarchists, although we are not a homogenous bunch in many regards, do tend to be united in wishing to see an end to the state, to authority and heirarchy. Being governed, therefore, does not constitute freedom. This is not, however, a popular view.
'Freedom' has been fetishised for the whole of living memory and beyond. Freedom was what the Nazis, Fascists and Soviet Communists aimed to destroy, in opposing them therefore freedom was that valuable thing that everyone has clung to. No way am i going to disagree with this so far. My issue comes when 'freedom' becomes linked with one particular context - the Western world, electoral democracy, capitalism. Capitalism is a hackneyed hate figure, but in this context i believe i am right to use it, as it is one of the more harmful manifestations of 'freedom' as the expression is misused today. (y'know, my issue with totalitarians has never been that they aren't keen on McDonalds or whatever - not since puberty at any rate. The confusions of a Cold War childhood are something me and Blu have in common, although being that bit younger mine are sometimes more base) Freedom to drive a gas-guzzler, freedom to kill yourself with fast food, to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops, to listen to the latest manufactured pop music - freedom to obsess over appearances, images,
illusions. This is freedom as our leaders would have it, and anyone who opposes it - however non-violent they are, however opposed to mass murder
by anyone - is a terrorist.
This isn't freedom. It's an illusion. Ok, i'll come clean here and admit that Blu's post is not the only inspiration behind this one, although it was a big kick up the arse. My fledgling research has led me into the realm of 'culture jamming', as practiced by
Adbusters and a whole lot of activists including plenty in my local area. Culture jamming, just to show my geekiness on the subject, has in its theoretical ancestry the idea of
Detournement. It is the idea of taking a cultural artefact - most commonly an advert, these days - and altering its meaning. In doing this, you can often show important truths that lie behind the facade: possibly the most important of which is the knowledge that such a facade exists. This is what makes culture jamming such a useful tactic for today's activists. (for once, the fact of having become trendy hasn't diminished its usefulness - i will rant here about trendiness/appropriation one day, if Blu doesn't mind) It is a way to show people, through a medium they recognise, that all is not rosy in the garden. And once we recognise the illusion and look behind it, we are that bit freer.
Introduction
This is going to be a group blog featuring political and social commentary. The idea is that we have planned for a while to write a book together, but as we are both busy students that hasn't happened yet. A blog, however, is more flexible in terms of time commitments, while still allowing us to co-operate.
I'm waiting until the other half of the team gets sorted with a login etc before posting any real content. Personal introductions will also be added at some point.
