FINAL ESSAY

RESPONDING TO CULTURE JAM

Kalle Lasn in his book calls for ending “branding” of America and returning to authentic culture. He describes how we are being manipulated and enticed by the media and cultural forces and how a family ceases to function when they are disconnected from all the modern gadgets. He explains how today personalities and culture are being shaped by electronic mass media environment instead of nature. People are also becoming so addicted listening to the media that they are not even aware that the stress they are experiencing is all because of the mediated consumption driven culture. He is urging people to change and telling them that ordinary people have all the tools they need for revolution. He is encouraging everybody to make their own choices, learn new strategies of self-reliance and discover the joy of jamming. He is telling people to lead an anti-consumerist lifestyle and get the control back from corporations so that our lives can become much better.

According to Lasn "American culture is no longer created by the people. (Culture Jam pg. xiii). I agree with Lasn that we are being manipulated and enticed by the media and cultural forces. Personalities and culture are also being shaped by electronic mass media environment instead of nature. Our culture has become very much dependent on all the brands, products, fashions, celebrities, entertainments and spectacles created by all the big corporations. Today media also plays a very important role in the increased amount of information transported into our house everyday. Major Corporations and the media are influencing people on how to live, what to wear and how to react to life situations.

Personally I have to say that it is very difficult to imagine life without microwave, toasters, cell phone etc., because frankly life is much easier with all these. However, people today are addicted to technology and cannot live without their electronic gadgets like iPhone, iPod, laptops, Blackberries and other digital devices. It has become so bad that people are waking up in the night to check their emails and text messages. If any of these gadgets are taken away from them they experience the "actual physical withdrawal" from all these gadgets. I agree with Lasn that people today should start living their lives without depending on so many gadgets.

I agree with Lasn that we are bombarded by the media every day and by technology everywhere. Somehow we have to stop the media from polluting our minds and preying on our emotions before it becomes too late. We have become so used to it that we do not think that it is causing us any problems at all. Some of the statistics mentioned in the book about people like "77 percent of the adult population is a mess" is quite scary.

However, I do not agree with Lasn's idea of "subvertisement". He wants the culture jammers taking on the corporations at their own game by creating "an effective TV subvertisement" which is actually an uncommercial. He really thinks the subvertisement will break their media-consumer trance and momentarily challenge their whole world outlook. I do not really think this is an effective way of gaining people's attention at all, as he is doing the same thing as the advertisers, which is persuading people to do what he wants them to do.

It is very clear that Lasn is anti-corporate and he wants to bring down the corporate culture in USA. He writes “when you don’t buy, you don’t buy in to consumer culture and when you don’t buy in; corporations lose their hold on you. “I sincerely believe that the power to act on media suggestions is in people’s control. Individuals have to just buy whatever they need. The power to make or break media and also reduce the dominance of corporation’s hold is ultimately consumer’s decision. This can be achieved by making their own decisions instead of giving the control to media and all the big corporations.

This book is all about how people can change the world. However some of the ways in which he mentions to change the world like sculling fashion billboards, taking the TV networks to world court looks very impractical. Some of the issues raised by Lasn in the book are very important and worth getting people’s attention.I even  agree with Lasn that today media rules the world however, the ideas he puts forth in this book about how to change the corporate culture and dominance from media are  very radical and can never be implemented by an average person.