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The Problem with Adbusters

  
  

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Matthew Fluxington
11:37 / 07.01.04
Basically. I mean, I wouldn't want to equate legitimate pop art with something like fast food, because that's totally unfair to the artist and it's one of those things that people who disapprove of mainstream pop usually say.
 
 
Eppy
14:12 / 07.01.04
I think maybe what Matthew's trying to get at is that when you're making essentially a consumerist and cultural argument, which Adbusters and a lot of anti-globalization folks are by focusing on "brands," you have to play by the rules of cultural capital. What you're trying to do is the equivalent of trying to get someone to stop watching one TV show and/or start watching another one, and if you just say "Your TV show sucks, mine is so much cooler," that's not going to work unless you have a particular social relationship with the target of the argument. (Like they think you're cooler and want to please you--which, trust me, is one of the last things most people think about activists.) What you have to recognize is that people like what they consume--genuinely like it, not like-it-because-they're-brainwashed-by-evil-corporations. When you make the latter argument, you're basically calling someone stupid, and while that certainly may be true in some cases, it's not really the best way to win someone to your side.

The issue is that activists, as portrayed in this here thread and elsewhere, are conflating morality with taste, and that's way dangerous, to say nothing of ineffective. OK, Starbucks is worse than a local coffeeshop because it's the same and it's everywhere. But why is that morally or politically bad? It's not, but it is distasteful. I've yet to hear a critique of advertising that really rises above the issue of taste--that it's everywhere, that it's ugly, that it's intrusive. And that's true, and that's fair; taste certainly matters a lot to me. But at the same time, you have to realize that this holds no water with someone who disagrees with your tastes, and that you can't actually rationally argue someone out of their tastes, because theirs, like yours, are totally irrational. Also--and people don't seem to get this--there's a big difference between "Nike exploits its workers" and "you shouldn't buy Nike." One does not necessarily follow from the other, and a dollar isn't the same as a vote. I can think Nike's practices are immoral and support candidates who seek to change that, but that doesn't mean I can't buy the damn sneakers if they're cheap and I want something to put on my feet. If your possessions are not your life, then your buying decisions are not your politics. Everyone's exploiting someone. You can dislike Nikes because they're ugly, but don't try to pretend like that's actually tied to a moral stance.

The Starbucks example is particularly galling because it's such NIMBYism on the part of leftists. Starbucks really is a staggeringly progressive business, in terms of employment policies and buying decisions. But leftists like coffee and coffeeshops and hate having their tastes visibly "co-opted." (Instead of invisibly co-opted by the people who opened the independent coffeeshops. You think the cafe in your little college town just happened to be there and wasn't deliberately intentioned to cater to your ass?) And thus, Starbucks is evil. Taste--not morality. It just seems really weird to me for anti-consumerists to be pushing consumerist strategies, i.e. buy different stuff. How does this fit in, again?

I have a lot of problems with AdBusters, but the one suggested by this thread most strongly is that it's a dead end. It doesn't encourage people to really go beyond shallow cultural critique. (Also, by portraying its satire as political, it somehow makes people think that other comedy isn't political, but that's a whole other pet peeve.) Yes, people read AdBusters and then go join an anti-globalization group sometimes. But these groups, too, rarely go beyond the mindset that produced said magazine. They think if they just YELL the TRUTH!, if they THRUST it in your FACE so you CAN'T DENY IT, then this will work as some sort of magical spell that will change your behaviors. The problem with that is that it assumes that people don't know the truth already. But a lot of the time they do--and they're OK with that. Folks need to realize that hypocrisy and contradiction is a key element not only of politics, but of all human endeavors. We're not pure, and I for one wouldn't want us to be.

So what's left? Well, traditional politics--but that's too messy for a lot of activists to get involved with. It involves contradictions and compromises and long-term slogs, and that's just not something they can stomach. And that's OK--but it doesn't make them right.
 
 
diz
16:33 / 07.01.04
there was a really great article, in (iirc) Mother Jones a few years ago, which basically traced the history of the shift in enivronmental activism from trying to lobby government to regulate manufacturers and employers to trying to browbeat consumers into changing their buying habits.

basically, it all boiled down to this: this shift is incredibly beneficial to manufacturers and has totally neutered the environmental movement. the classic example i always remember from the article is DDT: if the environmental movement had focused on trying to convince farmers to stop using it rather than focusing on trying to ban its production, DDT would probably still be in wide use in the US. there are lots of consumers, and only a few producers. government can be a pretty useful tool for shutting down the latter and cut off supply, whereas trying to cut off demand is much trickier. essentially, you have to convince large numbers of people not to use or buy something when it may be in their best economic interests to use or buy that item (to say nothing of personal preferences and tastes and whatnot), and your chief selling point is a set of ideological beliefs the target audience probably doesn't buy into.

it also, as has been mentioned here, smacks of high-handed moral Puritanism, which turns off a lot of people. "yes, you can buy that product, but you should be better than that." it really misplaces the moral burden: how much sense does it make to tell the financially struggling single mother of two that its her moral oblgation to buy all organic free-range food, which are generally more expensive than the mass-produced factory farmed crap she usually buys (i say this as someone who rarely eats anything that didn't come from a fast food restaurant or a shiny package at 7-11). if you allow something to hit the market, someone's gonna buy it, and it's just stupid to focus all your energy on telling them they shouldn't, when you could just cut it off at the source.

of course, the chances of a major wave of significant environmental and/or labor regulation and reform coming out of Washington today is pretty fucking slim. odds are a little better in Europe, but not too much...
 
 
Rage
06:48 / 08.01.04
1. Starbucks is much more fun to fuck with people in than Cafe Boheme

2. Independent coffee shops charge much more money for their coffee than Starbucks, yet "activists" are constantly complaining about the overpriced coffee at Starbucks

3. Wanna buy some "Fuck Starbucks" stickers at your local indie coffee shop? Only $3...
 
 
No star here laces
09:19 / 08.01.04
Eppy: that was a fuckin magic post. I haven't looked at Barbelith in weeks and you just got me hooked again.
 
 
diz
11:46 / 08.01.04
Wanna buy some "Fuck Starbucks" stickers at your local indie coffee shop? Only $3...

tink (my girlfriend, who really needs to get an account here) is continually amused by the fact that anti-consumerist Adbusters is like $8-9 per issue. even though it makes sense (no ads, duh), it still has the overall effect of turning Adbusters into exactly the type of glossy, sexy overpriced consumer fetish object that it purports to criticise.
 
 
Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes
22:25 / 08.01.04
To me, the answers to the problems of corporate power and produce are simple: international law enforcing fair trade. However, in a political system being driven by corporate muscle and conservative ideology, this seems almost impossible, but so must the capitalist factory owner power in the early 20th century seemed impossible to trades unionists. Or the male dominated political system to female vote protestors or slavery/racial discrimination to the abolition of slavery and civil rights movements. In all these struggles the aggrieved and the progressive elites worked together. So, I must agree that the answers to the problems that Adbusters highlight are political. But to me, the Adbuster ideology seems to be another case of attacking the symptoms not the cause.
However Adbusters is good at highlighting the symptoms and in our culture we usually dwell on what is on the surface.
 
 
Jester
00:57 / 09.01.04
basically, it all boiled down to this: this shift is incredibly beneficial to manufacturers and has totally neutered the environmental movement. the classic example i always remember from the article is DDT: if the environmental movement had focused on trying to convince farmers to stop using it rather than focusing on trying to ban its production, DDT would probably still be in wide use in the US. there are lots of consumers, and only a few producers. government can be a pretty useful tool for shutting down the latter and cut off supply, whereas trying to cut off demand is much trickier. essentially, you have to convince large numbers of people not to use or buy something when it may be in their best economic interests to use or buy that item (to say nothing of personal preferences and tastes and whatnot), and your chief selling point is a set of ideological beliefs the target audience probably doesn't buy into

I think this is a really interesting argument: it's probably true that it would be much more effective to lobby for legislation. I wonder if the current activist strategy of targeting consumers isn't actually a symptom of (or a reaction to?) the fact that people are now, much more than citizens, consumers. I think that might be part of what is behind the general activist attack on brands, advertising, etc, that has been discussed. Rather than a general attack on capitalism per se, although a critique of capitalism is an underlying factor, it is a reaction against the definition of people's worth in society through products and images. Is the legislature even much of a potent force in society anymore? Not only because it often fails on a grand scale to represent the interests and wishes of its population, but because the global nature of the economy means that many actions it takes (banning GM produce...) are made completely unenforcable.

On the subject of Starbucks, as opposed to local coffee shops: one of the main arguments must surely be that when you spend money in a local business then the local economy benefits. When you spend money in a giant global corporation, you simply increase the profits of a megolithic company. I am no economist though, so feel free to shoot that idea down...

Haus: As for Borders not affecting Charing Cross Road, if that is the case, why have so many bookshops, small and big, shut down since they opened?
 
 
diz
16:59 / 09.01.04
Haus: As for Borders not affecting Charing Cross Road, if that is the case, why have so many bookshops, small and big, shut down since they opened?

there may be other factors at work here. many independent booksellers have been hit hard by Amazon and eBay, since they both provide alternate methods of finding used/rare books, which are a key thing indie bookstores can offer that big box retailers can't.

of course, it could just be Borders. i'm not familiar enough with the local specifics.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:43 / 16.01.04
Eppy wrote:

What you have to recognize is that people like what they consume--genuinely like it, not like-it-because-they're-brainwashed-by-evil-corporations. When you make the latter argument, you're basically calling someone stupid, and while that certainly may be true in some cases, it's not really the best way to win someone to your side.

I think you're simplifier and misrepresenting some of the arguments which are made about advertising - not that there isn't anybody out there who puts it so reductively, but the majority of people who write about advertising and get published and read and taken at all seriously tend to express a little more complexity than "the foolish masses are brainwashed by evil corporations". Even if they didn't, I can't see how "people just consume what they like" is any less reductive or simplistic - so consumer desires are created in a vacuum? Seems unlikely. I know mine aren't. Tastes aren't forced onto people, but they can be shaped, for starters.

Which leads us on to the fact that it's only "calling someone stupid" to talk about the influence of advertising if you deny that you yourself are susceptible - okay, so you get your pissy adolescent RATM fans who do that. But it's more accurate (and not entirely uncommon) to say we are ALL influenced by advertising to a certain degree, in a variety of ways, some of them very subtle. I think it's definitely a worthwhile piece of strategic advice to point out the difference between saying "you are being brainwashed" and "we are being influenced". Apart from anything else, the latter is more likely to include the possibility that people are being influenced from all sides (depending on what they read, consume, etc), which may include influences from less obvious sources than big corporations (eg, Adbusters).

The issue is that activists, as portrayed in this here thread and elsewhere, are conflating morality with taste, and that's way dangerous, to say nothing of ineffective. OK, Starbucks is worse than a local coffeeshop because it's the same and it's everywhere. But why is that morally or politically bad? It's not, but it is distasteful.

Conflating morality and taste DOES happen - I see it all the time in the Music forum, but I don't think the example you use is particularly valid. I've read plenty of critiques of Starbucks that have nothing to do with taste and everything to do with the business practices of the company - in fact there are some in this thread. I'd even go so far as to say (although this is just hearsay) I've heard more people say that they find Starbucks conveniant and pleasant enough as a consumer experience but cannot countenance going there on the basis of the company's policies, than vice versa.

We're moving beyong Adbusters here and to be honest I'd rather talk about the contradictions that occur when radical politics interacts with populat culture in broader terms, in a separate thread, and with specific reference to attitudes towards "mainstream" pop culture. The only other thing I'd say is that I think you're right about the specific example of Adbusters being a dead-end, in the sense that the first thing I noticed in the few issues of it that I've read is the extent of repetition. But you're also generalising wildly and widely about activists, and doing them a huge disservice in assuming a) that the motivation for choosing direct action or other forms of action over involvement in traditional politics is just laziness, or inflexibility, rather than any problems with the political/electoral system as it stands*, and b) that no activists are capable of employing more than one strategy for effecting change, or capable of thinking in the long-term (again though, this is really a discussion for elsewhere - I'm pretty sure there are a few old threads in the Switchboard hashing this out, and I can dig around for 'em if you're interested).


*Maybe it's less discussed in the USA, but in the UK it's openly accepted even by leading figures in government that the political system is failing and alienating the public, particularly young people, and that some responsibility with this lies with the existing political parties.
 
  

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