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I think the definitive trait of culture jamming is the reuse of existing cultural icons to advance a subversive or counter-cultural message, generally using illegal means (graffiti, copyrighted images) or grassroots means (self-publishing, group works with less emphasis on the individual).
Matt points out that a lot of the techniques of the culture jammers have been incorporated into mainstream society. I'd like to point out the differences between pastiche and bricolage here.
Pastiche is cultural collage using pieces from diverse sources and creating a new whole, and so is bricolage - with one key difference relating to privilege. Pastiche comes from a place of social power, a place where it's *ok* for you to take anything you might want. A good stereotype of pastiche is the white liberal hippie who pairs African fabrics with Asian art and photographs of Europe to create their ideal home. Nothing wrong with that, but we have to recognize that they're doing this because they can, because in a lot of ways they have cultural power - financial power to buy all this stuff, social power for the opportunity to pick and choose the best of each culture without having to take the downsides.
Bricolage is very similar, but the collage of bricolage is working with diverse cultural elements because they're *all you have* - the way that a poor artist will have mismatched furniture, because that's what they have to work with. An artist working from this perspective might design something using elements of several cultures, but they do this because this is all they know or have access to. Consider someone growing up in poverty and taking the handouts they can get - their art is going to be perhaps just as diverse as a richer person, but the influences come from chance rather than choice.
And of course as Matt said... it turns back into pastiche when the mismatched furniture becomes an imitated look sold by all the fashionable department stores for thousands.
Culture jamming is, in its best incarnations, a self-aware ironic sort of pastiche aimed at making privilege more obvious in some way. It's saying, "yes, I can make these choices... and they are ridiculous."
One aspect of culture jamming that isn't touched on as much is the opportunity to piggyback messages. I like doing pop magic(k) ritual because people go away with some sort of ritual consciousness attached to whatever cultural icon I used. Last year, I did a soul journey through the Egyptian book of the dead using muppets, and it pleases me that now everyone who came to that sees Kermit and thinks of Egypt. If you use the McDonald's golden arches M logo enough times to write the word "Murder" - people are going to reflexively think of this when they see the logo. Even if they still like McDonald's, this is going to be somewhere in the back of their heads. Done well, culture jamming is a sort of memetic parasite that uses all the work the original idea did to get into your brain, but turns the message back on itself. I only have to write Murder with the McDonald's M a couple of times to get it stuck in your brain, but McDonald's spent billions of dollars advertising what is now in part *my* idea.
I haven't been sleeping well lately, so I hope that was as coherent as I meant it to be. |
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