Apple Jam

The term “culture jam” suggests that we can interfere with the messages delivered to us as consumers, that as people—even citizens—we can resist.

How does it work?  We begin be examining what an advertisement’s message is—not the product that it sells, but the lifestyle message behind the product.  For instance, DKNY and Abercrombie and Fitch sell sex appeal to youth, Hummers sell American patriotism and strength, and McDonald’s sells fun and convenience.

Then we turn that extra message on its ear, reverse or otherwise alter the image so that the ad’s underlying goal is undone.  In the newer Apple ads, for instance, Apple sells two male images of the PC and Mac, one a bumbling business geek, the other a laid-back young hipster.  It’s an anti-business (or at least anti-corporate) appeal.  Who wants to be stuffy and inept?  But streetwise, young, and still successful?  Give me that Mac!

My “jam” of the ad is perhaps simplistic, but my first goal is to remove the two male models and replace them with alternatives.  I have no interest in trying to sell the PC, but I do wish to render them irrelevant, even comical, to remind us what Apple company is up to.

I now give the Mac a cute pink bunny (at least it’s still an image of youth and simplicity!) and I add a stereotypical geek to emphasize what Apple did in casting the PC guy, making their strategy open and explicit.  I added one more random image to make my intent plain (It reads, “I’m irrelevant to the product.”).

Ads are easy to jam, because they are so obvious.  Other propaganda is less explicit, though.  Politicians make speeches that sell security, prosperity, and change. Teachers sell principles of success, capitalism, and obedience.  Beneath most every argument lies assumptions, subtexts, presuppositions which the speaker wants unspoken, unquestioned.

How does we make the implicit explicit?  Imagine the teacher who says to his class, “Some teachers never let you speak without raising your hand.”  The implicit claim of superiority, the guilt offered to students who speak out of turn, and the demand for gratefulness to the teacher who says it—all of these may motivate such a comment. And what should we make of a boyfriend’s comment which begins, “If you really loved me . . .”?

How do we become critics of every message around us?  How do we move from consumer-target back to human?  It is possible to respond first to the presupposition before the explicit message; but it takes practice.