The term \u201cculture jam\u201d suggests that we can interfere with the messages delivered to us as consumers, that as people\u2014even citizens\u2014we can resist.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/apple-ad1.jpg?resize=200%2C211&ssl=1\")
How does it work?\u00a0\u00a0We begin be examining what an advertisement\u2019s message is\u2014not the product that it sells, but the lifestyle message behind the product.\u00a0\u00a0For instance, DKNY and Abercrombie and Fitch sell sex appeal to youth, Hummers sell American patriotism and strength, and McDonald\u2019s sells fun and convenience.<\/p>\n
Then we turn that extra message on its ear, reverse or otherwise alter the image so that the ad\u2019s underlying goal is undone.\u00a0\u00a0In 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.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s an anti-business (or at least anti-corporate) appeal.\u00a0\u00a0Who wants to be stuffy and inept?\u00a0\u00a0But streetwise, young, and still successful?\u00a0\u00a0Give me that Mac!<\/p>\n
My \u201cjam\u201d of the ad is perhaps simplistic, but my first goal is to remove the two male models and replace them with alternatives.\u00a0\u00a0I 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.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/apple-jam.jpg?resize=587%2C228&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
I now give the Mac a cute pink bunny (at least it\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0I added one more random image to make my intent plain (It reads, “I’m irrelevant to the product.”).<\/p>\n
Ads are easy to jam, because they are so obvious.\u00a0\u00a0Other propaganda is less explicit, though.\u00a0\u00a0Politicians make speeches that sell security, prosperity, and change. Teachers sell principles of success, capitalism, and obedience.\u00a0\u00a0Beneath most every argument lies assumptions, subtexts, presuppositions which the speaker wants unspoken, unquestioned.<\/p>\n
How does we make the implicit explicit?\u00a0\u00a0Imagine the teacher who says to his class, \u201cSome teachers never let you speak without raising your hand.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The 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\u2014all of these may motivate such a comment. And what should we make of a boyfriend\u2019s comment which begins, \u201cIf you really loved me . . .\u201d?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The term \u201cculture jam\u201d suggests that we can interfere with the messages delivered to us as consumers, that as people\u2014even citizens\u2014we can resist. How does it work?\u00a0\u00a0We begin be examining what an advertisement\u2019s message is\u2014not the product that it sells, but the lifestyle message behind the product.\u00a0\u00a0For instance, DKNY and Abercrombie and Fitch sell sex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,248],"tags":[364,274,365,366,367,368,369],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chizblog","category-culture-criticism","tag-advertising","tag-consumer","tag-culture-jam","tag-jam","tag-mac","tag-pc","tag-presupposition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/Apple-Ad.jpg?fit=270%2C277&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":830,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/the-apple-of-discord\/","url_meta":{"origin":809,"position":0},"title":"The Apple of Discord","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2008 Apr 20","format":"video","excerpt":"Eris, the Goddess of Discord, throws the apple into the hall of the gods, labeled\u00a0kalliste, \u201cto the fairest.\u201d And so begin the arguments of Helen\u2019s fidelity, Achilles\u2019 hubris, and Odysseus\u2019 loss. All of Western literature is beset first by discord, by imbalance, and how often the simple apple plays a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/d90ef6a6e187f330ae4321c6a650c72e.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2403,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/american-original-sin-archetype\/","url_meta":{"origin":809,"position":1},"title":"American Original Sin: American Archetype","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2020 Mar 30","format":false,"excerpt":"These are difficult arguments, and so, as good symbol-using animals, we tend to reduce the abstract complexity to symbols and fight over those instead. Why challenge American exceptionalism when we can argue over the best baseball team?","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/03\/merica-cookie.jpg?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2404,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/american-original-sin-pc-monster\/","url_meta":{"origin":809,"position":2},"title":"American Original Sin: Sesame Street’s PC Monster","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2020 Mar 29","format":false,"excerpt":"Our goal as a consumer society is to eat, eat, and eat. The chocolate chip cookie has ever been, therefore, that perfect product of American consumerism.","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/03\/c-coronary.jpg?fit=400%2C264&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1706,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/american-road-trip-2-indiana-and-illinois\/","url_meta":{"origin":809,"position":3},"title":"American Road Trip 2: Indiana and Illinois","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2012 Jul 15","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing necessarily insightful about these next few posts, but more an account of some of the highlights of my second American Road Trip. This time I will be taking two specific roads while traveling to Vegas and back: Route 50, called the \"Loneliest Road in America,\" and Route 66, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/071513_0434_AmericanRoa3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1768,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/on-james-berlin\/","url_meta":{"origin":809,"position":4},"title":"On James Berlin, Yahoo News, and the War on Christmas","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2010 Dec 19","format":false,"excerpt":"I still remember my direct encounter with Neo-Marxist philosopher and rhetorician James Berlin (1942-1994) during a presentation I made at the Michigan College English Association conference. 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I stopped, considering the design and realizing that probably 51 companies had created 132 different designs of collectible Obama plates, now\u2014not two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/072910_0420_InventingVa6.png?fit=401%2C228&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/couple.jpg?resize=306%2C143&ssl=1\")
How do we become critics of every message around us?\u00a0\u00a0How do we move from consumer-target back to human?\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0possible to respond first to the presupposition before the explicit message; but it takes practice.<\/p>\n