Features / If the medium is the message - subvert it / If the medium is the message - subvert it Duncan Campbell on the man who has made it his aim to un-swoosh America Perhaps no publication could claim to be more in tune with the campaign against corporatism and globalisation than Adbusters, which carries some of the most striking images of any magazine in the world. The Canadian magazine, which is published every two months, is the "journal of the mental environment", and from its exquisitely executed covers to its call for cultural revolution it is attracting readers from all sides of the political arena. Next month it will be encouraging the world to take part in a Buy Nothing Day. This month it is running a "creative resistance contest". Its ideas come from the French Situationists and from Marshal McLuhan, but its execution is very much 21st century. Articles in its latest edition cover everything from the marketing of the United States elections to a story about McDonald's in Lebanon. According to its manifesto, "We are a loose global network of artists, writers, environmentalists, ecological economists, media-literacy teachers, reborn lefties, ecofeminists, downshifters, high-school shit-disturbers, campus rabble-rousers, incorrigibles, malcontents and green entrepreneurs . . . We believe that culture jamming will become to our era what civil rights was to the 60s, feminism to the 70s, and environmental activism to the 80s . . . Above all, it will change the way we interact with the mass media and the way in which meaning is produced in our society." Adbusters was born more than 10 years ago, but it is only since the anti-globalisation protests in Seattle last year that it has started breaking through to a wider audience. Its founder and editor-in-chief is 58-year-old Kalle Lasn, who left Estonia as a two-year-old, and grew up in Australia, where he worked for the defence department. He moved to Tokyo, where he was in market research, and then to Canada. There he became an award-winning documentary film-maker before founding Adbusters, driven by his disillusionment with corporatisation and the failure of conventional leftwing politics to combat it. His philosophy is contained in the book Culture Jam: The Uncooling Of America, whose list of dedications includes "My mortal enemy, Philip Morris Inc, which I vow to take down." He and his colleagues have set themselves the task of "un-swooshing America" and "jamming its image factory until it comes to a sudden, shuddering halt". The Vancouver-based Adbusters is their journal. "At the beginning I did feel we were talking to the converted", says Lasn, "but all of a sudden there is a well-spring of interest." Initially the magazine was produced on newsprint and had a small if loyal following. Now it sells 100,000 copies worldwide, mainly in the US, but also Australia and New Zealand. It has about 2,000 subscribers in Britain. Many of the ideas in the magazine and on its website have the subversive message of the loose movement that has emerged since Seattle. Lasn sees the magazine as a player in the epic battle between corporate culture and civic culture - "a people-driven Planet Earth or a corporate-driven Planet Inc". As he put it in Culture Jam: "Instead of treating vegetative, corporate-driven TV culture as something to be gently, ironically mocked, it's time to face the whole ugly spectre of our TV-addicted nation, the savage anomie of a society entranced and entrapped and living a lie. It's time to admit that chronic TV watching is North America's number-one mental health problem, and that a society in which citizens spend a quarter of their waking lives (more than four hours a day) in front of their sets is in serious need of shock therapy." If you watch people flipping through Adbusters in a newsagents you can often see the puzzlement on their faces. Is this ad for Absolut Vodka for real? Is this two-page photo-spread of an elderly man asking, "How can I die with dignity?" an invitation to a website about dying? This is part of the magazine's intent, a desire to challenge the persuasion industry, to subvert the meaning in the message, and to encourage people to become "culture jammers", taking on the corporations at their own game. "Corporations advertise and culture jammers subvertise" is one of its credos. Adbusters does take ads, and will run "advocacy advertisements", such as either pro- or anti-abortion, but it reserves the right to vet every other kind of ad. Some of the visuals are subversions of well-known ads, but although all the usual suspects (Nike, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney) have been lampooned, only one has sued: "Absolut Vodka came after us with a horde of lawyers, but we beat them back quite handsomely. They got scared and ran away with their tail between their legs. We have quite consciously provoked people like Nike and McDonald's. They haven't sued, but they do subscribe." Lasn ran into problems, however, when he tried to advertise his Buy Nothing Day on television. The big television networks refused to run the commercials, and CNN only agreed after being hounded by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. But Adbusters remains optimistic. If not culture jam today, then certainly culture jam tomorrow. The Guardian Weekly 19-10-2000, page 26
