Culture Jamming

We are exposed to 3,000 advertisements a day. Whether they are television commercials, magazine pages, flyers or billboards, marketers want to paste their ad's anywhere that is visually possible. Actually, some companies have even considered placing ad's in outer space that can be seen from earth. Should we not feel bombarded by all of this advertising? Many people let ad's affect them; they marvel, they accept, and they buy the product. Others will briefly look at ads and then go back to reading their books or listening to their ipod, feeling unmoved. And then there are participants of culture jamming; people who take action in creative ways. Culture Jamming is a form of communication that targets consumers and tries to inform them with shocking facts, images or videos that what they are buying is unhealthy and unnecessary. Practitioners of culture jamming believe that advertisements have negatively influenced people's social values, and try to bring out the real, not-so-noticeable sides of advertisers.

An example of culture jamming is artist Ron English. Ron and his team of billboard liberationists take ads, manipulate them in their own ways by using artistic abilities or political conduct and plaster them in similar places where the originals are. What is the point of this? To inform the world that corporations are bombarding us. Ron pokes fun at food companies like Coca Cola and McDonalds, cigarette companies like Marlboro and Camel, and political figures such as Bush and Obama. Ron dedicates his life to creating these anti-advertising billboards to raise awareness about current events and social conditions, and some are just for fun to create humour without overt social commentary. What Ron is doing is illegal, so he has to be careful. He does his work during the day because if he were caught at night, it would be obvious that he is doing something illegal. Ron also does paintings in the same content.
It is important that the message gets across somehow: that we are over-consumers who cannot get enough of spending and getting, and maybe, just maybe, culture jamming will open our eyes, and people like Ron will continue to provide the public with truth and reality.

CCCE. "Culture Jamming". November 25th 2008. <http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/CultureJamming.htm>

Ron English. "Popaganda". November 25th 2008. <http://www.popaganda.com/billboards/index.shtml>