DOCSLIB.ORG

Subverting the Spectacle: a Critical Analysis of Culture

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Subverting the Spectacle: a Critical Analysis of Culture Subverting the Spectacle: A Critical Analysis of Culture Jamming as Activist Performance Submitted by William J E Platt to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama In August 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all the material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature…………………………………………………………. 1 Abstract: This thesis is a critical analysis of culture jamming as a form of activist performance that focuses on the relationship between performance, politics and ideology in the context of late-capitalism. Culture jamming is defined here as an overtly theatrical approach to political activism that primarily targets corporate power through the appropriation of the signs and symbols that constitute its branding. Drawing on a range of different examples including Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, the contemporary subvertising movement, the Yes Men and Liberate Tate, this thesis explores the way in which culture jamming intervenes in the ideological construction of the real by reintroducing a sense of the political into everyday life. Situating my analysis in relation to Guy Debord’s theory of spectacle and the concept of ‘the performative society,’ I draw on a range of theories from performance and theatre studies, philosophy, critical theory and cultural studies to develop the concept of ‘political force.’ Using this idea as my primary reference point I argue that culture jamming is able to meaningfully challenge the pervasive sense of cynicism characteristic of neoliberalism by transforming our experience of everyday life and, in some cases, producing a sense of the world beyond capitalist realism’s horizons of the thinkable. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments 4 Introduction 5 Chapter 1: Towards a Theory of Political Force 28 Chapter 2: Reverend Billy and the Performative Critique of Commodity Fetishism 82 Chapter 3: Subvertising and the Right to the City 122 Chapter 4: The Yes Men and the Political Force of Pranking 170 Chapter 5: Liberate Tate as Vested-Vanguard 210 Conclusion 252 Bibliography 260 3 Acknowledgements This research project could not have been completed without the valuable input and support of other scholars, artists, friends and family. First of all, I’d like to extend my thanks to my supervisors, Patrick Duggan and Stephen Hodge. Their feedback, advice and pastoral support has been constant and invaluable. In particular, I’d like to reiterate my thanks to Patrick for his decision to continue supervising this project whilst working at the University of Surrey. Some of the most significant breakthroughs in my research came out of conversations with my fellow PhD students at the University of Exeter Drama department. In particular, I’d like to highlight the contributions of my colleagues Sharanya Murali, Jon Venn, Aqeel Abdulla, Bec Fraser, Kate Holmes, Gabriel Varghese and Sinibaldo de Rosa, whose advice and unwavering friendship was an enormous source of comfort during some difficult periods. I’d also like to the thank all the staff (past and present) at the Drama department, in particular Kara Reilly, Jane Milling, Evelyn O’Malley, Rebecca Hillman and Michael Pearce, for their brilliant support and guidance during my studies. Special thanks also to all those involved in TaPRA’s Performance, Community and Identity and Performance and the Body working groups for the invaluable feedback I received from them during this project. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my parents, Celia and Chris Platt, and my partner, Lindsay Coleman. It is no overstatement to say that this project would not have been completed without the unconditional love and support that I received from them. I am forever in their debt. 4 Introduction This thesis is a critical analysis of culture jamming as a form of activist performance. The term ‘culture jamming’ was first coined by cultural critic, Mark Dery, in 1993 in an article entitled Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs (2010). As we shall see throughout this thesis, it is an overtly theatrical and performative approach to political activism that primarily targets corporate power through the appropriation of the signs and symbols that constitute its branding. For Dery, this approach can be understood as a means of both literally and figuratively ‘jamming’ the endless flow of signification that animates the socio-political landscape of late-capitalism by ‘introducing noise into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations’ (Dery, 2010: n.p). As the communications scholar Christine Harold has suggested, culture jammers pursue these aims by subverting and challenging ‘the marketing rhetoric of multinational corporations’ through practices such as media pranking, corporate sabotage, subvertising and trademark infringement (Harold, 2004: 190). Whilst thinkers like Dery and Harold trace the emergence of culture jamming back to the late 1980s and early 90s – a period coextensive with the emergence of neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology of Western capitalism (terms that will be discussed in detail shortly) – political theorist Richard Gilman-Opalsky contends that its theoretical and practical underpinnings were first articulated in the late 1950s by the Situationist International – a group of radical thinkers and artists formed in France out of the ashes of the Letterist International – and the well-known concept of détournement (Gilman-Opalsky, 2013: 3). Defined by the group’s most influential theorist, Guy Debord, as ‘the fluid language of anti- ideology’ (Debord, 1983: 208), détournement can be best understood as the 5 subversion of dominant cultural texts through the appropriation and recombination of various textual elements into a new ensemble. As we shall see, each of the case studies discussed in this thesis make extensive use of the détournement in their performance practice; from the anti-consumer ‘retail interventions’ of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir (who appropriate evangelical rhetoric as a means of staging a performative critique of commodity fetishism) to the institutional critique of Liberate Tate (whose critique of Tate’s relationship with British Petroleum hinges on the creative appropriation of the gallery’s curatorial practices as a means of reshaping its identity from a position of ‘interstitial distance’). Culture jamming is not a social movement in and of itself, but is a critical sensibility practiced by a confluence of artists and activists. It is an approach to activism characterized by a critical attitude towards the present and is performed through acts of political and aesthetic appropriation. This is the main way in which the term ‘jamming’ is understood in this thesis. However, there are two other understandings of the term that will be deployed elsewhere in my analysis. Firstly, jamming is also used to describe moments of interruption in which activists use performance as a means of literally jamming the various ideological performances that characterize everyday life under late-capitalism. This understanding of jamming informs my discussion of the performances of Reverend Billy and the contemporary subvertising movement in chapters 2 and 3 respectively. Secondly, and related to this, jamming will at times be understood as a process of improvisation in which activists use appropriation as a means of producing new versions of dominant cultural and political texts. Though this understanding of jamming might be readily applied to all of the 6 examples discussed in my thesis it is most explicitly drawn upon in my analysis of the Yes Men’s political pranking in Chapter 4. The understanding of jamming as appropriation might be thought of as analogous to the Situationist concept of détournement. Though I do not consider culture jamming to be a straightforward recapitulation of the Situationist International’s political project it is important to emphasize the extent to which the concept of détournement is linked to the group’s attempt to radically transform the experience of everyday life under capitalism. This political project was carried out in explicit opposition to the alienating logic of the ‘spectacle’ – a mode of capitalist production theorized by Debord that is characterized by the production and consumption of mediatized representations. In the opening statement of The Society of the Spectacle (1983) Debord updates Karl Marx’s famous opening lines of Capital as follows: ‘In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation’ (Debord, 1983: 1). Whilst these ‘spectacles’ frequently take the form of images Debord’s theory is more concerned with the way that this mode of production structures social relations and produces a pervasive sense of distraction and critical inactivity. This is why he argues that the spectacle is ‘that which escapes the activity of men, that which escapes reconsideration and correction by their work’ (Ibid: 18). Now, as we shall see in Chapter 1, the form of abstraction described by Debord is a historically
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History
    e “Unruly, energetic, unmastered. Also erudite, engaged and rigorous. Batchen’s essays have arrived at exactly the e a c h w i l d i d e a right moment, when we need their skepticism and imagination to clarify the blurry visual thinking of our con- a writing photography history temporary cultures.” geoffrey batchen c —Ross Gibson, Creative Director, Australian Centre for the Moving Image h In Each Wild Idea, Geoffrey Batchen explores widely ranging “In this remarkable book, Geoffrey Batchen picks up some of the threads of modernity entangled and ruptured aspects of photography, from the timing of photography’s by the impact of digitization and weaves a compelling new tapestry. Blending conceptual originality, critical invention to the various implications of cyberculture. Along w insight and historical rigor, these essays demand the attention of all those concerned with photography in par- the way, he reflects on contemporary art photography, the role ticular and visual culture in general.” i of the vernacular in photography’s history, and the —Nicholas Mirzoeff, Art History and Comparative Studies, SUNY Stony Brook l Australianness of Australian photography. “Geoffrey Batchen is one of the few photography critics equally adept at historical investigation and philosophi- d The essays all focus on a consideration of specific pho- cal analysis. His wide-ranging essays are always insightful and rewarding.” tographs—from a humble combination of baby photos and —Mary Warner Marien, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University i bronzed booties to a masterwork by Alfred Stieglitz. Although d Batchen views each photograph within the context of broader “This book includes the most important essays by Geoffrey Batchen and therefore is a must-have for every schol- social and political forces, he also engages its own distinctive ar in the fields of photographic history and theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Identities Bought and Sold, Identity Received As Grace
    IDENTITIES BOUGHT AND SOLD, IDENTITY RECEIVED AS GRACE: A THEOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF AND ALTERNATIVE TO CONSUMERIST UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE SELF By James Burton Fulmer Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion December, 2006 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Paul DeHart Professor Douglas Meeks Professor William Franke Professor David Wood Professor Patout Burns ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all the members of my committee—Professors Paul DeHart, Douglas Meeks, William Franke, David Wood, and Patout Burns—for their support and guidance and for providing me with excellent models of scholarship and mentoring. In particular, I am grateful to Prof. DeHart for his careful, insightful, and challenging feedback throughout the writing process. Without him, I would have produced a dissertation on identity in which my own identity and voice were conspicuously absent. He never tried to control my project but rather always sought to make it more my own. Special thanks also to Prof. Franke for his astute observations and comments and his continual interest in and encouragement of my project. I greatly appreciate the help and support of friends and family. My mom, Arlene Fulmer, was a generous reader and helpful editor. James Sears has been a great friend throughout this process and has always led me to deeper thinking on philosophical and theological matters. Jimmy Barker, David Dault, and Eric Froom provided helpful conversation as well as much-needed breaks. All my colleagues in theology helped with valuable feedback as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance in Obsolescence: Recuperation and Temporality in the Work of Guy Debord and the Situationist International
    RELEVANCE IN OBSOLESCENCE: RECUPERATION AND TEMPORALITY IN THE WORK OF GUY DEBORD AND THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL Tom Bunyard RECUPERATION In 2009, the French State bought an archive of Guy Debord’s work, containing his manuscripts, correspondence, reading notes, cinematic material and assorted personal effects. This purchase, which was conducted in order to prevent the archive’s sale to Yale, resulted in its installation in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). In order for this to take place, the President of the Bibliothèque was required to dub Debord’s work a “national treasure”; Sarkozy’s minister of culture was then obliged to endorse that evaluation by describing Debord as a “great French intellectual.”1 Unsurprisingly, these statements have proved somewhat notorious. Debord’s “bad reputation”2 once merited far more attention from the police and secret services than it did from academia, and the irony involved in the archive’s acquisition has not been lost on its many commentators: for as a journalist in Le Monde remarked, it entailed housing, “in a temple of the state,” the archives of “an intellectual who was critical of all institutions, and of society in general.”3 Yet while the tension between the archive’s content and its current location may have been sufficient to provoke commentary in the press, it remains the case that Debord’s work, together with that of the Situationist International (S.I.), has been steadily accepted and celebrated by the society that it opposed for years. This process of accommodation has proceeded apace over the past few decades, and Situationist material has now become a fixture of both the academic Left and of university teaching program; this despite the fact that in 1966, a French judge felt moved to declare Situationist ideas to be a genuine “threat” to the minds of impressionable students, and to society at large.4 Thus while the transition from the status of “threat” to that of “treasure” announced by the archive’s purchase is sharp, it is by no means without precedent.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium
    Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Ohio State University Alexandra Mary Jenkins, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Jared Gardner, Advisor Sean O’Sullivan Robyn Warhol Copyright by Alexandra Mary Jenkins 2014 Abstract Feminist activism in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s harnessed radical social thought and used innovative expressive forms in order to disrupt the “grand perspective” espoused by men in every field (Adorno 206). Feminist student activists often put their own female bodies on display to disrupt the disembodied “objective” thinking that still seemed to dominate the academy. The philosopher Theodor Adorno responded to one such action, the “bared breasts incident,” carried out by his radical students in Germany in 1969, in an essay, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis.” In that essay, he defends himself against the students’ claim that he proved his lack of relevance to contemporary students when he failed to respond to the spectacle of their liberated bodies. He acknowledged that the protest movements seemed to offer thoughtful people a way “out of their self-isolation,” but ultimately, to replace philosophy with bodily spectacle would mean to miss the “infinitely progressive aspect of the separation of theory and praxis” (259, 266). Lisa Yun Lee argues that this separation continues to animate contemporary feminist debates, and that it is worth returning to Adorno’s reasoning, if we wish to understand women’s particular modes of theoretical ii insight in conversation with “grand perspectives” on cultural theory in the twenty-first century.
    [Show full text]
  • Culture Jamming
    Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank Vincent de Jong for introducing me to the intricacy of the easyCity action, and for taking the time to answer my questions along my exploration of the case. I also want to thank Robin van t’ Haar for his surprising, and unique, contribution to my investigations of the easyCity action. Rozalinda Borcila, the insights you have shared with me have been a crucial reminder of my own privilieged position – your reflections, I hope, also became a marker in what I have written. Also, I would like to thank others that somehow made my fieldwork possible, and influenced my ‘learning’ of activism and culture jamming. Of these I would especially like to thank Nina Haukeland for introducing me to the politics of activism, Kirsti Hyldmo for reminding me of the realities of exploitation, Åse Brandvold for a skilled introduction to the thoughts and tools of culture jamming, and Maria Astrup for showing me the pleasures and powers of aesthetics. Also, I would like to thank the Norwegian Adbusters Network, and the editorial groups of Vreng. To my main advisor Professor Kristian Stokke, I would like to thank you for the excellent support you have given me throughout my master studies. Your insights have been of grate value, and I cannot thank you enough for continually challenging me. Also, the feedback from Olve Krange, my second advisor, was crucial at the early stage of developing the thesis, to defining its object of inquiry, and finally when writing my conclusion. I would also like to express my appreciation to Professor Oddrun Sæther for an excellent introduction to the field of cultural studies, to Professor Matt Sparke at the University of Washington for demonstrating the intriguing complexities of political geography, and to PhD candidate Stephen Young, for proof reading and fruitful inputs at the final stage of writing.
    [Show full text]
  • “What I'm Not Gonna Buy”: Algorithmic Culture Jamming And
    ‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube Item Type Article Authors Wood, Rachel Citation Wood, R. (2020). ‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube. New Media & Society. Publisher Sage Journals Journal New Media and Society Download date 30/09/2021 04:58:05 Item License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10034/623570 “What I’m not gonna buy”: algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube ‘I feel like a lot of YouTubers hyperbolise all the time, they talk about how you need things, how important these products are for your life and all that stuff. So, I’m basically going to be talking about how much you don’t need things, and it’s the exact same thing that everyone else is doing, except I’m being extreme in the other way’. So states Kimberly Clark in her first ‘anti-haul’ video (2015), a YouTube vlog in which she lists beauty products that she is ‘not gonna buy’.i Since widely imitated by other beauty YouTube vloggers, the anti-haul vlog is a deliberate attempt to resist the celebration of beauty consumption in beauty ‘influencer’ social media culture. Anti- haul vloggers have much in common with other ethical or anti-consumer lifestyle experts (Meissner, 2019) and the growing ranks of online ‘environmental influencers’ (Heathman, 2019). These influencers play an important intermediary function, where complex ethical questions are broken down into manageable and rewarding tasks, projects or challenges (Haider, 2016: p.484; Joosse and Brydges, 2018: p.697).
    [Show full text]
  • Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) “Conspicuous Leisure”
    Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) “Conspicuous Leisure” • American economist • Born in farm country of Minnesota (Norwegian settlers) • Norwegian farmers vs. English townspeople • Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Takes the appearance of an anthropological study of the “behavior of people who possess or are in the pursuit of wealth, and who, looking beyond their wealth, want the eminence/status that, or so they believe, wealth was meant to buy.” (John Kenneth Galbraith, Introduction) Book on snobbery and social pretense; the effect of wealth on behavior. Context: American society at the end of the 19th century: the “Gilded Age” (Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, etc). A rhetorically clever critique of the rich - purports to be a purely descriptive anthropological study (appearance of objectivity); no prescriptions offered. But, read between the lines, it is a “devastating put- down” (JKG, Intro). “Conspicuous Leisure” (Chapter 3) Some terms: pecuniary - money-related; monetary pecuniary struggle - struggle to acquire and exhibit wealth in order to gain status pecuniary emulation - effort to equal or surpass another in status associated with wealth leisure - nonproductive consumption of time leisure class - upper class exempt from productive work Veblen claims that the pecuniary struggle is the driving force behind the development of culture and society. The pecuniary struggle should make humans industrious and frugal. Veblen thinks otherwise: • For the working class (the “pecuniary inferior” class) - superficially this is true, but later we’ll see otherwise. • For the wealthy class (the “pecuniary superior” class) - pecuniary emulation demands abstention from work. The struggle for wealth (private property) is due to pecuniary emulation. It is not a struggle for subsistence.
    [Show full text]
  • Thorstein Veblen and American Social Criticism Joseph Heath Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Thorstein Veblen Is P
    Thorstein Veblen and American Social Criticism Joseph Heath Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Thorstein Veblen is perhaps best thought of as America’s answer to Karl Marx. This is sometimes obscured by the rather unfortunate title of his most important work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which misleading, insofar as it suggests that the book is just a theory of the “leisure class.” What the book provides is in fact a perfectly general theory of class, not to mention property, economic development, and social evolution. It is, in other words, a system of theory that rivals Marx’s historical materialism with respect to scope, generality and explanatory power. Furthermore, it is a system of theory whose central predictions, with respect to the development of capitalism and the possibilities for emancipatory social change, have proven to be essentially correct. When stacked up against Marx’s prognostications, this success clearly provides the basis for what might best be described as an invidious comparison. For example, it is Veblen who, at the close of the 19th century, observed that “The exigencies of the modern industrial system frequently place individuals and households in juxtaposition between whom there is little contact in any other sense than that of juxtaposition. One's neighbors, mechanically speaking, often are socially not one's neighbors, or even acquaintances; and still their transient good opinion has a high degree of utility... It is evident, therefore, that the present trend of the development is in the direction of heightening the utility of conspicuous consumption as compared with leisure” (1899, ch.
    [Show full text]
  • Re:Imagining Change
    WHERE IMAGINATION BUILDS POWER RE:IMAGINING CHANGE How to use story-based strategy to win campaigns, build movements, and change the world by Patrick Reinsborough & Doyle Canning 1ST EDITION Advance Praise for Re:Imagining Change “Re:Imagining Change is a one-of-a-kind essential resource for everyone who is thinking big, challenging the powers-that-be and working hard to make a better world from the ground up. is innovative book provides the tools, analysis, and inspiration to help activists everywhere be more effective, creative and strategic. is handbook is like rocket fuel for your social change imagination.” ~Antonia Juhasz, author of e Tyranny of Oil: e World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must Do To Stop It and e Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time “We are surrounded and shaped by stories every day—sometimes for bet- ter, sometimes for worse. But what Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsbor- ough point out is a beautiful and powerful truth: that we are all storytellers too. Armed with the right narrative tools, activists can not only open the world’s eyes to injustice, but feed the desire for a better world. Re:Imagining Change is a powerful weapon for a more democratic, creative and hopeful future.” ~Raj Patel, author of Stuffed & Starved and e Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy “Yo Organizers! Stop what you are doing for a couple hours and soak up this book! We know the importance of smart “issue framing.” But Re:Imagining Change will move our organizing further as we connect to the powerful narrative stories and memes of our culture.” ~ Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies, author of e Economic Meltdown Funnies and other books on economic inequality “Politics is as much about who controls meanings as it is about who holds public office and sits in office suites.
    [Show full text]
  • Between Semiotic Democracy and Disobedience: Two Views of Branding, Culture and Intellectualproperty
    Fordham Law School FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History Faculty Scholarship 2012 Between Semiotic Democracy and Disobedience: Two views of Branding, Culture and IntellectualProperty Sonia K. Katyal Fordham University School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the First Amendment Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Sonia K. Katyal, Between Semiotic Democracy and Disobedience: Two views of Branding, Culture and IntellectualProperty, 4 Wipo J. Intell. Prop. 50 (2012) Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/618 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Between Semiotic Democracy and Disobedience: Two views of Branding, Culture and Intellectual Property Sonia K. Katyal* Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law Brand names; Civil disobedience; Culture; Democracy; Intellectual property Nearly 20 years ago, a prominent media studies professor, John Fiske, coined the term “semiotic democracy” to describe a world where audiences freely and widely engage in the use of cultural symbols in response to the forces of media.1 A semiotic democracy enables the audience, to a varying degree, to “resist”, “subvert” and “recode” certain cultural symbols to express meanings that are different from the ones intended by their creators, thereby empowering consumers, rather than producers.2 At the time, Fiske’s concept was revolutionary; it promised a complete reversal of the monopolistic hierarchy of the author and the presumed passivity of the audience in receiving meaning.
    [Show full text]
  • Banksy at Disneyland: Generic Participation in Culture Jamming Joshua Carlisle Harzman University of the Pacific, [email protected]
    Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research Volume 14 Article 3 2015 Banksy at Disneyland: Generic Participation in Culture Jamming Joshua Carlisle Harzman University of the Pacific, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope Recommended Citation Harzman, Joshua Carlisle (2015) "Banksy at Disneyland: Generic Participation in Culture Jamming," Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: Vol. 14 , Article 3. Available at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol14/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Banksy at Disneyland: Generic Participation in Culture Jamming Cover Page Footnote Many thanks to all of my colleagues and mentors at the University of the Pacific; special thanks to my fiancé Kelly Marie Lootz. This article is available in Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/ kaleidoscope/vol14/iss1/3 Banksy at Disneyland: Generic Participation in Culture Jamming Joshua Carlisle Harzman Culture jamming is a profound genre of communication and its proliferation demands further academic scholarship. However, there exists a substantial gap in the literature, specifically regarding a framework for determining participation within the genre of culture jamming. This essay seeks to offer such a foundation and subsequently considers participation of an artifact. First, the three elements of culture jamming genre are established and identified: artifact, distortion, and awareness. Second, the street art installment, Banksy at Disneyland, is analyzed for participation within the genre of culture jamming.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigating New Aspects of Recuperation 1 Michael Tsangaris
    Re-adapting radical forms of expression in the digital era -Investigating new aspects of recuperation 1 Michael Tsangaris To cite this version: Michael Tsangaris. Re-adapting radical forms of expression in the digital era -Investigating new aspects of recuperation 1. XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology / RC57 Visual Sociology, Jul 2018, Toronto, Canada. hal-02349016 HAL Id: hal-02349016 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02349016 Submitted on 5 Nov 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 Re-adapting radical forms of expression in the digital era - Investigating new aspects of recuperation1. Michael Tsangaris, University of Piraeus, Greece Undoubtedly, all past media forms held possibilities for alternative communications but most of the times commodification that turns everything into ‘Spectacle’ degenerated such options. Even some of the most experimental forms of painting, photography, music or moving images, after all, removed far away from the original ideological frames in which they were initially created, and got absorbed by the mainstream cultural industry. In fact, alternative media forms such as aggressive rock music, street graffiti or tattoos, were initially used to express distinctive youth cultural scenes or counter-movements challenging the dominant culture.
    [Show full text]