Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
The Adbusters website offers an alternative view for many things we tend not to think twice about. In short, they challenge some of common ideologies set in our corporation runned society. The site and its magazine counterpart of the same title is "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the informationage." Available on the site are links to articles, their shop, forums (for the online community), ways to get involved, videos (requiring QuickTime), and spoof ads. The main page is well organized, using images as well as text to indicate what each link leads to.
The spoof ads challenge the "image" that product is normally portrayed with. It requires its viewer to look deeper into what using the product actually means, and presents the unsaid side of what a normal advertisement of that product would say. These activists are trying to use different modalities to convey their message against the corporation runned world. Overall, this site provides an alternative point of view to many things present in the world today.
The spoof ads challenge the "image" that product is normally portrayed with. It requires its viewer to look deeper into what using the product actually means, and presents the unsaid side of what a normal advertisement of that product would say. These activists are trying to use different modalities to convey their message against the corporation runned world. Overall, this site provides an alternative point of view to many things present in the world today.
posted by kanani at 6:30 PM
1 Comments:
AdBusters is always an entertaining and provocative site. You're right to point out the complex modalities of their spoof ads, which draw upon familiar images of products (commonplaces in some respects) in order to shock or surprise us into a different perspective on what that product represents within our culture and our individual experience.
AdBusters also attempts to galvanize political activism through a number of different appeals. The Two Minutes of Silence campaign is one interesting example of this political rhetoric, as is the Buy Nothing Day they are also advocating. In each case, these are appeals oriented to future action, which places them in the classical category of political rhetoric.
The spoof ads are also political, of course, but they seem closer to the rhetoric of "praise and blame" called epideictic or ceremonial in classical terms. They aim to make us rethink our ideas in the present, though of course we may choose not to purchase these products in the future.
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