USA Places - Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America
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List Price: $25.00
USA Places Price: $13.75
Your Save: $ 11.25 ( 45% )
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Manufacturer: William Morrow & Company
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23
EAN: 9780688156565
ISBN: 0688156568
Label: William Morrow & Company
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 251
Publication Date: 1999-11
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Studio: William Morrow & Company
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Editorial Reviews:
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According to Kalle Lasn, publisher of Adbusters magazine, culture jamming will become to our era what civil rights was to the '60s, what feminism was to the '70s, and what environmental activism was to the '80s. Culture jammers are a global network of media activists who assert that America is no longer a country, but a multitrillion-dollar brand, built on a cult of celebrity and marketing brand names. These brands, products, celebrities -- the spectacles that surround the production of culture -- are our culture now. The architect of Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, Lasn believes it is only by "uncooling" these symbols of culture, by organizing resistance against the institutions that manage the brands, that America can reassert herself. With cutting-edge design, this manifesto for the new millennium has the potential to completely alter the way we think and live.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Hypocritical and useless.
Comment: Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America (Morrow, 1999)
I was relatively sure I was going to hate Culture Jam. What I didn't realize-- but, upon reflection, should have-- is why. Lasn, as with many disinformationists, adopts the pose of "oh, those other guys are awful because they distort the facts," and then turns around and uses those same facts as selectively as possible to make sure his point gets across. (The whole second chapter could have done with a massive infusion of Stanton Peele's The Diseasing of America-- quoting Peele's stats-heavy book liberally could have strengthened a number of Lasn's arguments-- but certain findings of Peele's would have undermined or destroyed other arguments, so why bother?) All well and good if you simply want to consider it a rant and dismiss it as harmless, but Lasn's book is intended as a call to action. All well and good, and there's little denying that turning the American culture of advertising on its head is a laudable goal. If you believe the end justifies the means, hop to it. If you don't, after reading this book, get a few second opinions before running off half-cocked. (zero)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Culture Jam- an Eye Opener
Comment: Kalle Lasn's Culture Jam is a harsh and unforgiving reality check on the progression of American commercialism and, as a consequence, the decline of culture and community in the United States. By articulating the evils of television, advertising, and the media, Lasn illustrates to the reader the ways in which these technologies have warped and ravaged the brains of our generation. Arguing that these by-products of modernity are imbibed deep within our `culture', Lasn argues that the commercialist trend that Americans have so entrenched themselves within will inevitably damage the minds and spirits of our future as well, and lead to our eventual demise. Both chilling and insightful, Culture Jam is not only a narrative of the effects of commercialism, but one also of the loss of community that Americans have experienced as a result of the deep preoccupation we have developed with brand names through the mind numbing message we are fed constantly by the media and each other: buy, buy, buy.
By further illuminating the innumerable other evils of the multi-million dollar brand that is American, Lasn explains to the reader how concentrated corporate control, loss of a sense of real self, and the overriding emphasis we put on brand names, has led to the complete fall of the great American Dream. Caring about nothing, less what we own, and unable to even communicate with our loved ones without the comfortable buzz of our brand name electronic devices surrounding us, American's have become unable to settle with enough, and instead, yearn for the proverbial MORE. Lasn concludes with a challenge to the reader to deny this branding of America and break free from the bonds of consumerism and media.
What I thought to be a somewhat abrasive and self righteous attitude at the beginning of the book, I came to realize was merely an outrage over the state of America today and a deep and sincere appeal to the reader to join in this outrage in order to care enough to make a change. The harsh truth that, yes, "We, the people, have lost control" could be the wake up call that we need in order to begin to reject the serious crisis of mind controlling consumerism and understand that it truly shapes and dictates our very lives (71). Lasn wholeheartedly succeeds in his quest to jolt the reader out of his passive state of acceptance and to start the flow of dialogue about change and hope for a different future.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a starting point for living consciously
Comment: As a founder of the Adbusters organization and prominent activist himself, Kalle Lasn examines modern American society, media, and corporations and just how intertwined they all are in his 1999 work Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America.
Written in an interesting narrative style, Lasn describes many of the afflictions today's typical American suffer from and how we have become so accustomed to finding salvation in many different ways, essentially, in Corporate America.
He then delves further and demonstrates how Corporate America is not here for us, to provide us with all of the latest and greatest, but rather how it shapes us and exploits us.
All the while, he proposes that, due to the constraints of modern society, we are so disconnected from nature and the world at large that we are much more psychologically and physically affected than we may even be aware.
Lasn acknowledges the discouragement that many have when fighting for a change in society, but he offers up the fundamental idea behind this next revolution as "culture jamming" and provides some hope.
Culture Jam offers up new perspectives that are not always readily made to us in this society; the bottom line Lasn conveys is that we need to fight fire with fire and anybody can contribute, even in the most seemingly miniscule way.
Customer Rating:
Summary: No Culture Shock for me!
Comment: I found Culture Jam a good reference to the culture shock many Americans go through each day. The main argument refers to our lives as consumer and therefore media driven.
In reading Kalle Lasn's book, my eyes were opened by how consumer and media driven our lives are. Although, I already knew of this aspect as a consumer, the examples given had much reflection on what I consider an average middle class American life.
I wish that there were more information that did not reflect a great amount on the examples given. In this I mean that the author should give examples of the outside world.
Lasn opened the book with "Autumn", to assess the current damages of our consumer driven lives. The point that if we cut nature out of our lives that our spirits die is right on in a sense. When we totally rely on materialistic things, we do indeed lose our spirituality. We indeed have also become more virtual rather that relying on our "real" lives.
Classifying advertisements as "mental pollutants" was also a good analogy. We go through the motions of work everyday to earn money for the products we see advertised everyday in the media. Our lives are totally shaped by the media.
Huge corporations have become dominate by serving their own interests when they consistently put their products on the airwaves. But haven't those interests become our interests? Why isn't this explained? I think it is a major part of why we are like we are as consumers.
I didn't agree with the concept of the Situationists in the "Spring" section of the book. Why do they think the spectacle has been kidnapped? This is never really explained and doesn't bring any clear meaning to the page. By the way, the whole Situationists theory, if you can call it that, is a farce. I couldn't even read through this part in the book. It's just repeating itself over and over again.
I also did not find any meaning in the "We are not" sections of the book. Look at what we are for once. I don't really care for some negativity with no backup. It is just too much. If you really would care to look into it, everything still has the same meaning, it just depends how each individual looks at it. Why do we keep blaming others for the uncertainty and change? I am still cool!
The close of the book seemed to ramble on about thinking and doing things for yourself, which I feel left a lot of ends untied. I think the ending was just a way to get more pages in the book and very unhelpful. I think we can figure out on our own that we must "demarketise" our lives in order to be a greater society.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but definitely not the best
Comment: Lasn begins the book Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America with several chapters devoted to the problems of American culture. We watch too much television. We have become desensitized to violence. We buy wholeheartedly into what corporate America tells us we should eat, wear, look like, be. We are a nation that interacts with the world through the "virtual" lenses of our cameras, our computers, our televisions. We have become disconnected from the natural world. While the list he lays out is nice, it's a relatively familiar litany of complaints about American consumerism. However, the solutions that he offers later in the book seem to contradict each other. One of his main arguments is that our lives should be spent seeking and engaging in authentic gestures. On page 106, Lasn says "Living in the moment, pursuing the authentic gesture, living close to the edge -- call it what you will -- when it's genuine, it's the force that makes life worth living." Although I agree that much of our lives are inauthentic and dictated by corporate America, authenticity as a goal leaves a lot of room for scary interpretation. What if "living on the edge" for me is murder or rape? What if the thing that makes me feel most alive is setting my neighbor's house on fire? Is it fair to trample on the rights of others in our quest for authenticity? It's a little unsettling to me that Lasn's statement, whether he intended this or not, could be interpreted as advocating a society full of amoral chaos. In addition, Lasn seems to contradict himself in the next section of his book. Lasn offers the reader many ideas of how they can take on corporate America. On page 149, Lasn informs us that "The real lesson here is that no battle is too small." Lasn teaches us how to fight back against the 1-800 headquarters of our bank when we are told that we will no longer be able to call our local branch directly. Lasn offers an example of how we can attack the Nike sponsorship of our university hockey team. The problem is not that these things are not worth doing (although one could question just how important a battle with the bank is when our president is about to send us to war). The problem is that Lasn seemed to be saying in the previous section that we should be striving for an authentic experience. What's authentic about replicating an experience that one read about in his book? And why is blindly following Lasn's ideas more authentic than blindly following American consumerism? Although there are some inconsistencies and some of his statements are misguided, I believe Lasn's heart is in the right place. The reader gets the sense that he is very committed to his beliefs and his desire to effect positive change on the American culture. He's right that America needs changing, but I didn't find reason to believe that he's found a viable path to this change.
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