Culture Jamming - Essay Example

Culture Jamming Culture Jamming Cultural Jamming is an idea supporting anti-consumerism that aims to disrupt and undermine the media culture and the areas where it is being utilized including corporate advertising. Culture jamming is often used as a means to “subvertising”, i.e. making parodies of the existing corporate advertisements by either altering their existing logos and ads or creating new images that target the best-known brands among the many. Culture jammers, intends to emphasize the personal freedom of consumers and the domination of society instead of the domination of corporations and brand names.

One of the culture jammers depicted in the short clip from Jill Sharpe’s video Culture Jam rightly defines the idea of culture jamming as "The way to protect yourselves in insidious corporate culture is to take the classic expressions of that corporate culture and add a little twist that redefines their meaning in a revolutionary direction and send it back in their faces." Culture jamming techniques include transforming logos, remaking advertisements, and altering the fashion statements in an ironic and humorous way, using the same communication medium, which attempts to take out the hype and restore the human mind to its original unbiased state.

According to culture jammers, this can bring a major change in this age of globalization as viewers realize that they have been fooled by the insidious corporate culture. The issue focused on culture jamming is definitely important, as corporate culture and advertising certainly do try to capture the hearts and minds of the masses by evoking their emotions. Culture jamming hence attempts to negate the effect by subverting those effects and hoping for a major change in culture and society.

Culture jamming is often seen as an act of vandalism which has certainly blemished their image and primary objective. But the intentions of culture jammers are far different from the people causing destruction. It must also be noted that along with criticizing the existing media culture, there is also the need to offer an alternative social culture by the culture jammers. References Nomai, A. J. (2008). Culture jamming: Ideological struggle and the possibilities for social change.