Adbusters is a popular alternative magazine started in 1989 by self-proclaimed “cultural jammer” Kalle Lasn and Bill Schamlz. As the title suggests, Adbusters is dedicated to exposing and undermining mainstream capitalist culture. Their mission statement says,
“We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.”
Ever since I first saw Adbusters, I’ve been very ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I have to admit that it’s consistently one of, perhaps the most, interesting and relevant magazines that actually discusses something of substance. While the mainstream media delivers little but cliches that never question the political and economic status quo, most alternative media tends to respond to the former in a predictable and mostly uninteresting, unoriginal and superficial way. Adbusters is one of the few (save perhaps for more obscure extreme left and anarchist journals) magazines that attempts to question and demolish the very memes and beliefs upon which mainstream society rests. On the other hand, there are some fundamental contradictions in the very essence of what Adbusters supposedly stands for.
We can start to examine the whole Adbusters dialectic by looking at the format and price. How, one might naturally ask, can a glossy magazine that sells for $8 (I believe that’s the current price) claim to be leading the fight against global capitalism? The price alone makes it out of reach to all but privileged consumers (to use the leftist jargon proper to such discussions!) Then there’s the format of the magazine and what may be it’s best known feature -fake ads meant to parody real ones. The strange thing about this is that there is often little difference between Adbuster parody ads and the more sophisticated real ads found in many blatantly consumerist magazines, such as Wired or Rolling Stone.
Of course, it’s a truism in the kind of intellectual circles that Adbuster readers belong to that the symbols and values of anything radical or countercultural are quickly commodified by mainstream consumer culture (see, for example, the book Commodify Your Dissent, by Thomas Frank). Modern advertising has become hip and has mastered the art of ironic self-mockery. It has also appropriated the language of rebellion, giving us “radical,” and “revolutionary” SUVs and running shoes. So it has become almost impossible to effectively parody the more sophisticated end of the advertising industry. So in this manner, Adbusters, by putting out an expensive, and stylish publication, is not only taking the risk that its intentions and authenticity may be questioned, but that it gets lost in the vast expanse of similar looking media.
All of this, and I still haven’t directly addressed the written content of Adbusters. It is here where my ambivalence reaches a crescendo. To assess what this magazine is all about, in both its strengths and weaknesses, we can do no better than to examine a recent article that sparked quite a bit of controversy. The article is Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization, by Douglas Haddow. In this article, Haddow speaks in broad terms of young “hipsters” who embody the apathy, nihilism and superficial cool of contemporary Western culture. These hipsters, Haddow argues, are entirely self-absorbed and care nothing beyond the image they cast with their fashion statements, musical tastes and events that they deign to attend. Haddow compares them, unfavorably of course, with prior movements of disaffected youth.
Following this article, there was a deluge of criticism, much of it aimed at Haddow and Adbusters itself. Many of the critics accused Haddow himself of being such a hipster, and hence a hypocrite. They further pointed out that his article did nothing to suggest what these hipsters might do, but only attacked them. Perhaps most pointedly, Haddow was accused of generalizing about this whole group of people who may not even really exist. He does not, after all, define them with any precision.
I don’t want to discuss Haddow’s article at length, but merely wanted to bring this up as a good way to immerse ourselves in the current atmosphere at Adbusters. Earlier I used the word “dialectic,” and I think this sums up the most important contribution that Adbusters makes to cultural criticism. This is also why, after all my quibbles, some of them arguably serious issues, I still find Adbusters to be more worth reading than any other publication I can think of offhand. It is because the very format and positions taken by Adbusters seem to frequently generate thought-provoking and potentially useful discussions. And not incidentally, Adbusters prints a wide sampling (perhaps all, for all I know) of the letters it receives, no matter how critical. So in this way, Adbusters, or those who write for it, are not shielded from the fray, as are most traditional media commentators who simply write an article and have to deal with, at most, one or two critical responses.
Adbusters stands at the intellectual forefront of the debates regarding issues such as global capitalism, advertising and new (as well as old) media. I must confess, as an only partially reformed libertarian, that I am somewhat skeptical about the very raison d’être of Adbusters. That is, I’m not sure that capitalism per se or advertising are the most essential problems of modern society. Yet I can say that I find a great deal of what the global economy, advertising world and mainstream media create to be worthy of condemnation, and Adbusters does this in a truly interesting and intellectually stimulating way, flaws notwithstanding.
Perhaps the most blatant limitation of Adbusters is that it tends to be mainly reactionary. It criticizes and satirizes while seldom offers any real alternatives, other than abstract anarchist or existentialist type calls for “freedom” or “authenticity.” It is here that the reader must take responsibility and realize that maybe the anarchists and existentialists were right after all –is is up to us to think for ourselves and create our own experience. A magazine, even Adbusters, is not going to do it for us any more than any church, government or corporation. Nor should we expect them to. So, while I remain aware of the sometimes painful contradictions implicit in the Adbusters format, I’ll probably keep reading it anyway.
http://www.adbusters.org
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