Reading Response: Naomi Klein - No Logo

This article assigned for this reading response is a chapter of Naomi Klein's book, No Logo, which focuses on a type of art called "culture jamming.," a developing style that uses advertising as it's main subject matter.  These "culture jammers" have chosen to attack ads which they find to be manipulative, dangerous or misinforming, especially advertisements for alcohol and tobacco, which target underprivileged young people in low income areas. The artists tap into the hard work put into ads by advertisers by using there location, color scheme, slogan, etc, but they, then, subvert the meaning of the advertisement to display something more accurate to what the company is offering, "sending conter-messages that hack into a corporation's own method of communication to send a message starkly at odds with the one that was intended."

Culture Jammers have been around for much longer than you might imagine (a culture jamming collective called BUG-UP, Australia's Billboard Utilizing Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, caused approximately $1 million in damage to tobacco billboards in 1983) even though they seem to fit in line with many of the tactical web - artists that we see today.The article discusses how their form has been affective at using one part of the power structure against another, creating things that are both aesthetically and politically effective.  The tobacco and alcohol companies fear these attention welcoming artists because they are beginning to expose some of the inaccuracies of advertising in the public forum. Rather than sue these artists, large companies are better to just leave them well alone and avoid extra publicity.

I'm all for it. I like the idea that we should all have a billboard to say what we think is important to the whole. With all of our advancements and evolutions that have allowed us to communicate so fluidly, the one thing that seems to be undermined is the existence of open public forum. As the article states and I find to be true, "free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point that no one can here you." I think that is important to take back control of our media, it shouldn't be strictly a tool for companies to beam messages at us, which I think taps into this whole other issue of who owns what.