Blogger Clogger's Nonworking Mental Cog Blog

 “...bear in mind that culture jamming is a form of communication that can come only from outside commercial culture, not from inside the media industry.”

(O'Shaugnessy & Stadler. 2012 pg. 214)

Hello Everyone!      Hope this Thursday morning is going swimmingly for you all. Today, in the wide world of Professional Blogging we're discussing the nature of culture jamming. It has nothing to do with our father's tendency to jam every historical site into a vacation. More to the point, culture jamming is an active attempt to stand against the erroneous failing of modern mass media to provide the truth.

The Daily Colbert Conundrum

     So are shows like the Colbert Report or The Daily Show truly a form of culture jamming? They do make a point of standing against the mass media or at least political media. These shows also manage to bring certain elements of the truth that the mass media fails to hide into the light. I really like these shows but no matter what my thoughts are it's a situation I must defer to the scientists for.

Cue the quote above.

     No matter your feelings on Daily and his band of merry political warmongers we can't dismiss the fact that they are ever entrenched within the mass media. There are massive media corporations and major sums of currency making these shows a success and the further you travel up the ladder of currency the closer you get to the maw of consumption.

Pictured: Media and its Maw

(antiherogaming.wordpress.com)

Daddy Issues

     So my father can't be considered a brilliant paragon of human evolution but he's got some intellect and he has some ethics. In many of his righteous moments he professes the problem with shows of this nature trivializing serious problems by saturating them with humour. He makes many claims to the fact that the mass media relies on the tendency for humans to relax in the face of humour and think the problems stated are nothing more than a joke so we shouldn't concern ourselves with them. This understanding of my father's plays perfectly with one of Stadler and O'Shaughnessy's limitations of culture jamming:

“The use of controversy and humour can serve to focus attention on the ad, not the issue, or it can trivialize the issue.” (O'Shaugnessy & Stadler. 2012 pg. 226)

(social.bioware.com)

     I know, I was shocked too upon finding out the truth. Far more than just having to come face to face with the fact that I do the same thing...that some of my truly enjoyed shows may be sharing pints along side that which they profess to bring down, I had to see the proof that they were actually a limitation on the efforts of the revolution.

     Are these proofs concrete? No, they're just text but they're proofs regardless and I'm sure the avid among you can find many counter proofs through a lot of watching of the The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Much like the American military's regards to hippies, I welcome your dissent. Either way, I'm still going to watch their shows :)


Text References
- O'shaughnessy, M., & Stadler, J. (2012). Media and Society: Fifth Edition. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, Pgs: 214 & 226