Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn
Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn (1999) argues that traditional social move
ment strategies cannot bring about the kinds of change culture jammers seek. With regard to the traditional political “Left,” Lasn (1999) states that
they lack passion; he argues that “there’s something drab and predictable about them; they feel like losers” (p. 118), and states that individuals who
want to build an effective social movement must use new tactics. This new
paradigm of political activism involves the creative appropriation, creation, and enactment of culture, along with large doses of humor and creativity?
this approach works by creating a political poetics. In an interview, Reverend
Billy explains:
I’m using strategies like entertainment, comedy, music, and then of course working
with small groups of people inside transnational chain stores inside the private
property of the enemy, of the great retail juggernaut?that also is much more
fun?it’s charged and less predictable than a demonstration that has its didactic
language and a set of terms that are very old. (As interviewed in Post & Palacios,
2006)
We believe that part of culture jamming’s potential effectiveness as critical
public pedagogy, then, is its ability to help participants to engage in com
munal politics. When politics becomes poetic, and is presented or enacted
through culture?and especially through a fun, exciting, collective experi
ence of culture?it can seem more open and inviting, and less predictable,
than other forms of political protest (Duncombe, 2002).
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