Power, Memory and Gender in Media:Culture Jam & SomeFilms by Ann Marie Fleming

Some Questions . . .

Questions . . .

• for the Students: Culture Jam; AMF

• for the Directors: Culture Jam; AMF

Culture Jam: Q for Students • What is culture jamming? Do you agree with it?

What are the differences among the three types of culture jammers, Billboard Liberation Front, Media Tigress Carly Stasko and Reverend Billy?

• In one way or another, they are on the borders of legality. Do you see them as illegal? Are there other alternatives to bring people’s attention to the omnipresence of commercial culture?

• Do you feel influenced, if not overwhelmed, by the ads or commercial culture in our daily life? Does the film change your consciousness? Is there a way for you to resist their influences?

Culture Jam is . . .• Reality hacking, breathing so that you don’t get suffoc

ated, responding to mass media in a subversive way, tactical intervention, a semiological warfare, reconfiguring the logo, academy hacking, making a mockery of consensus reality.

• Premises: no free speech; no way to respond, while our mind is “branded” or occupied by those ads.

Billboard Liberation Front• Style: minimalist, • Target: Billboard,

Transit ads, Street furniture

• Purpose: changing the viewers’s consciousness in a simple way.

• Not damaging the ads.

•

Billboard Liberation Front• Never been caught; humorous;

• Not anti-smoking, just tell the truth

Billboard Liberation Front

• LSD – a kind of drug

Billboard Liberation Front• I’m realistic. I only smoke Facts.

Billboard Liberation Front• Dot Com ads

Billboard Liberation Front• Billboards are playing god.

Billboard Liberation Front• Self contradictory?

Carly Stasko, Media Tigress• Target: ads everywhere

• Method: with collages with stickers on the ads

• Purpose: open our mind, making a little space for responding to the ads

Two Types of Controversies

• Defacing public property?

• On an opposite end to the media makers?

“We all love media.”

“Small” and/or Subtle Protests• Shopping is good, enjoy debt, fill your inner

emptiness with stuff!

“Small” and/or Subtle Protests• Which comes first, the beauty or the

myth?

Angry Protests• You are the product. Enjoy debt. Ignore

poverty.

• The screen ad in a restroom.

Church of Stop Shopping• Target: Disney as a sweat shop

• Method: theatrical activism (a fake priest); shock people into an awareness with a few minutes’ theatrical acts, or suspension of their common sense.

Controversies• Mixing two dearly loved symbols: that of

Mickey and cross Christ is a Jewish comedian // Mickey, a

seizer

Reverend Billy’s Performance

• Lost his theatre in SF; went to NY for another theatrical center;

• See Disney as performing (in driving out small vendors)

• Needs to warm up in his performances

• Careful timing and attention grabbing.

•

Questions for Director Sharpe

• What do you personally think about the three types of culture jamming? Do you try to imply your views with your camera angles?