Nowhere is the adbuster"s ear for the pitch used to fuller effect than in the promotion of adbusting itself, a fact that might explain why culture jamming"s truest believers often sound like an odd cross between used-car salesmen and tenured semiotics professors. Second only to Internet hucksters and rappers, adbusters are susceptible to a spiraling bravado and to a level of self-promotion that can be just plain silly. There is much fondness for claiming to be Marshall McLuhan"s son, daughter, grandchild or b.a.s.t.a.r.d progeny. There is a strong tendency to exaggerate the power of wheatpaste and a d.a.m.n good joke. And to overstate their own power: one culture-jamming manifesto, for instance, explains that "the billboard artist"s goal is to throw a well aimed spanner into the media"s gears, bringing the image factory to a shuddering halt."22 Adbusters has taken this hard-sell approach to such an extreme that it has raised hackles among rival culture jammers. Particularly galling to its critics is the magazine"s line of anticonsumer products that they say has made the magazine less a culture-jamming clearinghouse than a home-shopping network for adbusting accessories. Culture-jammer "tool boxes" are listed for sale: posters, videos, stickers and postcards; most ironically, it used to sell calendars and T-shirts to coincide with Buy Nothing Day, though better sense eventually prevailed. "What comes out is no real alternative to our culture of consumption," Carrie McLaren writes. "Just a different brand." Fellow Vancouver jammers Guerrilla Media (GM) take a more vicious shot at has taken this hard-sell approach to such an extreme that it has raised hackles among rival culture jammers. Particularly galling to its critics is the magazine"s line of anticonsumer products that they say has made the magazine less a culture-jamming clearinghouse than a home-shopping network for adbusting accessories. Culture-jammer "tool boxes" are listed for sale: posters, videos, stickers and postcards; most ironically, it used to sell calendars and T-shirts to coincide with Buy Nothing Day, though better sense eventually prevailed. "What comes out is no real alternative to our culture of consumption," Carrie McLaren writes. "Just a different brand." Fellow Vancouver jammers Guerrilla Media (GM) take a more vicious shot at Adbusters Adbusters in the GM inaugural newsletter. "We promise there are no GM calendars, key chains or coffee mugs in the offing. We are, however, still working on those T-shirts that some of you ordered-we"re just looking for that perfect sweatshop to produce them." in the GM inaugural newsletter. "We promise there are no GM calendars, key chains or coffee mugs in the offing. We are, however, still working on those T-shirts that some of you ordered-we"re just looking for that perfect sweatshop to produce them."23 Marketing the Antimarketers The attacks are much the same as those lobbed at every punk band that signs a record deal and every zine that goes glossy: Adbusters Adbusters has simply become too popular to have much cachet for the radicals who once dusted it off in their local secondhand bookstore like a precious stone. But beyond the standard-issue purism, the question of how best to "market" an antimarketing movement is a uniquely th.o.r.n.y dilemma. There is a sense among some adbusters that culture jamming, like punk itself, must remain something of a porcupine; that to defy its own inevitable commodification, it must keep its protective quills sharp. After the great Alternative and Girl Power" cashins, the very process of naming a trend, or coining a catchphrase, is regarded by some with deep suspicion. " has simply become too popular to have much cachet for the radicals who once dusted it off in their local secondhand bookstore like a precious stone. But beyond the standard-issue purism, the question of how best to "market" an antimarketing movement is a uniquely th.o.r.n.y dilemma. There is a sense among some adbusters that culture jamming, like punk itself, must remain something of a porcupine; that to defy its own inevitable commodification, it must keep its protective quills sharp. After the great Alternative and Girl Power" cashins, the very process of naming a trend, or coining a catchphrase, is regarded by some with deep suspicion. "Adbusters jumped on it and were ready to claim this movement before it ever really existed," says McLaren, who complains bitterly in her own writing about the "USA Today/MTV-ization" of jumped on it and were ready to claim this movement before it ever really existed," says McLaren, who complains bitterly in her own writing about the "USA Today/MTV-ization" of Adbusters Adbusters. "It"s become an advertis.e.m.e.nt for anti-advertising."24 There is another fear underlying this debate, one more confusing for its proponents than the prospect of culture jamming "selling out" to the dictates of marketing. What if, despite all the rhetorical flair its adherents can muster, culture jamming doesn"t actually matter? What if there is no jujitsu, only semiotic shadowboxing? Kalle Lasn insists that his magazine has the power to "jolt postmodern society out of its media trance" and that his uncommercials threaten to shake network television to its core. "The television mindscape has been h.o.m.ogenized over the last 30 to 40 years. It"s a s.p.a.ce that is very safe for commercial messages. So, if you suddenly introduce a note of cognitive dissonance with a spot that says "Don"t buy a car," or in the middle of a fashion show somebody suddenly says "What about anorexia?" there"s a powerful moment of truth."25 But the real truth is that, as a culture, we seem to be capable of absorbing limitless amounts of cognitive dissonance on our TV sets. We culture jam manually every time we channel surf-catapulting from the desperate fundraising pleas of the Foster Parent Plan to infomercials for Buns of Steel; from Jerry Springer to Jerry Falwell; from New Country to Marilyn Manson. In these information-numb times, we are beyond being abruptly awakened by a startling image, a sharp juxtaposition or even a fabulously clever detournement. But the real truth is that, as a culture, we seem to be capable of absorbing limitless amounts of cognitive dissonance on our TV sets. We culture jam manually every time we channel surf-catapulting from the desperate fundraising pleas of the Foster Parent Plan to infomercials for Buns of Steel; from Jerry Springer to Jerry Falwell; from New Country to Marilyn Manson. In these information-numb times, we are beyond being abruptly awakened by a startling image, a sharp juxtaposition or even a fabulously clever detournement.
Jaggi Singh is one activist who has become disillusioned with the jujitsu theory. "When you"re jamming, you"re sort of playing their game, and I think ultimately that playing field is stacked against us because they can saturate...we don"t have the resources to do all those billboards, we don"t have the resources to buy up all that time, and in a sense, it almost becomes pretty scientific-who can afford these feeds?"
Logo Overload To add further evidence that culture jamming is more drop in the bucket than spanner in the works, marketers are increasingly deciding to join in the fun. When Kalle Lasn says culture jamming has the feeling of "a bit of a fad," he"s not exaggerating.26 It turns out that culture jamming-with its combination of hip-hop att.i.tude, punk anti-authoritarianism and a well of visual gimmicks-has great sales potential. It turns out that culture jamming-with its combination of hip-hop att.i.tude, punk anti-authoritarianism and a well of visual gimmicks-has great sales potential.
Yahoo! already has an official culture-jamming site on the Internet, filed under "alternative." At Soho Down & Under on West Broadway in New York, Camden Market in London or any other high street where alterno gear is for sale, you can load up on logo-jammed T-shirts, stickers and badges. Recurring detournements-to use a word that seems suddenly misplaced-include Kraft changed to "Krap," Tide changed to "Jive," Ford changed to "f.u.c.ked" and Goodyear changed to "Goodbeer." It"s not exactly trenchant social commentary, particularly since the jammed logos appear to be interchangeable with the corporate kitsch of unaltered Dubble Bubble and Tide T-shirts. In the rave scene, logo play is all the rage-in clothing, temporary tattoos, body paint and even ecstasy pills. Ecstasy dealers have taken to branding their tablets with famous logos: there is Big Mac E, Purple Nike Swirl E, X-Files E, and a mixture of uppers and downers called a "Happy Meal." Musician Jeff Renton explains the drug culture"s appropriation of corporate logos as a revolt against invasive marketing. "I think it"s a matter of: "You come into our lives with your million-dollar advertising campaigns putting logos in places that make us feel uncomfortable, so we"re going to take your logo back and use it in places that make you feel uncomfortable,"" he says.27 But after a while, what began as a way to talk back to the ads starts to feel more like evidence of our total colonization by them, and especially because the ad industry is proving that it is capable of cutting off the culture jammers at the pa.s.s. Examples of pre-jammed ads include a 1997 Nike campaign that used the slogan "I am not/A target market/I am an athlete" and Sprite"s "Image Is Nothing" campaign, featuring a young black man saying that all his life he has been bombarded with media lies telling him that soft drinks will make him a better athlete or more attractive, until he realized that "image is nothing." Diesel jeans, however, has gone furthest in incorporating the political content of adbusting"s anticorporate attacks. One of the most popular ways for artists and activists to highlight the inequalities of free-market globalization is by juxtaposing First World icons with Third World scenes: Marlboro Country in the war-torn rubble of Beirut (see image image); an obviously malnourished Haitian girl wearing Mickey Mouse gla.s.ses; Dynasty Dynasty playing on a TV set in an African hut; Indonesian students rioting in front of McDonald"s arches. The power of these visual critiques of happy one-worldism is precisely what the Diesel clothing company"s "Brand O" ad campaign attempts to co-opt. The campaign features ads within ads: a series of billboards flogging a fictional Brand O line of products in a nameless North Korean city. In one, a glamorous skinny blonde is pictured on the side of a bus that is overflowing with frail-looking workers. The ad is selling "Brand O Diet-There"s no limit to how thin you can get." Another shows an Asian man huddled under a piece of cardboard. Above him towers a Ken and Barbie Brand O billboard. playing on a TV set in an African hut; Indonesian students rioting in front of McDonald"s arches. The power of these visual critiques of happy one-worldism is precisely what the Diesel clothing company"s "Brand O" ad campaign attempts to co-opt. The campaign features ads within ads: a series of billboards flogging a fictional Brand O line of products in a nameless North Korean city. In one, a glamorous skinny blonde is pictured on the side of a bus that is overflowing with frail-looking workers. The ad is selling "Brand O Diet-There"s no limit to how thin you can get." Another shows an Asian man huddled under a piece of cardboard. Above him towers a Ken and Barbie Brand O billboard.
Perhaps the point of no return came in 1997 when Mark Hosler of Negativland received a call from the ultra-hip ad agency Wieden & Kennedy asking if the band that coined the term "culture jamming" would do the soundtrack for a new Miller Genuine Draft commercial. The decision to turn down the request and the money was simple enough, but it still sent him spinning. "They utterly failed to grasp that our entire work is essentially in opposition to everything that they are connected to, and it made me really depressed because I had thought that our esthetic couldn"t be absorbed into marketing," Hosler says.28 Another rude awakening came when Hosler first saw Sprite"s "Obey Your Thirst" campaign. "That commercial was a hair"s breadth away from a song on our [ Another rude awakening came when Hosler first saw Sprite"s "Obey Your Thirst" campaign. "That commercial was a hair"s breadth away from a song on our [Dispepsi] record. It was surreal. It"s not just the fringe that"s getting absorbed now-that"s always happened. What"s getting absorbed now is the idea that there"s no opposition left, that any resistance is futile."29
I"m not so sure. Yes, some marketers have found a way to distill culture jamming into a particularly edgy kind of nonlinear advertising, and there is no doubt that Madison Avenue"s embrace of the techniques of adbusting has succeeded in moving product off the superstore shelves. Since Diesel began its aggressively ironic "Reasons for Living" and "Brand O" campaigns in the U.S., sales have gone from $2 million to $23 million in four years,30 and the Sprite "Image Is Nothing" campaign is credited with a 35 percent rise in sales in just three years. and the Sprite "Image Is Nothing" campaign is credited with a 35 percent rise in sales in just three years.31 That said, the success of these individual campaigns has done nothing to disarm the antimarketing rage that fueled adbusting in the first place. In fact, it may be having the opposite effect. That said, the success of these individual campaigns has done nothing to disarm the antimarketing rage that fueled adbusting in the first place. In fact, it may be having the opposite effect.
Ground Zero of the Cool Hunt The prospect of young people turning against the hype of advertising and defining themselves against the big brands is a continuous threat coming from cool-hunting agencies like Sputnik, that infamous team of professional diary readers and generational snoops. "Intellectual crews," as Sputnik calls thinking young people, are aware and resentful of how useful they are to the marketers: They understand that mammoth corporations now seek their approval to continually deliver goods that will translate to megasales in the mainstream. Their stance of being intellectual says to each other, and to themselves, and most importantly to marketers-who spend innumerable dollars for in-your-face this-is-what-you-need advertis.e.m.e.nts-that they cannot be bought or fooled anymore by the hype. Being a head means that you won"t sell out and be told what to wear, what to buy, what to eat or how to speak by anyone (or anything) other than yourself.32 But while the Sputnik writers inform their corporate readers about the radical ideas on the street, they appear to think that though these ideas will dramatically influence how young people will party, dress and talk, they will magically have no effect whatsoever on how young people will behave as political beings.
After they sound the alarm, the hunters always rea.s.sure their readers that all this anticorporate stuff is actually a meaningless pose that can be worked around with a hipper, edgier campaign. In other words, anticorporate rage is no more meaningful a street trend than a mild preference for the color orange. The happy underlying premise of the cool hunters" reports is that despite all the punk-rock talk, there is no belief that is a true belief and there are no rebels who cannot be tamed with an ad campaign or by a street promoter who really speaks to them really speaks to them. The unquestioned a.s.sumption is that there is no end point in this style cycle. There will always be new s.p.a.ces to colonize-whether physical or mental-and there will always be an ad that will be able to penetrate the latest strain of consumer cynicism. Nothing new is taking place, the hunters tell each other: marketers have always extracted symbols and signs from the resistance movements of their day.
What they don"t say is that previous waves of youth resistance were focused primarily on such foes as "the establishment," the government, the patriarchy and the military-industrial complex. Culture jamming is different-its rage encompa.s.ses the very type of marketing that the cool hunters and their clients are engaging in as they try to figure out how to use antimarketing rage to sell products. The big brands" new ads must incorporate a youth cynicism not about products as status symbols, or about ma.s.s h.o.m.ogenization, but about multinational brands themselves as tireless culture vultures.
The admen and adwomen have met this new challenge without changing their course. They are busily hunting down and reselling the edge, just as they have always done, which is why Wieden & Kennedy thought there was nothing strange about asking Negativland to shill for Miller. After all, it was Wieden & Kennedy, a boutique ad agency based in Portland, Oregon, that made Nike a feminist sneaker. It was W&K who dreamed up the postindustrial alienation marketing plan for c.o.ke"s OK Cola; W&K who gave the world the immortal plaid-clad a.s.sertion that the Subaru Impreza was "like punk rock" and it was W&K who brought Miller Beer into the age of irony. Masters at pitting the individual against various incarnations of ma.s.s-market bogeymen, Wieden & Kennedy sold cars to people who hated car ads, shoes to people who loathed image, soft drinks to the Prozac Nation and, most of all, ads to people who were "not a target market."
The agency was founded by two self-styled "beatnik artists," Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, whose technique, it seems, for quieting their own nagging fears that they were selling out has consistently been to drag the ideas and icons of the counterculture with them into the ad world. A quick tour through the agency"s body of work is nothing short of a counterculture reunion-Woodstock meets the Beats meets Warhol"s Factory. After putting Lou Reed in a Honda spot in the mid-eighties, W&K used the Beatles anthem "Revolution" in one Nike commercial, then carted out John Lennon"s "Instant Karma" for another. They also paid proto-rock-and-roller Bo Diddley to do the "Bo Knows" Nike spots, and filmmaker Spike Lee to do an entire series of Air Jordan ads. W&K even got Jean-Luc G.o.dard to direct a European Nike commercial. There were still more countercultural artifacts lying around: they stuck William Burroughs"s face in a mini-TV-set in another Nike commercial and designed a campaign, nixed by Subaru before it made it to air, that used Jack Kerouac"s On the Road On the Road as the voice-over text for an SVX commercial. as the voice-over text for an SVX commercial.
After making its name on the willingness of the avant-garde to set its price for the right mix of irony and dollars, W&K can hardly be blamed for thinking that culture jammers would also be thrilled to take part in the postmodern fun of a self-aware ad campaign. But the backlash against the brands, of which culture jamming is only one part, isn"t about vague notions of alternativeness battling the mainstream. It has to do with the specific issues that have been the subject of this book so far: the loss of public s.p.a.ce, corporate censorship and unethical labor practices, to name but three-issues less easily digested than tasty morsels like Girl Power and grunge.
Which is why Wieden & Kennedy hit a wall when they asked Negativland to mix for Miller, and why that was only the first in a string of defeats for the agency. The British political pop-band Chumbawamba turned down a $1.5 million contract that would have allowed Nike to use its. .h.i.t song "Tub-thumping" in a World Cup spot. Abstract notions about staying indie were not at issue (the band did allow the song to be used in the soundtrack for Home Alone 3 Home Alone 3); at the center of their rejection was Nike"s use of sweatshop labor. "It took everybody in the room under 30 seconds to say no," said band member Alice Nutter.33 The political poet Martin Espada also got a call from one of Nike"s smaller agencies, inviting him to take part in the "Nike Poetry Slam." If he accepted, he would be paid $2,500 and his poem would be read in a thirty-second commercial during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Espada turned the agency down flat, offering up a host of reasons and ending with this one: "Ultimately, however, I am rejecting your offer as a protest against the brutal labor practices of the company. I will not a.s.sociate myself with a company that engages in the well-doc.u.mented exploitation of workers in sweatshops." The political poet Martin Espada also got a call from one of Nike"s smaller agencies, inviting him to take part in the "Nike Poetry Slam." If he accepted, he would be paid $2,500 and his poem would be read in a thirty-second commercial during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Espada turned the agency down flat, offering up a host of reasons and ending with this one: "Ultimately, however, I am rejecting your offer as a protest against the brutal labor practices of the company. I will not a.s.sociate myself with a company that engages in the well-doc.u.mented exploitation of workers in sweatshops."34 The rudest awakening came with Wieden & Kennedy"s cleverest of schemes: in May 1999, with labor scandals still hanging over the swoosh, the agency approached Ralph Nader-the consumer-rights movement"s most powerful leader and a folk hero for his attacks on multinational corporations-and asked him to do a Nike ad. The idea was simple: Nader would get $25,000 for holding up an Air 120 sneaker and saying, "Another shameless attempt by Nike to sell shoes." A letter sent to Nader"s office from Nike headquarters explained that "what we are asking is for Ralph, as the country"s most prominent consumer advocate, to take a light-hearted jab at us. This is a very Nike-like thing to do in our ads." Nader, never known for being light of heart, would only say, "Look at the gall of these guys." The rudest awakening came with Wieden & Kennedy"s cleverest of schemes: in May 1999, with labor scandals still hanging over the swoosh, the agency approached Ralph Nader-the consumer-rights movement"s most powerful leader and a folk hero for his attacks on multinational corporations-and asked him to do a Nike ad. The idea was simple: Nader would get $25,000 for holding up an Air 120 sneaker and saying, "Another shameless attempt by Nike to sell shoes." A letter sent to Nader"s office from Nike headquarters explained that "what we are asking is for Ralph, as the country"s most prominent consumer advocate, to take a light-hearted jab at us. This is a very Nike-like thing to do in our ads." Nader, never known for being light of heart, would only say, "Look at the gall of these guys."35 It was indeed a very Nike-like thing to do. Ads co-opt out of reflex-they do so because consuming is what consumer culture does. Madison Avenue is generally not too picky about what it will swallow, it doesn"t avoid poison directed against itself but rather, as Wieden & Kennedy have shown, chomps down on whatever it finds along the path as it looks for the new "edge." The scenario that it appears unwilling to consider is that its admen and adwomen, the perennial teenage followers, may finally be following their target market off a cliff.
Adbusting in the Thirties: "Become a Toucher Upper!"
Of course the ad industry has disarmed backlashes before-from women complaining of s.e.xism, gays claiming invisibility, ethnic minorities tired of gross caricatures. And that"s not all. In the 1950s and again in the 1970s, Western consumers became obsessed with the idea that they were being fooled by advertisers through the covert use of subliminal techniques. In 1957, Vance Packard published the runaway best-seller The Hidden Persuaders The Hidden Persuaders, which shocked Americans with allegations that social scientists were packing advertis.e.m.e.nts with messages invisible to the human eye. The issue re-emerged in 1973, when Wilson Bryan Key published Subliminal Seduction Subliminal Seduction, a study of the lascivious messages tucked away in ice cubes. Key was so transported by his discovery that he made such bold claims as "the subliminal promise to anyone buying Gilbey"s gin is simply a good old-fashioned s.e.xual orgy."36 But all these antimarketing spasms had one thing in common: they focused exclusively on the content and techniques of advertising. These critics didn"t want to be subliminally manipulated-and they did did want African Americans in their cigarette ads and gays and lesbians selling jeans. Because the concerns were so specific, they were relatively easy for the ad world to address or absorb. For instance, the charge of hidden messages harbored in ice cubes, and other carefully cast shadows, sp.a.w.ned an irony-laden advertising subgenre that design historians Ellen Luton and J. Abbot Miller term "meta-subliminal"-ads that parody the charge that ads send secret messages. In 1990, Absolut Vodka launched the "Absolut Subliminal" campaign which showed a gla.s.s of vodka on the rocks with the word "absolut" clearly screened into the ice cubes. Seagram"s and Tanqueray gin followed with their own subliminal in-jokes, as did the cast of want African Americans in their cigarette ads and gays and lesbians selling jeans. Because the concerns were so specific, they were relatively easy for the ad world to address or absorb. For instance, the charge of hidden messages harbored in ice cubes, and other carefully cast shadows, sp.a.w.ned an irony-laden advertising subgenre that design historians Ellen Luton and J. Abbot Miller term "meta-subliminal"-ads that parody the charge that ads send secret messages. In 1990, Absolut Vodka launched the "Absolut Subliminal" campaign which showed a gla.s.s of vodka on the rocks with the word "absolut" clearly screened into the ice cubes. Seagram"s and Tanqueray gin followed with their own subliminal in-jokes, as did the cast of Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live with the recurring character Subliminal Man. with the recurring character Subliminal Man.
The critiques of advertising that have traditionally come out of academe have been equally unthreatening, though for different reasons. Most such criticism focuses not on the effects of marketing on public s.p.a.ce, cultural freedom and democracy, but rather on ads" persuasive powers over seemingly clueless people. For the most part, marketing theory concentrates on the way ads implant false desires in the consuming public-making us buy things that are bad for us, pollute the planet or impoverish our souls. "Advertising," as George Orwell once said, "is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." When such is the theorist"s opinion of the public, it is no wonder that there is little potential for redemption in most media criticism: this sorry populace will never be in possession of the critical tools it needs to formulate a political response to marketing mania and media synergy.
The future is even bleaker for those academics who use advertising criticism for a thinly veiled attack on "consumer culture." As James Twitch.e.l.l writes in Adcult USA Adcult USA, most advertising criticism reeks of contempt for the people who "want-ugh!-things."37 Such a theory can never hope to form the intellectual foundation of an actual resistance movement against the branded life, since genuine political empowerment cannot be reconciled with a belief system that regards the public as a bunch of ad-fed cattle, held captive under commercial culture"s hypnotic spell. What"s the point of going through the trouble of trying to knock down the fence? Everyone knows the branded cows will just stand there looking dumb and chewing cud. Such a theory can never hope to form the intellectual foundation of an actual resistance movement against the branded life, since genuine political empowerment cannot be reconciled with a belief system that regards the public as a bunch of ad-fed cattle, held captive under commercial culture"s hypnotic spell. What"s the point of going through the trouble of trying to knock down the fence? Everyone knows the branded cows will just stand there looking dumb and chewing cud.
Interestingly, the last time that there was a successful attack on the practice of advertising-rather than a disagreement on its content or techniques-was during the Great Depression. In the 1930s the very idea of the happy, stable consumer society portrayed in advertising provoked a wave of resentment from the millions of Americans who found themselves on the outside of the dream of prosperity. An anti-advertising movement emerged that attacked ads not for faulty imagery but as the most public face of a deeply faulty economic system. People weren"t incensed by the pictures in the ads, but rather by the cruelty of the obviously false promise that they represented-the lie of the American Dream that the happy consumer lifestyle was accessible to all. In the late twenties, and through the thirties, the frivolous promises of the ad world made for stomach-wrenching juxtapositions with the casualties of economic collapse, setting the stage for an unparalleled wave of consumer activism.
There was a short-lived magazine published in New York called The Ballyhoo The Ballyhoo, a sort of Depression-era Adbusters Adbusters. In the wake of the 1929 stock-market crash, The Ballyhoo The Ballyhoo arrived as a cynical new voice, viciously mocking the "creative psychiatry" of cigarette and mouthwash ads, as well as the outright quackery used to sell all kinds of potions and lotions. arrived as a cynical new voice, viciously mocking the "creative psychiatry" of cigarette and mouthwash ads, as well as the outright quackery used to sell all kinds of potions and lotions.38 The Ballyhoo The Ballyhoo was an instant success, reaching a circulation of more than 1.5 million in 1931. James Rorty, a 1920s Mad Ave adman turned revolutionary socialist, explained the new magazine"s appeal: "Whereas the stock in trade of the ordinary ma.s.s or cla.s.s consumer magazine is reader-confidence in advertising, the stock in trade of was an instant success, reaching a circulation of more than 1.5 million in 1931. James Rorty, a 1920s Mad Ave adman turned revolutionary socialist, explained the new magazine"s appeal: "Whereas the stock in trade of the ordinary ma.s.s or cla.s.s consumer magazine is reader-confidence in advertising, the stock in trade of Ballyhoo Ballyhoo was reader-disgust with advertising, and with high-pressure salesmanship in general.... was reader-disgust with advertising, and with high-pressure salesmanship in general.... Ballyhoo Ballyhoo, in turn, parasites on the grotesque, bloated body of advertising."39 Ballyhoo"s culture jams include "Scramel" cigarettes ("they"re so fresh they"re insulting"), or the line of "69 different Zilch creams: "What the well greased girls will wear. Absolutely indispensable (Ask any dispensary)." The editors encouraged readers to move beyond their snickers and go out and bust bothersome billboards themselves. A fake ad for the "Twitch Toucher Upper School" shows a drawing of a woman who has just painted a mustache on a glamorous cigarette model. The caption reads, "Become a Toucher Upper!" and goes on to say: "If you long to mess up advertis.e.m.e.nt: if your heart cries out to paint pipes in the mouths of beautiful ladies, try this 10-second test NOW! Our graduates make their marks all over the world! Good Toucher Uppers are always in demand" (see image image). The magazine also created fake products to skewer the hypocrisy of the Hoover administration, like the "Lady Pipperal Bedsheet De Luxe"-made extra long to snugly fit on park benches when you become homeless. Or the "smilette"-two hooks that clamp on to either side of the mouth and force a happy expression. "Smile away the Depression! Smile us into Prosperity!"
The hard-core culture jammers of the era were not the Ballyhoo Ballyhoo humorists, however, but photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. These political doc.u.mentarians latched on to the hypocrisies of ad campaigns such as the National a.s.sociation of Manufacturers" "There"s No Way Like the American Way" by highlighting the harsh visual contrasts between the ads and the surrounding landscape. A popular technique was photographing billboards with slogans like "World"s Highest Standard of Living" in their actual habitat: hanging surreally over breadlines and tenements. The manic grinning models piled into the family sedan were clearly blind to the tattered ma.s.ses and squalid conditions below. The photographers of the era also scrupulously doc.u.mented the fragility of the capitalist system by picturing fallen businessmen holding up "Will Work for Food" signs in the shadow of looming c.o.ke billboards and peeling h.o.a.rdings. humorists, however, but photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. These political doc.u.mentarians latched on to the hypocrisies of ad campaigns such as the National a.s.sociation of Manufacturers" "There"s No Way Like the American Way" by highlighting the harsh visual contrasts between the ads and the surrounding landscape. A popular technique was photographing billboards with slogans like "World"s Highest Standard of Living" in their actual habitat: hanging surreally over breadlines and tenements. The manic grinning models piled into the family sedan were clearly blind to the tattered ma.s.ses and squalid conditions below. The photographers of the era also scrupulously doc.u.mented the fragility of the capitalist system by picturing fallen businessmen holding up "Will Work for Food" signs in the shadow of looming c.o.ke billboards and peeling h.o.a.rdings.
In 1934, advertisers began to use self-parody to deal with the mounting criticism they faced, a tactic that some saw as proof of the industry"s state of disrepair. "It is contended by the broadcasters, and doubtless also by the movie producers, that this burlesque sales promotion takes the curse out of sales talk, and this is probably true to a degree," writes Rorty of the self-mockery. "But the prevalence of the trend gives rise to certain ominous suspicions...When the burlesque comedian mounts the pulpit of the Church of Advertising, it may be legitimately suspected that the edifice is doomed; that it will shortly be torn down or converted to secular uses."40 Of course the edifice survived, though not unscathed. New Deal politicians, under pressure from a wide range of populist movements, imposed lasting reforms on the industry. The adbusters and social doc.u.mentary photographers were part of a ma.s.sive gra.s.sroots public revolt against big business that included the farmers" uprising against the proliferation of supermarket chains, the establishing of consumer purchasing cooperatives, the rapid expansion of a network of trade unions and a crackdown on garment industry sweatshops (which had seen the ranks of the two U.S. garment workers" unions swell from 40,000 in 1931 to more than 300,000 in 1933). Most of all, the early ad critics were intimately linked to the burgeoning consumer movement that had been catalyzed by One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics (1933), by F.J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet, and (1933), by F.J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet, and Your Money"s Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer Dollar Your Money"s Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer Dollar (1927), written by Stuart Chase and F.J. Schlink. These books presented exhaustive catalogs of the way regular folks were getting lied to, cheated, poisoned and ripped off by America"s captains of industry. The authors founded Consumer Research (later splintered off into the Consumers Union), which served both as an independent product-testing laboratory and a political group that lobbied the government for better grading and labeling of products. The CR believed objective testing and truthful labeling could make marketing so irrelevant it would become obsolete. According to Chase and Schlink"s logic, if consumers had access to careful scientific research that compared the relative merits of the products on the market, everyone would simply make measured, rational decisions about what to buy. The advertisers, of course, were beside themselves, and terrified of the following F.J. Schlink had built up on the college campuses and among the New York intelligentsia. As adman C.B. Larrabee noted in 1934, "Some forty or fifty thousand persons won"t so much as buy a box of dog biscuits unless F.J. gives his "O.K."...obviously they think most advertisers are dishonest, double-dealing shysters." (1927), written by Stuart Chase and F.J. Schlink. These books presented exhaustive catalogs of the way regular folks were getting lied to, cheated, poisoned and ripped off by America"s captains of industry. The authors founded Consumer Research (later splintered off into the Consumers Union), which served both as an independent product-testing laboratory and a political group that lobbied the government for better grading and labeling of products. The CR believed objective testing and truthful labeling could make marketing so irrelevant it would become obsolete. According to Chase and Schlink"s logic, if consumers had access to careful scientific research that compared the relative merits of the products on the market, everyone would simply make measured, rational decisions about what to buy. The advertisers, of course, were beside themselves, and terrified of the following F.J. Schlink had built up on the college campuses and among the New York intelligentsia. As adman C.B. Larrabee noted in 1934, "Some forty or fifty thousand persons won"t so much as buy a box of dog biscuits unless F.J. gives his "O.K."...obviously they think most advertisers are dishonest, double-dealing shysters."41 Schlink and Chase"s rationalist utopia of Spock-like consumerism never came to fruition, but their lobbying did force governments around the world to move to outlaw blatantly false claims in advertising, to establish quality standards for consumer goods, and to become actively involved in the grading and labeling of them. And the Consumers Union Reports Consumers Union Reports is still the buyer"s bible in America, though it long ago severed its ties to other social movements. is still the buyer"s bible in America, though it long ago severed its ties to other social movements.
It is worth noting that the modern-day ad world"s most extreme attempts to co-opt anticorporate rage have fed directly off images pioneered by the Depression-era doc.u.mentary photographers. Diesel"s Brand O is almost a direct replica of Margaret Bourke-White"s "American Way" billboard series, both in style and composition. And when the Bank of Montreal ran an ad campaign in Canada in the late nineties, at the height of a popular backlash against soaring bank profits, it used images that recalled Walker Evans"s photographs of 1930s businessmen holding up those "Will Work for Food" signs. The bank"s campaign consisted of a series of grainy black-and-white photographs of ragged-looking people holding signs that asked, "Will I ever own my own home?" and "Are we going to be okay?" One sign simply read, "The little guy is on his own." The television spots blasted Depression-era gospel and ragtime over eerie industrial images of abandoned freight trains and dusty towns.
In other words, when the time came to fight fire with fire, the advertisers raced back to an era when they were never more loathed and only a world war could save them. It seems that this kind of psychic shock-a clothing company using the very images that have scarred the clothing industry; a bank trading on anti-bank rage-is the only technique left that will get the attention of us ad-resistant roaches. And this may well be true, from a marketing point of view, but there is also a larger context that reaches beyond imagery: Diesel produces many of its garments in Indonesia and other parts of the Far East, profiting from the very disparities ill.u.s.trated in its clever Brand O ads. In fact, part of the edginess of the campaign is the clear sense that the company is flirting with a Nike-style public-relations meltdown. So far, the Diesel brand does not have a wide enough market reach to feel the full force of having its images slingshot back at its body corporate, but the bigger the company gets-and it is getting bigger every year-the more vulnerable it becomes.
That was the lesson in the responses to the Bank of Montreal"s "Sign of the Times" campaign. The bank"s use of powerful images of economic collapse at exactly the same time that it announced record profits of $986 million (up in 1998 to $1.3 billion) inspired a spontaneous wave of adbusting. The simple imagery of the campaign-people holding up angry signs-was easy for the bank"s critics to replicate with parodies that skewered the bank"s exorbitant service fees, its inaccessible loans officers and the closing of branches in low-income neighborhoods (after all, the bank"s technique had been stolen from the activists in the first place). Everyone got in on the action: lone jammers, CBC television"s satirical show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Globe and Mail"s Report on Business Magazine This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Globe and Mail"s Report on Business Magazine, and independent video collectives.
Clearly, these ad campaigns are tapping into powerful emotions. But by playing on sentiments that are already directed against them-for example, public resentment at profiteering banks or widening economic disparities-the process of co-optation runs the very real risk of amplifying the backlash, not disarming it. Above all, imagery appropriation appears to radicalize culture jammers and other anticorporate activists-a "co-opt this!" stance develops that becomes even harder to diffuse. Eor instance, when Chrysler ran a campaign of pre-jammed Neon ads (the one that added a faux aerosol "p," changing "Hi" to "Hip"), it inspired the Billboard Liberation Front to go on its biggest tear in years. The BLF defaced dozens of Bay Area Meon billboards by further altering "Hip" to "Hype," and adding, for good measure, a skull and crossbones. "We can"t sit by while these companies co-opt our means of communication," Jack Napier said. "Besides...they"re tacky."
Perhaps the gravest miscalculation on the part of both markets and media is the insistence on seeing culture jamming solely as harmless satire, a game that exists in isolation from a genuine political movement or ideology. Certainly for some jammers, parody is perceived, in rather grandiose fashion, as a powerful end in itself. But for many more, as we will see in the next chapters, it is simply a new tool for packaging anticorporate salvos, one that is more effective than most at breaking through the media barrage. And as we will also see, adbusters are currently at work on many different fronts: the people scaling billboards are frequently the same ones who are organizing against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, staging protests on the streets of Geneva against the World Trade Organization and occupying banks to protest against the profits they are making from student debts. Adbusting is not an end in itself. It is simply a tool-one among many-that is being used, loaned and borrowed in a much broader political movement against the branded life.
Chapter Thirteen.
Reclaim the Streets I picture the reality in which we live in terms of military occupation. We are occupied the way the French and Norwegians were occupied by the n.a.z.is during World War II, but this time by an army of marketeers. We have to reclaim our country from those who occupy it on behalf of their global masters.
-Ursula Franklin, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, 1998 This is not a protest. Repeat. This is not a protest. This is some kind of artistic expression. Over.
-A call that went out on Metro Toronto police radios on May 16, 1998, the date of the first Global Street Party It is one of the ironies of our age that now, when the street has become the hottest commodity in advertising culture, street culture itself is under siege. From New York to Vancouver to London, police crackdowns on graffiti, postering, panhandling, sidewalk art, squeegee kids, community gardening and food vendors are rapidly criminalizing everything that is truly street-level in the life of a city.
This tension between the commodification and criminalization of street culture has unfolded in a particularly dramatic manner in England. In the early to mid-nineties, as the ad world leaped to harness the sounds and imagery of the rave scene to sell cars, airlines, soft drinks and newspapers, the lawmakers in Britain made raves all but illegal, through the 1994 Criminal Justice Act. The act gave police far-reaching powers to seize sound equipment and deal harshly with ravers in any public confrontations.
To fight the Criminal Justice Act, the club scene (previously preoccupied with searching out the next all-night dance site) forged new alliances with more politicized subcultures that were also alarmed by these new police powers. Ravers got together with squatters facing eviction, with the so-called New Age travelers facing crackdowns on their nomadic lifestyle, and with radical "eco-warriors" fighting the paving-over of Britain"s woodland areas by building tree houses and digging tunnels in the bulldozers" paths. A common theme began to emerge among these struggling countercultures: the right to uncolonized s.p.a.ce-for homes, for trees, for gathering, for dancing. What sprang out of these cultural collisions among deejays, anti-corporate activists, political and New Age artists and radical ecologists may well be the most vibrant and fastest-growing political movement since Paris "68: Reclaim the Streets (RTS).
Since 1995, RTS has been hijacking busy streets, major intersections and even stretches of highway for spontaneous gatherings. In an instant, a crowd of seemingly impromptu partyers transforms a traffic artery into a surrealist playpen. Here"s how it works. Like the location of the original raves, the RTS party"s venue is kept secret until the day. Thousands gather at the designated meeting place, from which they depart en ma.s.se to a destination known only to a handful of organizers. Before the crowds arrive, a van rigged up with a powerful sound system is surrept.i.tiously parked on the soon-to-be-reclaimed street. Next, some theatrical means of blocking traffic is devised-for example, two old cars deliberately crash into each other and a mock fight is staged between the drivers. Another technique is to plant twenty-foot scaffolding tripods in the middle of the roadway with a brave lone activist suspended high up top-the tripod poles prevent cars from pa.s.sing but people can weave between them freely; and since to knock the tripod over would send the person on top crashing to the ground, the police have no recourse but to stand by and watch the events unfold. With traffic safely blocked, the roadway is declared a "street now open." Signs go up that say "Breathe," "Car Free," and "Reclaim s.p.a.ce." The RTS flag-a bolt of lightning on different colored backdrops-goes up and the sound system begins to blast everything from the latest electronic offerings to Louis Armstrong"s "What a Wonderful World."
Then seemingly out of nowhere comes the traveling carnival of RTSers: bikers, stilt walkers, ravers, drummers. At previous parties, jungle gyms have been set up in the middle of intersections, as well as giant sandboxes, swing sets, wading pools, couches, throw rugs and volleyball nets. Hundreds of Frisbees sail through the air, free food is circulated and the dancing begins-on cars, at bus stops, on roofs and near signposts. Organizers describe their road-napings as anything from the realization of "a collective daydream" to "a large-scale coincidence." Like adbusters, RTSers have transposed the language and tactics of radical ecology into the urban jungle, demanding un-commercialized s.p.a.ce in the city as well as natural wilderness in the country or on the seas. In this spirit, the most theatrical RTS stunt occurred when 10,000 partyers took over London"s M41, a six-lane highway. Two people dressed in elaborate carnival costumes sat thirty feet above the roadway, perched on scaffolding contraptions that were covered by huge hoop skirts (see image image). The police standing by had no idea that underneath the skirts were guerrilla gardeners with jackhammers, drilling holes in the highway and planting saplings in the asphalt. The RTSers...die-hard Situationist fans-had made their point: "Beneath the tarmac...a forest," a reference to the Paris "68 slogan, "Beneath the cobblestones...a beach."
The crowd followed us and the road turned from a traffic jam to a road rave with hundreds of people shouting and demanding clean air, public transport and bicycle lanes.-RTS E-mail report, Tel Aviv, Israel, May 16, 1998 The events take culture jamming"s philosophy of reclaiming public s.p.a.ce to another level. Rather than filling the s.p.a.ce left by commerce with advertising parodies, the RTSers attempt to fill it with an alternative vision of what society might look like in the absence of commercial control.
The seeds of RTS"s urban environmentalism were planted in 1993 on Claremont Road, a quiet London street slated to disappear under a new expressway. "The M11 Link Road," explains RTSer John Jordan, "will stretch from Wanstead to Hackney in East London. To build it, the Department of Transport had to knock down 350 houses, displace several thousand people, cut through one of London"s last ancient woodlands and devastate a community with a six-lane-wide stretch of tarmac at the cost of 240 million pounds, apparently to save six minutes on a car journey."1 When the city ignored fierce local opposition to the road, a group of activist artists took it upon themselves to try to block the bulldozers by turning Claremont Road into a living sculptural fortress. They pulled sofas into the streets, hung TVs from tree branches, painted a giant chessboard in the middle of the road and put up spoof suburban development billboards in front of the houses slated for demolition: "Welcome to Claremont Road-Ideal Homes." The activists moved into chestnut trees, occupied construction cranes, blasted music and blew kisses at the cops and demolition workers below. The now empty houses were transformed-connected to each other through underground tunnels and filled with art installations. Outside, old cars were painted with slogans and zebra stripes and turned into flower boxes. The cars were not only made beautiful, they also made effective barricades, as did a hundred-foot scaffolding tower built through the roof of one of the homes. The tactic, Jordan explains, was not the use of art to achieve political ends but the transformation of art into a pragmatic political tool "both beautiful and functional." When the city ignored fierce local opposition to the road, a group of activist artists took it upon themselves to try to block the bulldozers by turning Claremont Road into a living sculptural fortress. They pulled sofas into the streets, hung TVs from tree branches, painted a giant chessboard in the middle of the road and put up spoof suburban development billboards in front of the houses slated for demolition: "Welcome to Claremont Road-Ideal Homes." The activists moved into chestnut trees, occupied construction cranes, blasted music and blew kisses at the cops and demolition workers below. The now empty houses were transformed-connected to each other through underground tunnels and filled with art installations. Outside, old cars were painted with slogans and zebra stripes and turned into flower boxes. The cars were not only made beautiful, they also made effective barricades, as did a hundred-foot scaffolding tower built through the roof of one of the homes. The tactic, Jordan explains, was not the use of art to achieve political ends but the transformation of art into a pragmatic political tool "both beautiful and functional."2 When Claremont Road was leveled in November 1994, it had become the most creative, celebratory, vibrantly living street in London. It was "a kind of temporary microcosm of a truly liberated, ecological culture," according to Jordan.3 By the time all the activists had been cherry-picked out of their tree houses and fortresses, the point of the action-that high-speed roads suck the life out of a city-could have had no more graphic or eloquent expression. By the time all the activists had been cherry-picked out of their tree houses and fortresses, the point of the action-that high-speed roads suck the life out of a city-could have had no more graphic or eloquent expression.
Though another group had used the same name some years earlier, the current incarnation of Reclaim the Streets was formed in May 1995, with the express purpose of turning what happened on Claremont Road into an airborne virus that could spread at any time, to any place in the city-a roving "temporary autonomous zone," to use a term coined by the American anarchist guru Hakim Bey. According to Jordan, the thinking was simple: "If we could no longer reclaim Claremont Road, we would reclaim the streets of London."4 Five hundred people showed up to the RTS party on Camden Street in May 1995 to dance to a bicycle-powered sound system, drums and whistles. With the Criminal Justice Act in full effect, the gathering caught the attention of the newly politicized rave scene and a key alliance was formed. At RTS"s next event, three thousand people showed up to the party on Upper Street, Islington; this time they danced to electronic music blasting from two trucks equipped with club-quality sound systems.
The combination of rave and rage has proved contagious, spreading across Britain to Manchester, York, Oxford and Brighton, and in the largest single RTS event to date, drawing 20,000 people to Trafalgar Square in April 1997. By then, Reclaim the Street parties had gone international, popping up in cities as far away as Sydney, Helsinki and Tel Aviv. Each party is locally organized, but with the help of E-mail lists and linked Web sites, activists in different cities are able to read reports from events around the world, swap cop-dodging strategies, trade information on building effective roadblocks, and read each other"s posters, press releases and flyers. Since video and digital cameras appear to be the accessories of choice at the street parties, RTSers also draw inspiration from watching footage of faraway parties, which is circulated through activist video networks, such as the Oxford-based Undercurrents, and uploaded onto several RTS Web sites.
Anarchists among the crowd took advantage of the opportunity to vent their fury on banks, jewelry shops and local branches of McDonald"s. Windows were smashed, paint bombs hurled and anti-globalisation slogans graffitied.-RTS E-mail report, Geneva, Switzerland May 16, 1998 In many cities, the street parties have dovetailed with another explosive new international movement-the Critical Ma.s.s bicycle rides. The idea started in San Francisco in 1992 and began spreading to cities across North America, Europe and Australia at roughly the same time as RTS. Critical Ma.s.s bicycle riders also favor the rhetoric of large-scale coincidence: in dozens of cities, on the last Friday of every month, anywhere from seventeen to seven thousand cyclists gather at a designated intersection and go for a ride together. By force of their numbers, the bikers form a critical ma.s.s and the cars must yield to them. "We"re not blocking traffic," the Critical Ma.s.s riders say, "we are the traffic." Since there"s a fair amount of overlap between RTS partyers and Critical Ma.s.s riders, it has become a popular tactic for the sites of street parties to be cleared of traffic by "spontaneous" Critical Ma.s.s rides that sweep through the area just moments before the blockades are set up and the partyers arrive.
Perhaps in light of these connections, the mainstream media almost invariably describe RTS events as "anti-car protests." Most RTSers, however, insist that this is a profound oversimplification of their goals.5 The car is a symbol, they say-the most tangible manifestation of the loss of communal s.p.a.ce, walkable streets and sites of free expression. Rather than simply opposing the use of automobiles, as Jordan says, "RTS has always tried to take the single issue of transportation and the car into a wider critique of society...to dream of reclaiming s.p.a.ce for collective use, as commons." The car is a symbol, they say-the most tangible manifestation of the loss of communal s.p.a.ce, walkable streets and sites of free expression. Rather than simply opposing the use of automobiles, as Jordan says, "RTS has always tried to take the single issue of transportation and the car into a wider critique of society...to dream of reclaiming s.p.a.ce for collective use, as commons."6 To underline these wider connections, RTS organized one London street party in solidarity with striking London Underground workers. Another was a joint event with those darlings of British rock stars, soccer players and anarchists-the sacked Liverpool dock workers. Other actions have taken on the ecological and human rights records of Sh.e.l.l, BP and Mobil. To underline these wider connections, RTS organized one London street party in solidarity with striking London Underground workers. Another was a joint event with those darlings of British rock stars, soccer players and anarchists-the sacked Liverpool dock workers. Other actions have taken on the ecological and human rights records of Sh.e.l.l, BP and Mobil.
These coalitions make RTS extremely difficult to categorize. "Is a street party a political rally?" asks Jordan rhetorically. "A festival? A rave? Direct action? Or just a b.l.o.o.d.y good party?" In many ways, the parties have defied easy labeling: they camouflage identifiable leaders, and have no center or even a focal point. RTS parties "swirl," as Jordan says.
Playing Politics Not only is the confusion deliberate, but it is precisely this absence of rigidity that has helped RTS to capture the imagination of thousands of young people around the world. Since the days when Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies infused self-conscious absurdity into their "happenings," political protest had lapsed into a ritualized affair, following a fairly unimaginative grid of repet.i.tive chants and scripted police confrontation. Pop, in the meantime, had become equally formulaic in its refusal to let the perceived earnestness of political conviction enter its ironic play s.p.a.ce. Which is where RTS comes in. The deliberate culture clashes of the street parties mix the earnest predictability of politics with the amused irony of pop. For many people in their teens and twenties, this presents the first opportunity to reconcile being creatures of their Sat.u.r.day-morning-cartoon childhoods with a genuine political concern for their communities and environment. RTS is just playful and ironic enough to finally make earnestness possible.
In many ways, Reclaim the Streets is the urban centerpiece of England"s thriving do-it-yourself subculture. Exiled to the economic margins by decades of Tory rule, and given little reason to return by the right-of-center policies of Tony Blair"s New Labour Party, a largely self-reliant infrastructure of food co-ops, illegal squats, independent media and free music festivals has emerged across the country. Spontaneous street parties are an extension of the DIY lifestyle, a.s.serting as they do that people can make their own fun without asking any state"s permission or relying on any corporation"s largesse. At a street party, just showing up makes you both a partic.i.p.ant and part of the entertainment.
The street party is also at odds with the way our culture tends to imagine freedom. Whether it"s hippies dropping out to live in rural communes, or yuppies escaping the urban jungle in sport utility vehicles, freedom is usually about abandoning the claustrophobia of the city. Ereedom is Route 66, it"s "On the Road." It"s eco-travel. It"s anywhere but here. RTS, on the other hand, doesn"t write off the city or the present. It harnesses the urge for entertainment and raves (and its darker side-the desire to freak out and riot) and channels them into an act of civil disobedience that is also a festival. For a day, the longing for free s.p.a.ce is not about escape but transformation of the here and now.
We visited the Virgin at the place of the cathedral, who certainly didn"t expect us and therefore didn"t join the dance. In spite of this we offered a very nice sunny show till later that night, past eleven o"clock, reclaiming the street for about five hours.
Of course, if you want to be really cynical, RTS is also flowery eco-poetry about vandalism. It"s high-minded talk about blocking traffic. It"s wildly dressed and painted kids screeching at extremely confused and possibly well-meaning cops about the tyranny of "car culture." And when RTS events go wrong-because only a handful of people show up, or the antihierarchy anarchist organizers are unable or unwilling to communicate with the crowd-that"s exactly what the party becomes: some jerk demanding the right to sit in the middle of the street for a loony reason known only to him. But at their best, RTS actions have been too joyful and humane to dismiss, cracking the cynicism of many onlookers, from the hip British music press, which declared the party at Trafalgar Square "the best illegal rave or dance music party in history,"7 to one striking Liverpool docker who noted that "the others talk about doing something-this lot actually do it." to one striking Liverpool docker who noted that "the others talk about doing something-this lot actually do it."8 And, as with all successful radical movements, some voice concern that the ma.s.s appeal of RTS has made it too fashionable, that the subtle theory of "applying radical poetry to radical politics" is getting drowned out by the pounding beat and the mob mentality. In October 1997, Jordan told me that RTS was going through a process of rigorous re-examination. He claimed that the 20,000-strong Trafalgar Square party was not the sort of climax RTS had been moving toward. When the police tried to impound the van containing the sound system, protestors didn"t cheekily blow kisses as hoped, they hurled bottles and rocks and four people were charged with attempted murder (the charges were later dropped). Despite the organizers" best efforts, RTS was spiraling into soccer hooliganism and, as one RTS spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph, when the organizers tried to regain control, some rioters turned against them. "I saw some of our people actually trying to stop yobbos who had got tanked up on beer and were mindlessly throwing bottles and rocks. A few of our contingent actually put themselves into the firing line and one was beaten up..."9 Such shades of gray, however, were lost on most in the British media who covered Trafalgar Square with headlines like "Riot Frenzy-Anarchist Thugs Bring Terror to London." Such shades of gray, however, were lost on most in the British media who covered Trafalgar Square with headlines like "Riot Frenzy-Anarchist Thugs Bring Terror to London."10 "The Resistance Will Be as Transnational as Capital"
After Trafalgar Square, Jordan says, it became clear that "it was too easy for the street party to be seen as just fun, just a party with a hint of political action.... If people think that turning up to a street party once a year, getting out of your head and dancing your heart out on a recaptured piece of public land is enough, then we are failing to reach our potential." The next task, he said, is to imagine a takeover bigger than just one street. "The street party is only a beginning, a taster of future possibilities. To date there have been 30 street parties all over the country. Imagine that growing to 100, imagine each one of those happening on the same day, imagine each one lasting for days on end and growing.... Imagine the street party growing roots...la fete permanente...."11 I admit that at the time I spoke to Jordan I was skeptical that this movement could pull off that level of coordination. At the best of times, Reclaim the Streets walks a delicate line, flirting openly with the urge to riot but attempting to flip it into a more constructive protest. The London RTSers say that one of the goals of the parties is to "visualize industrial collapse"-the challenge, then, is for partic.i.p.ants to inspire one another enough to dance and plant trees in the rubble, rather than to douse it with gasoline and drop a Zippo. But shortly after our interview, a notice went out on a couple of activist E-mail lists, floating the idea of a coordinated day of simultaneous street parties around the world. Seven months later, the first-ever Global Street Party was under way. To make ab