Weekly Response #6

Yu-Jen(Chris),Tsai
ADP3
Discussion 005

Weekly Response #6

In the autumn chapter in Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn discussed mostly about the prevailing capitalism created by the society and how it has been affecting us globally. The author talked about how our global situation either environmental or economical and even psychological is going downstream. He believes that out of all communication mediums, media plays a huge part of the consumerism. While Mr. Lasn is describing his experience of proposing his television commercial idea, the “Mystical Forests” commercial, which reveals the truth the advertising company tried covering up with their commercial called “Forest Forever” on what was really happening to the forest in Britain. However, the corporation wasn’t even close to accepting the proposal; “In today’s media environment, advertisers rule––the sponsor is king (Lanse 35)” Lasn stated in the last passage in the Media Virus chapter. Even though some part of what Kalle tried to explain to me seem reasonable and makes me aware of our behavior as consumers. However, I don’t think that it is completely up to the sponsors’ choice to decide whether an ad should go on air or not, especially information that concerns the safety of our planet earth like the “forest issue”; message like it shall never be overlooked since it has always been our responsibility to look after our eco system. Humans have been severely consuming resources provided from our land ever since the industrial revolution. Humans have the right and obligation to fully understand and grasp issues occurring in the eco world.
Another point the author brought up that I would like to touch on would be the “product placement” situation that has gotten a lot worse compared to ten years ago, when the author wrote this book. This shows that some problems never got solved despite the fact that people knew it all along. It’s just like watching television or eating junk food, people know that they’re bad for their health, but they still keep on doing it anyhow. For instance, I once bought a pair of New Balance sneakers at a high price simply because the main character in one of my favorite movies wore the sneaker throughout the entire movie. So what does this mean? “What this means is that we’re now ripe for manipulation. We can be buzzed by logos without noticing.” (Lasn 38) the author stated; this reminded me of professor Trumpey’s very first lecture while he showed us the Mercedes logo and a picture of poison ivy for us to identify; from that particular test, we can see how drastically the media has manipulated the minds in our generation. It is crucial for us to focus on the environmental facets by discovering them by ourselves instead of incessantly retrieving messages sent by the media without even filtering them.


Work Cited

Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam. New York, Page.35 third paragraph & Page.38


Trumpey, Joseph. Art Design Perspective 3: Technology and the Environment. Stamps Auditorium, Ann Arbor, MI. First Lecture.