Weekly Response #9

Yu-Jen(Chris),Tsai
ADP 3
Discussion 005

Weekly Response #9

One of the acts in the Spring chapter in Culture Jam that I disagree with and at the same time feeling impractical would be the part where Lasn talks about the definition of the word “cool”(113). Even though Lasn’s main point and opinion in this book is obviously somehow warning the society about the huge corporations, which he define as something harmful and evil to the human world; in my point of view, several beliefs of his are still too judgmental. For an instance, in the first paragraph of the section when the author wrote that the marketers or the corporations got hold of it and reverse the word “cool’s” meaning and by the end of the passage, Lasn refer the phenomenon as poison to our society today by calling the word “cool” as opiate. Of course there are some products or any kind of material objects that are overhyped; however, we need to think about why do certain companies have the ability to grab the consumers’ attention–– quality for one. It’s just like the idea of any type of designers in today’s world; the main objective of a good design is “mass produce”. Famous Australian product designer Marc Newson said that a good design should in fact cost less instead of overpricing them during an interview in the famous documentary about design released couple months ago called Objectified. And so it is not the corporation’s fault since they simply want to make their product better. On the other hand, those companies that started off with fairly well designed and manufactured product and ultimately slacking would not have the slim chance of surviving in the competition.
Other Lasn’s revolution idea that I found could be practical enough or at least for the greater good to our world would be the MEME Wars section where Lasn listed out “five of the most potent metamemes currently in the culture jammer’s arsenal.” The last of the five is called Media Carta would be the most efficient out of the five due to the power of communication mediums in terms of today’s technology.
To finish it up, I would just like to bring up the idea of the relationship between the consumers and the corporations or companies. It is natural that people tend to have the urge of owing new things, which is what keep the corporations and designers operating and coming up with new ideas. However, in order to achieve Lasn’s ideal world, we, as consumers, will have to start from the beginning; it’s going to be time consuming. I think that to get to that point we will have to wait for a new generation and start from them to change the wide definition of the word “need” and “cool”. The new designers from our generation would be the only solution to change the relationship.

Work Cited :

Objectified (2009) Documentary-
Director:
Gary Hustwit
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America