Understanding What We See

(10) Culture Jamming: Select and analyze an example.

Before I begin talking about what Culture Jamming is I would like to take a brief moment and say that this concept sounds a lot more confusing that what it actually is. I cannot say how many times I paced back and forth in my room trying to figure it out. This particular blog post will discuss my findings.

Have you ever seen a sign or an advertisement on a billboard for a company? You know, the ones that usually have text followed by a picture of some sort. A lot of the time, those kinds of ads can usually be tweaked around in such a minimal way to change the message of ad entirely. Take a look at these ads I was able to find.

Another very cleverly done modification, more effort was put into this one though. If you've ever noticed those instructions for how to use a crosswalk (believe me, they exsist) then you too will find this pretty funny.

Again, similar to the last picture, this jammer just takes an exsisting image and describes exactly what he sees. Fortunately for us, his descripiton is quite comical and make it hard to look at this sign in any other way.

There's quite a lot to talk about within those examples. The easiest place to start would be with the similarities between the two. They are obviously both clever edits of their originals, and they both change the meaning drastically. But, try to look past the visual differences. What the jammer has done is expressed himself through his modifications. He's just having a little bit of innocent fun which is often apperciated with a laugh or a "Whoa, that's so cool" comment. Not all of the time are Culture Jammers defacing signs for the sake of giving society the middle finger.

“Perhaps we’ve been too conditioned by photography to perceive single images as single moments. After all, it does take an eye time to move across scene in real life” (McCloud).

Culture Jammers are different from other people in the way that they react to the images and advertisements that we see around us. Typically, we see an advertisement, give our own opinions on it, or say things like "You know, it would be cool if they did this to their ad..." and then move on. The Jammers will actually make those changes and you can bet on it, that their changes won't go unnoticed.

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Sources Cited

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. 1st. New York, USA: HarperPerennial, 1994