 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind The end of our show each week we direct you to our website called cultural construction company While this might sound like the name of a business. It is not It is simply a website a space we've carved out online to think about some issues that are important to us The website links to personal and professional pursuits and it will continue to grow in these directions We have designed the site this way on purpose because we believe that the ways most people to find their lives into such Comparements as family friends business and profession can be misleading Life ain't that neat Life is fuzzy blurry overlapping Cultural construction company is meant to reflect that fuzziness While the site has blurred boundaries, it is not without a central theme or value Through a cultural construction company. We are concerned with culture We don't define culture But we do reflect upon the ways in which culture intrudes into our lives and ways in which we contribute to the culture around us Oh, yeah, and we try to find ways to create culture on purpose Say for instance by producing a radio show Why be concerned about culture? Because we have become convinced that culture is the place where power is shaped and challenged We are no longer confident that simply for testing a cause Casting a boat expressing an opinion or changing a law Will be enough to facilitate real change in a world that is at once locally centered and globally influenced Even when laws are obeyed only a change in our shared values will ensure an ongoing growth Towards a world where people can be free productive and expressive persons Culture is the whole of shared values that is greater than some of its parts On today's show we want to share our philosophy and we want to invite you to read some of the books that have influenced our thinking about culture and power It will offer you a reading list, our picks so to speak We don't expect to impact the publishing industry as radically as Oprah did But we wanted to do our part to fill the gap that remained after she decided to close her book club So welcome to the launching of the cultural construction company book club Later in the program you'll hear the first 10 entries and be given a chance to let us know your favorite culture channel Forum cultural construction company a manifesto We have heard it said many times that the liberation movements of the mid 20th century succeeded in changing laws But did not succeed in changing the hearts and minds of the general population Prejudice discrimination division and hatred are alive and well in the 21st century In spite of many rhetorical efforts to make things more egalitarian To enfranchise previously powerless constituencies and to inhibit systematic racism, sexism and so forth But since the Reagan era there seems to be nothing left but political correctness A hollow projection of what was envisioned when Rosa Parks refused to walk to the back of the bus Why would all those valiant efforts fail? Is it simply because people discriminate, divide and hate? Are we doomed to end fighting, genocide, ethnic cleansing and terrorism, however you define it? We would seem to have little reason to believe otherwise It does not take much to construct a very dismal view of the world But if one scratches the surface, one finds optimistic points of view almost everywhere Are these points of view simply delusional? Gramsci looked around and saw that Marx had the problem correctly diagnosed Capitalism was creating essentially the kind of world that Marx had predicted But that world wasn't heading towards revolution It seemed that the worse the world got, the more the masses loved it, aided up Why? Why would these people act against their self-interest with such enthusiastic glee? Gramsci's answer was cultural production Not only did owners of capital control production of capital, they also controlled production of culture It was the owners of culture who decided what would be seen, heard, read and experienced by the masses It was the owners of culture who essentially taught the masses how to think and feel And if the owners of capital controlled cultural production, it made sense that the culture reflected the best interest of the owners of capital, not those of the masses This was not a conspiracy, this was simply people acting the way they thought was right No collusion was necessary, control was all that was needed Hegemonic messages pervaded cultural constructions and these messages reflected the interests and beliefs of those who financed and controlled their creations In fact, one could argue that control of the means of information production supersedes control of the means of material production with a former leading to the latter more readily than the reverse We believe this is why classism has never really been addressed in all the isms that have had their 15 minutes of fame To discuss class on any meaningful level would be diametrically opposed to the best interest of those who control media production In a capitalist society, the illusion that haves and have-nots occupy their respective positions because of their work ethic and nothing else is a presumption that allows those who control cultural production to feel justified in their control The house of cards would be jeopardized if that illusion were dispelled That is not to say that other isms have been addressed adequately There is a tendency in US culture to address these things just enough to rationalize saying something was done but not enough to solve anything We have laws on the books but no dialogue in public forums The groups controlling discourses have designated others that serve as examples of how open the system is while different segments of others are simply ignored or worse ridiculed and tortured The designated opposition is a real problem in politics The second that your cause or group gets recognition you are in danger of playing into the hands of the ruling powers You become the proof that the system that you are criticizing essentially works Audrey Lord said, the master's tools cannot be used to dismantle the master's house We think this is what she means in part If we play politics in the American system without a fundamental change in the system we simply become the designated opposition, the favorite child Part of the system that those in power can point to and say, see the minority have their say It's just that the majority doesn't want that, that's democracy, it's the best system we can have It is important to stress at this point that we are constructing a macro level picture for convenience more than proposing an optimal model of human relationships While it is possible to communicate a coherent and accurate narrative of power relations these relations occur in the micro level decisions made by ordinary people and everyday circumstances Cultural production does not come from on high but rather take shape in the day to day resources upon which we draw to interact with each other We do not want to be the designated opposition We want something fundamental to change in the system We want this because we're tired of being on the outside looking in all the time We don't belong to many of the acceptable groups but even if we did, we think we would be heart sick about the stupidity that still exists A new channel for dialogue has to be opened a medium suitable for the message American democracy is failing to provide a good life for many of its citizens We believe that we must discover and develop new discursive resources upon which we and others may draw to make sense of their lives We are allowed to be consumers of culture We can watch film and television, listen to radio and read books or magazines with relative ease but we cannot produce a film or television show, broadcast a radio show or publish a book or magazine without approval from those who control culture Consumption of culture is encouraged Production of culture is not Production of culture is the Achilles heel of capitalism If people see, hear or read something enough times, it becomes real to them They use these discourses as sources of meaning But how does one produce culture that isn't pre-approved by the owners and controllers of cultural capital? This is where alternative culture becomes important Of course, alternatives have the same problem of becoming the designated opposition as political groups, but less so Attempts to co-opt alternative culture exist, of course But that is the battleground of culture Alternative producers seek to provide other voices Popular culture often absorbs those efforts But unlike politics, the pre-designated majority doesn't rule in this battle Every time the owners of capital absorb or co-opt something of alternative culture, it changes mainstream culture a little It cannot point to alternatives and announce them as simply the minority opinion and then proceed to absorb them Witness how queer culture has seeped into mainstream culture will embrace as one of the most popular shows on television Several shows have regular gay characters A topic where discussion was completely unthinkable 40 years ago is commonplace in prime time now Producing alternatives provides consumers with a choice But we hope to do more than provide a choice We hope to provide places where others can consciously produce culture Actually, everyone does produce culture The problem is that most of us do this with little thought And we often reproduce what we have seen and heard Every time we tell another person about the great movie we just watched Or discuss the plot line to our favorite sitcom or soap opera We are reproducing culture In order to open a space for constructing culture We need some rupture in our reproducing activity That is why deconstruction will consequently be part of the effort to find new cultural construction Deconstructing culture is cultural production Because the deconstruction becomes a discursive resource upon which meaning can be drawn Cultural construction company is an internet project dedicated to all things cultural It will offer critiques of mainstream culture It offers alternatives to mainstream channels of media It offers links to other alternatives It offers consumers a chance to become producers The idea is to become a producer of culture and not just a consumer It is cultural creativity with a self-reflexive conscience All things social and cultural are creations of human beings We are all cultural producers because we construct our lives and how we think about our lives With every action and reaction we make CCC is an attempt to do what we are doing anyway but to do it on purpose In a self-reflexive manner CCC is an attempt to invite others to gaze upon the process as well as the result CCC is an attempt to be a player in a different game than mainstream cultural creation In fact, it is an attempt to create a new game Where we will end up is difficult to say Staying fresh and on top of things is an important part of what we will be doing So we see this as an organic experience We don't want to reinvent the wheel but we also don't want to stop growing We also see it as rhizomatous growth and that CCC will change as it connects with other efforts similar to it Thus predicting where we will end up is like predicting where grass will stop growing It is too complex to predict The internet seemed a perfect place to start Because production of culture on the internet is less controlled than it is anywhere else in American culture And because the internet is international with access to something other than American productions Access is still limited by the technological equipment available to us within our means We recognize that while we want to create an alternative We are stuck with creating it within a box We cannot get outside the box But the internet is full of optimists such as us People who are trying something different Who are making cultural alternatives The trick will be connecting us all together in something of a critical mass Something that will fundamentally change the dominance of capitalist culture But we do not see our activities ending at the internet Culture can be produced on multiple levels in multiple places Every word we utter both reifies something in culture and changes something in it We are part of the tide that is seen from hindsight as culture That is as normative Thus we cannot predict with any accuracy where we will go Only assess where we've been and how influential we've become This is part of the self-reflective conscience of CCC So to sum this up, we see CCC as an adventure upon which we are interested in embarking Because we are tired of playing the political and economic games That simply force us to act in the best interest of those in control of capital We have little capital to control but we plan to use whatever resources we have To do something different, to ask different questions, to create alternatives This is a new phase of our lives and we welcome it You're listening to First Person Plural on CFUV 101.9 FM, Victoria Our project is without an influence and our influences include books Yes, we are outing ourselves as readers What better way to present our ideas than to share with you those sources that help shape them In the next few minutes we will share with you our Top 10 Cultural Studies Reads Editor Stephen Duncan devised the essays and excerpts in his Cultural Resistance Reader into several sections One of them is entitled, A Politics That Doesn't Look Like Politics These books fit that description There are many differences among these books but they have one thing in common They are concerned with combating the onslaught of commercial interests that shape contemporary culture So grab your pencil and paper to write down titles and authors Or better yet, visit our website, CulturalConstructionCompany.com to find the cue Introducing Cultural Studies, written by Jadan Siddharth, illustrated by Boren Van Loon Published in the U.K. by Icon Books, in the U.S. by Total Books and by Who Knows Whom in Canada The Introducing Series surveys a number of heady topics in a lavishly illustrated format Readers wanting light but not in substantial overviews of such topics as post-feminism, post-modernism, and symbiotics will find them herein The book tends to be written from a British point of view, but for North Americans that can be enlightening True to the iterative spirit of textual analysis, the book offers critiques of the critiques it sees fit to include Including a proviso about queer theory that appears on pages 152 and 153 A need was felt for a critical theory that linked gay affirmation with broad institutional change The result was queer theory, which settled into universities as the main sites of gay and lesbian discourses Queer theory has been criticized for unveiling its own ethical base Queer theorists, so the critics argue, have not provided an alternative social and moral articulation of difference Moreover, the historical and queer theory is reduced to the modern west or the period 1880 to 1980 in modern western societies This means that non-western cultures are almost totally ignored in queer theory Indeed, many queer theorists seem to be unaware that anything exists outside California Sister Outsider by Audrey Lord Lord is often quoted by cultural critics and cultural activists Her articulate outline of how poetry, the personal, and the political meld together into subversion of dominant paradigms Was most eloquent in this collection of lectures and essays The following quote is from excerpts of comments made by Lord in New York, September 29, 1979 And are found on pages 112 and 113 Those of us who stand outside the circle of the society's definition of acceptable women Those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference Those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older Know that survival is not an academic skill It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular, and sometimes reviled And how to make common cause with others, identified as outside the structures In order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own gain They will never enable us to bring about genuine change And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support Simone de Beauvoir once said It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for action I urge each one of us here to draw down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself And touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there See whose face it wears Then the personal, as the political, can begin to illuminate all our choices No logo, taking aim at the brand bullies by Naomi Klein Klein exposes the new face of corporatism There exists an elite that seeks to control the ways and means of symbolic communication itself Their modus operandi is introduction and promotion of commercial symbols meant to supersede all the content and all the uses of media and communication spaces Familiar archetypes of anti-corporate texts are present including consumers being trained to purchase whatever they are told and sweatshops whose workers have no access to remedy when their employers treat them arbitrarily But Klein's twist on the subject is the pursuit by multinationals of strategies designed to impose their trademarks and other proprietary snippets onto culture itself and indeed to have overriding considerations attributed to such intellectual property Counter-efforts have already begun and Klein notes many of them and their assessments of the practical nuances of corporate branding strategy The resistance is well aware of the implications of paid speech taking presidents over free speech with one of the more direct statements favoring direct action appearing on page 280 Streets of public spaces, ad busters argue and since most residents can't afford to counter corporate messages by purchasing their own ads they should have the right to talk back to images they never asked to see In recent years this argument has been bolstered by advertising's melty aggressiveness in the public domain The ads discussed in no space painted and projected onto sidewalks reaching around entire buildings and buses into schools onto basketball courts and onto the internet At the same time as discussed in no choice the proliferation of the quasi-public tenant squares of malls and superstores has created more and more spaces where commercial messages are the only ones permitted Adding even greater urgency to their cause is the belief among many jammers that concentration of media ownership has successfully devalued the right to free speech by severing it from the right to be heard The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer Ritzer is arguably the most accessible sociologist Almost every sociology student in North America has been assigned his comprehensive theory survey and so it is no surprise that Ritzer knows social theory What is surprising is that he can take that social theory and make it readable by relating it to the problems of everyday life such as the ways in which McDonald's philosophy has invaded other cultures and other realms of North American culture The following quote is found in his chapter on the quote Frontiers of McDonaldization in which he takes a look at trends in birth, death, and death-defying acts to demonstrate the extent to which the rationalizing philosophy of McDonald's has embedded itself in our everyday lives It is found on page 161 The funeral business has apparently adopted still another lesson from the fast food industry that what it is really selling is fun Quote, somber, boohoo funerals with loved ones weeping at the grave seem to be going out of style One family, for example, planned a beach party memorial service The Japanese, doing the United States one better are planning a death amusement park modeled after that key element of McDonald's society, Disney World An Osaka undertaker is already putting together quite a show A coffin on an electronically operated cart moves down a 50 meter hill bathed in the light of laser beams accompanied by chanting monks and the family of the deceased When it reaches the end of the hall, which was once a bowling alley the coffin enters a semi-circular tunnel enveloped in a thick flog of dry ice and disappears into the other world There is an example of a themed mausoleum under construction in Canada Atop the 110 foot high edifice mourners will be able to watch loved ones being cremated on a pyre overlooking the city Below will be themed floors one for Catholics with a nativity scene a floor for Buddhists with statues and incense burners one for the Canadian military veterans with medals and weaponry and a simulated tropical island with palm trees and piped in ukulele music for late members of Vancouver's substantial Fijian community White trash, race and class in America edited by Matt Ray and Inalee Newitz of Band Subject's online zine This collection of essays looks at the concept of whiteness from a number of different angles relating to class Since whiteness is often equated with wealth and non-white equated with poverty this reader breaks down both race and class by marking both the ways not usually done in sociological circles It does so with humor as well as wet The following quote is from an essay written by Laura Kipnis and Jennifer Reader called White Trash Girl about a performance art project by Jennifer Reader on page 115 This was White Trash Girl's project to deploy the classed and improper body onto the art world at large Because while art world habituates may plait at poverty chic and disdain bourgeois conventionality class hierarchies are still entrenched and rigid and the wrong class origins or the wrong sort of anti-styles still mark you as the interloper the gatecrasher of the citadels of culture Hence the birth of White Trash Girl The fairly unexamined social relations of the art education biz Nobody fucks with White Trash Girl, she fucks with you She's a mean model with a scatological sensibility, a right hook, skin thick as cheap vinyl when it comes to public opinion Fuck me? No, fuck you! Commodify your dissent, the business of culture and the new gilded age edited by Thomas Frank and Matt Whelan This collection of reprints from the Baffler is an irreverent look at business and culture Affle describing their essays as salvos, they take shots at much of the commodification of culture with hits designed to sink The following is an excerpt from a fake business research report recommending the purchase of stocks in a fake company which sells deviance with such brand names as subcults and grunge created by Frank Thomas and David McCallhay on page 74 Overview of Operations Consolidated deviances, business simply stated, consists of translating disparate subcultural signifying practices into easily identifiable and marketable lifestyle consumption configurations known as the company's trademark, subcults trademarked The company's staff of lifestyle experts, researchers, and vents and tests a wide variety of such configurations concentrating specifically on such market proven attributes as quote attitude, close quote, quote authenticity, close quote, and quote street credibility, close quote and although con dev intends to positively impact the modernization and centralization of cultural authority nationwide the company has found the greatest measure of success ironically is the heavy marketing of the music, looks, and accessories of quote local scenes, close quote These geographically particular subcults, trademarked, are presented to the national market as deeply indigenous and therefore quote authentic, close quote, expressions of grass root alienation The Onion presents our dumb century, 100 years of headlines from America's finest news source edited by Scott Dickers In a society that has tried very hard to make a joke of the media, a joke media source can be valuable Dickers and his staff have created a book of retroactive, very similitudinous page ones for their famous parody periodical The work echoes the similar but serious New York Times into the 20th century volume A typically fanciful yet barred item appears on page 114, the August 10, 1969 issue of the falsely venerable newspaper Nixon orders nation's youths arrested Washington D.C. President Nixon ordered the nation's approximately 50 million young people arrested Saturday charging all Americans between the ages of 13 and 25 with criminal trespass, disturbing the peace, and sedition America's youths have proven increasingly dangerous to the stability and security of the U.S., Nixon said The only safe option is to detain them indefinitely Nixon said the young people's repeated anti-war demonstrations, draft dodging, bra burning, unchecked hair growth, and slang use have reached crisis proportions and must be stopped Prisons across the country are expected to suffer overcrowding as the nation's adolescent population is incarcerated Officials are requiring all young people to report to local jails for temporary holding until federal prison space is allocated Federal Marshals have been enlisted to hunt down all young adults who refuse to report voluntarily and have orders to shoot on site any unauthorized young person Said Nixon, these grave security risks must be contained, at least until they are old enough to behave The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order edited by Marcel Karp and Debbie Stroller What separates the women from the girls? Boobs, no doubt Karp and Stroller were an important part of the Zine Revolution in the early 1990s, and this book has the best of breasts This project is a great example of what has come to be called New Feminism The following quote is an excerpt from the manifesto of Bust found in the front of the book, and it sums it up nicely But somewhere, somewhere in our girl brains, the idea had been planted When we were young, when we watched the Brady Bunch, when we were forced to take homemaking while the boys took shop That we would, of course, be married to successful men and be ready to have families by the time we were, well, at least definitely by the time we were 30 Instead we find ourselves nearing, or past 30, still in dating hell, still trying to figure out our sexual identities Still sleeping too late, forgetting to do the fucking laundry and wearing dirty underwear Not knowing how to cook, worrying about the electricity being turned off again Being in debt to our creditors, not having any savings, and hearing the tick, tick, tick of our goddamn biological clocks When we were in our early 20s, we thought that the biological clock, and juggling career and family stuff Was yuppie bullshit for women who wore beige stockings or relaxed their hair We knew better. We would figure it all out in our own radical bohemian thrift store ways Surely it would happen to us, and it hasn't. We haven't figured it out And now here we are. But look around you. There are a lot of us here. Lots and lots of us It's not just me. It's not just you. There are a whole heap of us, late 20s, early 30s, groovy girl women And we need to hear each other. We need to help each other. We need to laugh at each other. We need to speak at each other So speak. We want to read you. We want to recognize ourselves and laugh We want to have fun. We want to get mad. We want to bust. Love the left one and the right one The Happy Mutant Handbook, mischievous fun for higher primates, edited by Brownfelder et al So you're one of those creative people and you're trapped on earth with a bunch of organization men And perpetually depressed artsy types. Despair or not, there is another lifestyle option at your disposal The editors of Boing Boing, a zine of no fixed paradigm, provide tidbits on culture jamming Crediting the banned negative land with coining the term Advanced techniques in prank phone calling The Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of the Subgenius, praised above Using computers to all sorts of aesthetically scary ends And even the Happy Mutant Hall of Fame Featuring among others William M. Gaines, the late publisher of Mad Magazine Gaines's Hall of Fame biographical sketch is written by frequent contributor Carlos Sinclair And appears on page 23 All you need is the Watney-Warrie philosophy and you'll be smiling as wide as the gap-toothed redhead who coined that phrase, Alfred E. Newman Okay, so Alfred was just a cartoon mascot from Mad Magazine But William M. Gaines, co-creator of Mad along with Harvey Kurtzman, was a real character who had real fun The fun began at Educational Comics, owned by Bill's father, Max Gaines Soon after Bill got a job at E.C. as a gopher, his dad died in a boating accident Bill then took over the company, changed E.C. to entertaining comics And revolutionized not only the world of comics but American humor as well Beginning with the Crypt of Terror and the Vault of Horror In 1950, Gaines launched a new genre of comic books, Horror and Suspense E.C.'s Grizzly Tales clutched the imaginations of American youth And comic book sales boomed at an astounding rate Unfortunately, the media was already worshipping a name-calling finger-pointing morphine junkie by the name of Joe McCarthy Who flew into a fanatic rage over these Grizzly Tales Humans were screaming with devilish delight over these comics They were having too much fun Paranoia was trace-cheek And by 1954, McCarthy's gang put an end to Gaines' line of horror comics Gaines had already launched Mad Magazine, however So he just shifted gears And yet another genre was born, the American satire magazine Mad poked fun at other comic books and any two or three dimensional character who happened to be in the way It was a tremendous success It's dramatic impact on American humor Influenced bigwigs such as Saturday Night Live 60s cartoonist Robert Crumb It's a terrible films like Airplane and Naked Gun And my own Boing Boing Magazine Although he left this planet in 1992 after circling the sun 70 times The happy mutants of the world will be here to perpetuate his what-me-worry attitude Fatso because you don't have to apologize for your size By Marilyn Nguyen The most fun to be had reading Nguyen takes on the diet and fitness industry The fashion industry and the medical establishment With excerpts from her zine put together in a cohesive book Because fat hatred is so deeply entrenched in our culture This book necessarily culture jams Including fat trading cards And a beautiful Venus of Villendorf paper doll Complete with clothes that fit The flabulous Marilyn addresses the wait question On pages 122 through 123 If there were a fat homeland somewhere on the world map We might not have this problem If there really had been a golden fat era When fat was worshipped We wouldn't be in this bind I'm sorry but a couple of European painters in one prehistoric statuette Don't constitute a golden era If fat children were only born to fat parents And thin people only came from thin families Then our glorious fat heritage Passed down through the generations Might save us from this situation As it is There is no official language of fat pride There are no fat slang words No fat neighborhoods No fat holidays No traditional music of fat people There is no comforting and familiar fat cuisine No special dance that fat people dance When they are happy or sad No fat hairstyle No write a passage for fat children to undergo Other than the teasing There is in short No fat culture Although there is not yet a fat culture We do have a fat community Fat organizations and newsletters Books and magazines Conventions and parties Clothing stores and dating services And thousands of people Who either create these resources Or use them Given that the mania for thin Only really flourished in the last 100 years And given that fat people Only started to resist that mania In an organized way About 25 years ago We have accomplished a lot Still fewer than one tenth of one percent Of America's 97 million fat people Are out of the closet And actively enjoying fat community Fat people are staying in the closet Because they cling to the false hope Of one day passing Through their thin And because there is not yet a fat culture To welcome them home To welcome us home Don't worry It's coming Fat people would lead normal happy lives Full of the usual mix Of love, work, family, friends And car payments And on National Fat Day Everyone, fat and thin Would slick their hair back Don the traditional orange And pink kilts And take to the streets In the fat parts of town To dance the belly bossa nova Until dawn Fat culture, here we come You're listening to First Person Plural On CFUV Victoria's Public Radio 101.9 FM 104.3 cable And on the internet CFUV.UVAC.CA Giving sociology an edge! For those of you not familiar with her past Patty was an instructor at the University of Florida While she was in graduate school there And made a habit of assigning books To her students Lots and lots of books That is part of the inspiration For this segment I used to sign books even before I taught Yes, but only to me No, to other people too Oh, I didn't realize that Yes, I like telling people what to read You're like a walking annotated bibliography What can I say? I'm one of those readers One of those card-carrying readers Yes, a card-carrying reader I even have two or three cards That allow me to read That's another reference to the onion Americans dumb censured or whatever the title was Now that I've done this segment I've forgotten the title There's an article in The Onion In one of their fake gradual issues About Joe McCarthy Targeting the book reader menace Having taken care of the communists Now he's moving on to bigger and better things He describes public libraries Where card-carrying members Get together to engage in Book reading And other related activities But I like to encourage reading And I also like to share good books And I have to own up to a really bad book habit That habit being reading or purchasing books Well, both You can't have one without the other Okay, so you have not in fact heard of The public library Sure, you go to the library To figure out which books you want to purchase Oh, oh Well, let's indulge you then If you could have assigned an 11th book What would it have been? I actually debated about a book Called The Cultural Resistance Reader Edited by Stephen Duncan This book I don't know, it's got Probably over 50 articles on it Or excerpts from other books And I liked the way that he organized it And I especially liked the idea Of cultural resistance That sort of shaped The way I thought about the other books So I ended up using it not so much As a book that I would recommend Because it's not as accessible As the books that we put on the list I made a criteria on the list That it be accessible That it be something that you don't have to have A PhD In order to be able to read And understand what the people are saying So you're targeting the intelligently person? Well, yeah Or at least somebody who is interested in culture And there are a lot of people out there I mean, I think that There's a good number of activists Who are beginning to understand that The battle is on the culture front And not on the political front, per se There's this thing called culture jamming And culture jamming Is defined in many different ways In different places that I've seen To me, it's about critiquing the culture And looking for ways in which You can kind of turn cultural symbols Back on themselves Adbusters over in Vancouver Is a real good example of culture jamming Where they take logos of different companies And change the logo In order to get their message across So they're using the same symbology In fact, they're relying upon you As a consumer to recognize the symbology That they have appropriated But they inserted a different message So it's subversive It can be, yeah Well, subversive is a strong word Is it critical? Yeah, it's critical I mean, the one that comes to mind That I've read recently Is taking a pack of cools And changing the K to an F So you're seeing the cigarette ad As it is in your... And everything's in place The same writing, the same font That's in the ad itself Except because they change the K to an F It creates a whole different message And it's subtle But it's definitely a critique Of cigarettes are not cool Cigarettes make you a fool So they keep the font, the color scheme The art and so forth And they change one or two little elements So that the association is sure to remain So the idea is that it essentially Jams up the message It stops the message in its track It gets associated with it in any case Yes But it also stops it I mean, I think the word jam has a double entendre In culture jamming One is that it's innovative Or improv An element of humor An element of fun to it An element of spontaneity So that kind of jamming That sense of improvisation Or jam Which is what musicians talk about When they're doing improvisation They say that they're jamming But the other part of that Is sort of the log jam The thing that gets it stuck in the system And makes it stop in its tracks So to speak That's what culture jamming Is supposed to be Is sort of stop a cultural message In its tracks And either reroute it Or keep it from moving on Instead of attaching to a microorganism That attaches to a meme Yes, exactly To use Dawkins' term for The eighth consecutive week, I believe Sometimes it attaches a new message It replaces the message And sometimes it doesn't Sometimes it's just meant to stop it You know more about the roots of the term Than I do The term culture jamming I've seen in two different sources now One was the Happy Newton handbook And the other was no logo Both of which curiously appear on our top ten list That the band Negative Land In the 1980s coined the term First associated it with this sort of activity I know that the band Devo Was doing this sort of thing Although they were not using the term for it Mark Mothersbaugh has been interviewed In several places And he said that one of the things Devo tried to do Was sticking these little associational things Some purposefully Just out of lighthearted mischief And they did so through many media Music was one of them Video was another And they even pursued print at one point They did home videos, all sorts of things It was A project in them They were all art students from Akron, Ohio And they got bored And decided to start doing this sort of thing You brought up the word subversive before And I think this is an interesting question Are these people who do this kind of thing Trying to subvert some sort of system Are they merely offering an alternative? I don't know how you could trace intent I would guess that the subversive And the alternative are both lumped Into the same category by the big kids The people whom at Buster's busts I would guess that to them there is no difference Whether it's a deliberate attack On the cool cigarettes of the world Or whether it's just Devo Trying to put some silly images in your mind For the sake of artistic value One way or the other I would guess That the big kids consider it a threat And sometimes that's valid And sometimes that's just the big kids problem I've heard you talk about Not liking the word subversive before I don't think it's necessary I think that alternative Can't exist You can't trace intent But you can postulate that there are Areas in this sort of thing Especially symbolic communications Where intent is absent I think that's safe at least I think the fact that The mere attempt to create culture Is becoming more and more associated With an opposition to Quote free enterprise closed quote Is threatening indeed I think it is almost definitionally An attack on free speech I would use an indirect proof Or indirect argument I would say If this is not considered An attack on free speech An attack on the very principles The first principles of free speech What would be Being told no no you just can't do that Is extreme Or being told no no we own those words I think the ownership of words Has been a very interesting phenomenon In the last 15 20 years Words and phrases and sentences Yeah the trademark thing You deserve a break today You deserve a break today Is trademarked I think so was a diamond Is forever at one point I think that was a debut Slug in the late 40s Yeah but a diamond is forever Is not something that people But you deserve a break Is normal conversation And to have that trademarked I mean the next thing you know We're going to be charged royalties Every time we mention anything One of the few people to fight To successfully was William M. Gaines Whom I mentioned In the earlier segment As being one of the people Who had the happy mutant handbook Places in their hall of fame One of the things that Mad Magazine Was take the music to a popular song Or at least reference it And write new lyrics to it Which we've all done Al Jankovic has made a career on it But Gaines had done this for a while And he got sued by a bunch of major music publishers And he defended himself Anyone I say he defended himself He put together a defense I'm sure that he had attorneys Through the heavy lifting But essentially his argument Was that he was listening Smoke gets in your eyes I don't have to send a two cent royalty To Jerome Curran for it And he made it stick I wonder if he could make it stick today As easily as he did then though No I don't think he could One of the reasons that we looked At these books and why I've been Thinking about culture jamming lately Is because of our bigger project Cultural construction company And I've been asking myself In some ways I think it is For one thing the use of the word company I mean we purposely put it as a dot com Not a dot org or a dot net That we do own those domain names as well But we put it as a dot com And use the word company As a play on that word Company has come to be associated With a legal entity called corporations But in truth company also means A group of people Hanging out I mean you have company over You have people over to your house It's a social word That has to do with Hanging out together for a common purpose And so our intention On Looking at using the words Cultural construction Construction company And the word company Was all meant as a kind of culture jamming But since then I kind of Thought of us as more cultural creatives More people who think in terms of Creating culture Like having a radio show But other things too I mean we put pictures up We put our writing up We blog all of this other kind of stuff Is connected with the website And certainly as we move on There'll be more of it And I think that that underscores The subversive versus alternative A subversive is someone who defines himself In terms of the other And an alternative is a polite way Of saying an original Tatically it's being defined In terms of the other as well But in truth it's first principle Is what it has to offer You have been listening to First person plural on CFUV 101.9 FM In Victoria, British Columbia Simon cast it on 104.3 cable And CFUV.UVIC.CA First person plural is produced weekly By Dr. Patty Thomas and Carl Wilkerson Music for first person plural is composed Performed and produced by Carl Wilkerson For more information about First person plural Or Patty Thomas and Carl Wilkerson Visit our website CulturalConstructionCompany.com