On Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam

Culture Jam reminds me the jar of jam!! Culture Jam is the name of the book written by Kale Lasn and it is all about American culture.  Honestly this book is a jar of culture with all different tastes! As I was reading through I found more hidden information about where I am living, there was pages that my brain is still attached to it! means I like to read it more! why? because I am foreigner and I feel Lasn point of view is look like foreigner. To understand the Lasn's views I chose to interview couple of older people who really lived in US longer than me. on of the is my uncle who is traveling between Iran and US a lot, and the other person is a lady who I know from the Church. if you want to know what I liked and disliked or what I learnt from this book and my interviews with real people follow me by reading my next essay "On Kale Lasn's Culture Jam".

On Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam

“Twenty-five years ago, when the world had not quite lost all of its innocence and idealism, I was living in a film commune, churning out experimental films . . .” This is how Kalle Lasn (henceforth KL) describes his own cultural background.  I am a child of 1990’s and I was born after the world had lost its innocence and idealism, according to KL.  So much of what the author (KL) finds as the corruption of an innocent world is commonplace to me.  I talked to several much older acquaintances to better understand that innocent and idealistic world of KL.  These acquaintances are highly educated individuals who were about my age in nineteen sixties which was a time of cultural transformation in the United States and globally and the impression I get is that the idealism of that period is reflected in the thinking of KL.  As I understand, a small segment of 1960’s revolutionaries found living outside the social and economic mainstream desirable and adopted a form of life accordingly.  This is perhaps the kind of Puritanism (if it can be called so) that one finds in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and it is part of the lost innocence that KL finds regrettable.

In the first two chapters of Culture Jam, KL gives the reader a very bleak picture of the state of the world and what the future holds for us unless major cultural transformations change the current environment.  The issues she raises are diverse and their relationship rather tenuous.  They include

1. Alienation from family and nature (pages 3-7).
2. Widespread psychological disorders (pages 9 and 10).
3. Lack of emotional experiences and their replacement with TV-cyberspace (pages 11, 46 and 47).
4. Pollution of minds by TV; sex and violence, identical images leading to homogenization and lack of diversity etc. (pages 12, 18, 24-26 etc.)
5. Current thinking on economics and generation of wealth is leading to doomsday.
6. Corporate advertising dominating the airwaves and deeply influencing our thinking and the drift towards unbridled consumerism (pages 14-18, 63 etc.).
7. Government has degenerated into an instrument for the benefit of corporations and not responsive to people’s needs (pages 63-71 etc.).

KL gives the impression that corporate greed is the underlying cause of many current social ills and this appears to be the unifying theme in his ominous assessment of our postmodern world.  Social issues are by nature not black or white, and the points made by KL are no exception.  Each point has some validity and should be evaluated in its own context.  It is much too simplistic to reduce the real problems we are facing to simple consequences of corporate greed and power.  In addition, the evangelical tone of KL’s Culture Jam and that he is our benevolent and enlightened savior from the satanic world of corporate domination will alienate some, maybe many, thoughtful individuals.  The book reads like the expression of a stream of consciousness by a person who hates almost everything in the world today and would like to take us back to a Utopian world that he has created in his imagination.  Many prefer to see a more balanced, focused and rational assessment of issues.  I will attempt to address some (and only some) of the points made by KL.

According to KL (page 3), “One day it dawns on you that, as a family, you're failing. You aren't so much a family as five strangers sharing power and water.”  Are we really more estranged from our families than the previous generation was?  It is a very difficult proposition about which to make a quantitative or even a qualitative statement.  So I asked some of my older acquaintances to tell me about their relationship with their parents and children.  In important ways it seems that the quality of communication between family members has improved.  Some have explained to me that in their teenage years they felt that their parents were not making the effort to adjust to and understand the changing world of the younger generation.  With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps this judgment was unfair to the parents but because of it, they made the effort to develop better communication with their own children and understand their thinking.  It is true that their children spend a lot more time on the laptops, tablets or other gadgets than they did with their toys (whatever they were), nevertheless when they talk to each other it is often at a more sincere, unguarded and deeper level.  It is easier for their children to talk to them about their personal relationships than it was for them to relate their feelings and thoughts to their parents.  Parents and children seem to understand each other better nowadays.  This feeling is not universal but the opposite is not universal either.  Technology also has had a positive impact on the improvement of communication.  Apparently fifty years ago, making an international telephone call was expensive and not necessarily a trivial matter and of course there was no email even twenty five years ago.  Nowadays we can talk to each other across the globe on Skype or ooVoo and track our lost friends on Facebook.  Is this not an improvement in human relations?  I think one important reason for the immense success of the “cyberspace” is that it has made it so much easier to share our thoughts and emotions with family and friends.   

Consider the following statements from page 18 of Culture Jam, “Growing up in an erotically charged media environment alters the very foundations of our personalities. . .  I think the constant flow of commercially scripted pseudosex, rape and pornography makes us more voyeuristic, insatiable and aggressive.”  And HK further elaborates, “TV programming is inundated by sex and violence because the networks have determined they are an efficient way to produce audiences. The commercial media are to the mental environment what factories are to the physical environment. . .  A TV or radio station ‘pollutes’ the cultural environment because that's the most efficient way to produce audiences. It pays to pollute.” Does KL really think that we have become a bunch of promiscuous morons because there is so much sex in the media?  If so, he really does not understand the mind frame of the people of my generation.  What has changed relative to a generation or two ago is that since women have become more independent financially, they can respond to their feelings and romantic desires more honestly.  I happen to be an opera enthusiast and where would Italian opera be without women suffering because of sexual impositions on them?  The tragic characters of Lucia (of Lucia de Lammermoor), Cio Cio San (of Madame Butterfly), Violetta (of La Traviata) and many others are indicative of a cultural ailment.  It was in that innocent of world of KL that these unfortunate women lived and hopefully we have put that era behind us.

Sex and violence have been part of our cultural heritage from ancient mythological and biblical (of the Old Testament especially) tales of the Middle East and the Mediterranean region to the post-renaissance European romantic literature.  It is part of our genetic make-up to be excited about sex but this excitement is mitigated and controlled by many other factors.  Being beautiful and sexy has been important from time immemorial, and surely the advertising tycoons are aware of its power.  I also do not like to see young women responsive to advertising by Victoria’s Secrets or other outlets.  But the cultural predicament that KL warns us about is greatly exaggerated.  For most of us it is a passing experience and the fascination with it wears off in due time.  I was born and raised in Iran and some aspects of the current American culture, especially as relates to sex, were and are not so easily accessible to the general public.  Nevertheless, the impact of consumerism which according to KL is brought about by relentless advertising using sexual themes is as visible there as it is here.  The desire to be beautiful and attractive is universal whether one observes the Islamic dress code or not and regardless of the teachings of the leading clergy of any faith.  The only difference is the constraints imposed by the available wealth.

According to KL there are two schools on thought in Economics; one advocating limitless growth and the other ecological economics (see sections “Two Schools of Thought” and “Ecological Economics”).  By KL’s admission, the latter that he favors has not yet developed into a coherent theory.  So it is not really clear what he is advocating other than he is against economic growth as is generally understood and has grave concerns about the impending ecological disaster.  It seems that there is general consensus that ecological issues should be addressed and there are extreme elements on both sides that sabotage constructive discussions.  Some like to label warnings about ecology frivolous doomsday predictions and the other extreme elements would like to outlaw almost anything that interferes with the natural order of things.  Obviously, if we adopt the latter point of view, then medical care, among other things, should be outlawed and the former group is mindlessly ignoring scientific data.  The ecology issue is a scientific problem and I believe it should be of serious concern to governments. Developing countries, like China, India and Brazil are probably the most serious offenders.  How economic growth that these countries need can be reconciled with ecological concerns is a major problem about which I cannot say anything intelligent because of my very limited knowledge.  KL does not seem to have any constructive suggestions either.

There are other significant economic issues that are mentioned in Culture Jam.  In the section “The End of the American Dream,” KL warns us that this great symbol of the American culture and lifestyle has degenerated into a generally inaccessible goal for most.  This theme resonates strongly with many people of my generation but perhaps not in the same way as described by KL.  Robert Reich, an economist and a former Secretary of Labor, has been calling the public’s attention to the ever increasing income and asset inequality in the United States and its serious social consequences if the trend is not reversed.  There are many technical issues of economics involved on how to address this problem and I simply do not have the technical knowledge to analyze it.  But the issue has found an impressive dramatic expression is Susan Collins’ Hunger Games where the majority leads a life of semi-slavery serving the super-rich and the powerful and the media glamorizes the most reprehensible conduct of the ruling class.  The drama of Hunger Games captures the concerns, fear and the latent anger of the younger generation more effectively than the arguments of KL.  This is partly because we allow the dramatist to take liberties with factual realities in order to effectively make a point but an essay or book, like Culture Jam, is expected to present cold facts and argue coherently and dispassionately.

In the section entitled “Unofficial History of America,” KL argues that the American Revolution was directed as much against the British corporations as it was against the imperial rule of Britain. As a result, corporations were kept on a short leash (after the Revolution) and were supposed to be financial instruments to serve the general public.  A great transformation occurred with the 1886 ruling of the Supreme Court that effectively gave a corporation a status similar to that of a citizen and this marks the beginning of the ever increasing power of corporations at the expense of people according to KL. This is a very interesting point but an analysis of this issue requires specialized and deep knowledge of history and law far beyond my current capability.  Nevertheless I made some web search and I will be devil’s advocate.

In the eighteenth century, the idea of free enterprise was gaining ground and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (published in 1776, the year of the American Revolution) is the probably most important intellectual work on the benefits of the free enterprise system.  This idea, that Adam Smith called “the system of natural liberty,” and James Madison referred to as “the benign system of a responsible government,” allowed individuals great liberty in the production of wealth and was very much on the mind of framers of the American Constitution. For example, according to Thomas Jefferson, “Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”  In the Federalist Paper No. 12, Alexander Hamilton states, “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged, by all enlightened statesmen, to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth; and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.  By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. . .”  So the capitalist greed (avarice) that KL finds objectionable was regarded as a valuable asset by Alexander Hamilton.  It appears that the vision of the founders of the United States may have been very different from what KL attributes to them.  It is difficult to see how the curtailment of consumerism and the limitation of economic growth that KL advocates can be made compatible with the thinking of Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and other leaders of the period.

It also appears that our system of liberties and freedom from government interference that has become part of the American culture had its roots in the development of the free enterprise.  The notion that people should be free to (1) produce what they want, (2) travel and live where choose to, (3) acquire goods and services that they desire etc. etc. and the protection of individuals from government interference are deeply rooted in the free market philosophy and have influenced the development of our civil liberties. 

In addition, free trade enhanced the merging of diverse ideas from different regions of the globe and has led to the improvement of material goods and quality of life.  It stands to reason therefore that historically great cities and sites of civilization emerged along trade routes.  Cultural diversity developed in conjunction with the expansion of trade.  KL’s concern about homogenization and disappearance of diversity seems to be without merit.  I have personally witnessed more diversity and tolerance in the United States than in more traditional societies where the level of consumerism and exposure to pernicious TV advertising is much lower. 

According to KL (page 121), “The critical issues of our time are neither Left nor Right, neither male nor female, neither black nor white. The challenge for new millennium activists is to find the courage to let go of all their old orthodoxies, ‘isms’ and sacred cows, and to commit to ‘a ruthless criticism of all that exists.’ And after that, the big challenge is to bring revolutionary consciousness and contestation back into the modern world by standing up and boldly announcing to the world what Parisian rebels declared some thirty years ago: ‘We will wreck this world.’"  This paragraph is bound impress very negatively many readers who may generally be sympathetic to some of the issues raised by KL.  I don’t see any rationale for adopting this kind of extreme nihilism.  While there are many challenges in this world and many inequities and injustices that we should work on to rectify, this form of radical destructive attitude can find few sympathetic ears and for good reason.