Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America, Kalle Lasn tells the reader of a profound realization that he had in a parking lot supermarket. Lasn was about to drop a coin to pull out a locked shopping cart when he felt a surge of anger towards the supermarket chain for forcing him into obedience. Furthermore, Lasn was angered by the lack of any local produce or other products in the "sterile supermarket."
Lasn, editor of the postmodern magazine Adbusters, then forced a bent coin into the slot, sabotaging the locking mechanism. He then vowed to never come back to the supermarket and instead went towards a fruit and vegetable store, one that sold locally-grown produce.
This story sets the tone of Lasn's book. Culture Jam reads like an angry and passionate rant against the "mediated, consumption-driven culture" that has taken over American society. Every American was forced into a sort of trance. Since then, we have fallen into comfortable patterns without even realizing what has happened. We head off to the mall instead of craftspeople and artisans. We go to supermarkets to buy mass-produced bread instead of going to the bakery in the corner. We buy frozen fish flown in from New Zealand instead of, well, picking up a fishing rod and going down to the river ourselves.
The triumph of mass culture, Lasn argues, is that these changes have been so ingrained and have been accepted, all in the name of convenience. The act of buying from anywhere else has acquired a novel flavor. Instead, we have been brainwashed by giant corporations and conglomerates that grow wealthy based on the "rampant, oblivious consumption" of people who have willingly given up the beauty of a world of diverse choices. For Lasn, American society's effect is akin to living in a cult.
Viewed in this late, Lasn's act of jamming a coin into the supermarket's cart machine seems less an act of vandalism. Instead, the reader sees this as an act of protest -- the first of many that Lasn would initiate. The 50-year-old Lasn now spearheads larger national and worldwide campaigns, including "Buy Nothing Day" and "Turn Off the Television Week."
The aim of these campaigns -- and Lasn's lifelong goal -- is to undermine the brainwashing...
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