ONE SUBVERSIVE SERIAL!
ADBUSTERS is a fantastic magazine of cultural satire. It reads -- and feels -- like an art mag when you hold it in your hands. The pages are glossy and colorful; the spine is perfect bound. The design is as compelling as WIRED. And it goes without saying that the contributions are smartly written or richly composed. And there's not a speck of advertising in it, save for a few pitches for subscriptions.

Not bad for what's really an underground 'zine of radical politics, posing as a mainstream media mag beside your everyday issues of TIME and NEWSWEEK on the stand!

ADBUSTERS dubs itself the "Journal of the Mental Environment" but it isn't so much a PSYCHOLOGY TODAY as it is MAD MAGAZINE with a highly attuned social conscience. The magazine is predominantly concerned with calling into question consumer culture. Although the magazine is more political than comedic, it's emphasis on parody and satire often makes each issue quite funny. And like all good satire, the issues it raises about society are quite serious. And more than just poking their tongue into society's cheek, the magazine sees itself as a form of political activism -- they advocate real "creative resistance" to be performed in public as much as in the covers of a publication.

MASS CULTURE MANIFESTO
ADBUSTERS is notorious for promoting "Culture Jamming" -- or practicing the art of "creative resistance" through parodically reworking advertisements and other cultural texts that promote corporate thinking. The editors are deeply concerned about the global spread of capitalism and the way that it shapes the masses into blindly following trends in the media or the marketplace. As the editors themselves write:

"Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major rethinking in the way we will live in the 21st century. We believe culture jamming will become to our era what civil rights was to the '60s, what feminism was to the '70s, what environmental activism was to the '80s. It will alter the way we live and think."

A radical mission statement for a magazine, no? The contributors and editorial team at ADBUSTERS -- composed of everyone from college teachers to Green Party members, writers and artists to ecofeminists -- really is seeking nothing less than cultural revolution in a society of spectacle and a culture of distraction. Their strongly leftist and libertarian political agenda and their proud association with groups ranging from Marxists to Anarchists is sure to turn off many readers in the mainstream. But if you've got an open mind, or if you're sick and tired of commercialization, then you'll certainly enjoy ADBUSTERS a great deal. Heck, it might even inspire you to do a little creative resistance of your own.

JAMMING McDONALD'S
So what is Culture Jamming? An attempt to shake consumers out of their blind allegiance to name brands. It's all about unlearning conformity. "Dreams, almost by definition, are supposed to be individualistic and imaginative," a jammer in their Summer 1998 issue writes. "But what does it mean when a whole culture dreams the same dream?" The culture jammer seeks to wake people from dreaming banal, pre-fabricated dreams.

Social satire or parodic advertising is enough to get the job done -- just like a Freudian slip in everyday speech makes you do a double-take. McDonalds is an easy target for culture jammers seeking to parody commercials and make consumers "wake up" from their dreams of fast food convenience. I went to ADBUSTERS' web page to seek out various treatements of Mickey D's over the past 33 issues, and discovered all sorts of critiques of "McDonaldization" (a real word!) in countries abroad, parodic revisions of popular McAdvertisements, and the companies logo. Often these are written or designed by readers of the magazine, who submit them for contests or who are inspired by the magazine to go out into the world and subvert public billboards and the like. Here are some examples:

~~~ One artist ingeniously redesigns the McDonald's logo in an animated gif that transforms the famous "golden arches" logo into a hammer and sickle ( you can see it at http://adbusters.org/creativeresistance/02.html#top).

~~~ A pair of protesters don McDonald's uniforms and go out into a public square, pitching "Pigeon McNuggets" as the company's latest Value Meal. (photos available at http://adbusters.org/creativeresistance/contest1999/16.html)

~~~ The cover of their Summer 1998 issue lampoons the "Cult of Consumerism" by featuring a McDonald's manager and faithful fry cook, hand over heart saluting an off-screen flag, while the McD logo dominates the frame behind them, mimicking the patriotic propoganda of World War II.

~~~ In Adbusters' classic "spoof ads" section (highly recommended!), you can read all sorts of parodic adverts, like the "Big Mac Attack": a photo of a surgeons operating on a dying patient, whose beeping cardiogram machine spikes with the familar golden arches. Other ads include "Baby McFry" (a child cleverly dolled up as a package of fries) and "Grease" (a close-up of Ronald McDonalds' "grease paint"). (go there: http://adbusters.org/spoofads/food/)

OUT THERE
ADBUSTERS doesn't just play around with ads. Like the "McPigeon Nuggets" example cited above, they advocate performing parody publically. They celebrate acts of public resistance, like artists who alter the writing on billboards or hackers who subvert webpages so that you'll be diverted to more "progessive" sites which tell the truth. Every issue features a new list of such subversive shananigans, and you can browse some real classics at their "jammers gallery" online (http://adbusters.org/creativeresistance/jamgallery/).

ADBUSTERS not only supports performance art and "creative resistance" but also comes close to advocating more radical and sometimes "extreme" resistance. The back cover of their January 2001 issue sports an advertisement for "Xtreme Politics" which features provocative photos of the protests to the World Economic Summits and World Bank Meetings of recent history. They write, "The society that abolishes every adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure." A nihilistic call to arms! There's a thin line between subversion and abolition of a system -- one seeks progressive change, the other gives up all hope for progress.

It's hard, ultimately, to tell where ADBUSTERS stands, though it is clear that it is against the status quo. Overall, I applaud this magazine which calls blind belief and routine behavior into question, because I share the same mission in my own webzine. But I'm also not as radical or proud-to-be-progressive. The politics of Adbusters may at times be its major flaw: like any political movement they come across as too adamant at times, too self-assured. But the stakes are high enough to justify it.

Final note: Some people think ADBUSTERS is contradicting itself by making profitting (as media) by arguing against profit-making. But ADBUSTERS is actually a non-profit, tax-exempt (501-C) organization that survives off subscribers, donations, and grants. However, I do notice that magazine also offers ads for a book by its editor in chief, called CULTURE JAM: THE UNCOOLING OF AMERICA, which is no doubt generating author royalties. Still, "unadvertising" is what this magazine is all about, and I they ask people to rethink the system by working within it. Take a look at their web page and print magazine and you'll see what I mean. Indeed, their print version has a lot more to offer than the archives on the web at adbusters.org. The Jan 2001 issue features great photography in the pages where you'd expect ads to normally be, blurring the division between art and advertising. We see pretty photos of people enjoying themselves in the market and at restaurants. But where you might see a slogan or logo, we get the simple tag line, over and over: "The American Way of Life is Non-Negotiable." Food for thought.

-- Unheimlich, 2/01

Recommended: Yes

Describe the magazine's political views: It is liberal.
Primary Reason for Buying: Editorials/Social Commentary