Rebel Without Applause

Jacob Sullum from the May 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Doublespeak is not the only habit that Lasn shares with the propagandists he condemns. "We are constantly being hyped, suckered, and lied to," he complains. Later, as if to prove his point, he insists that "everything we do has global implications. Crisis is never far away....The fate of the planet hangs in the balance." Likewise, Lasn says advertising "is 'antilanguage' that, whenever it runs into truth and meaning, annihilates it"--a pretty apt description of the clever-seeming pronouncements that litter this book. "You have moved so far into the consumer maze that you can smell the cheese," Lasn warns. But isn't the cheese the reason you crawled into the maze in the first place? And is Lasn saying that you will eventually get the cheese (as rats tend to do) but still not be satisfied? Or is he implying that the cheese, representing true happiness, is forever out of reach? Already you, a lowly rodent, have given this metaphor more thought than he did.

When it comes to the question of who is running this experiment, Lasn implies a conspiracy so pervasive that no one can escape its influence. "A free, authentic life is no longer possible in America today," he writes. "We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode." Somehow, though, Lasn and his friends have managed to decode them. What's more, they've found the keys in plain sight, incorporated into the culture that supposedly tells us to shut up and keep buying stuff.

Thus, Lasn cites The Manchurian Candidate, A Clockwork Orange, Network, and The Truman Show as movies with subversive messages about the dangers of propaganda and the importance of thinking for oneself. All were critically acclaimed and have attracted big audiences, and many more examples could be added to the list. Why would corporations that depend on a servile population of unthinking consumers undermine themselves by producing and distributing such films? Perhaps they are simply making their brainwashing more effective by creating the illusion of dissent. But then what are we to make of Lasn's book, which was published by an imprint of HarperCollins, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate? Is Lasn himself a pawn of the corporations?

Assuming he is not, he may need to rethink his portrait of a monolithic culture that has only one thing to say about the virtues of consumption. But Lasn seems oblivious to the clues that there is something wrong with this picture. He claims mainstream media outlets have shut out his point of view because they're afraid of offending advertisers. "In the former Soviet Union you weren't allowed to speak out against the government," he says. "In North America today you cannot speak out against the sponsors." Yet he advises would-be culture jammers looking for publicity that "the media are always willing to expose a dirty little secret."

There is a similar contradiction in Lasn's description of the relationship between consumers and the businesses that cater to them. The corporations "are very attentive" to our desires, he concedes. Yet somehow "we get zero control." Later it becomes clear that Lasn cannot really believe this. "You learn to reward the good with your dollars and time, and punish the bad by refusing to buy in," he writes, urging his readers to use their power as consumers to change the culture. "You never let the corporation forget who is serving whom." This is not a rebellion against capitalism; this is how capitalism works.

From time to time, Lasn implicitly acknowledges that consumers have learned to be critical of what they see and hear. They have become "jaded and media-savvy"; they flip from channel to channel, looking for better options. These do not sound like the mindless drones on which Lasn's critique of "consumer capitalism" depends.

Try as he might to equate consumers with slaves and persuasion with coercion, the truth is that every manifestation of the market that Lasn deplores is a product of individual choices. People like fast food, zippy cars, and violent movies. Lasn does not merely argue against these choices; he insists they are not really choices at all. His book is suffused with contempt for the mesmerized masses who drink Coke, eat Snickers bars, wear Gap jeans, and aspire to drive BMWs or SUVs.

They may think they're cool, says Lasn, but they're not. "Legitimately cool people instinctively understand that the psychology of subservience--getting corporately seduced--is a chicken-ass way to live," he writes. "It's cool to rebel. But a lot of people who think they're rebelling, aren't." True rebels, in Lasn's view, do un-chicken-ass things like "jamming a coin into a monopoly newspaper box" and "liberating a billboard in the middle of the night." When they're not busy throwing tantrums at the supermarket.

Comments

nfl jerseys|11.14.10 @ 11:21PM|#

vycnfg

log in or register to reply