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Culture Jamming – faking the fake

It was a week ago when I was duped by the fake John Howard speech and it made a brief appearance on Webdiary as-real. The next day I put it up again, introduced this time as the satire that it is. Then on Thursday we published Richard Neville's account of the disappearance of his spoof site from the web, Secret silent censorship in cyberspace. Webdiarist Stephen Smith now brings us the broader perspective of 'culture jamming'. It's not my habit to make much comment in introduction to Webdiary threads, but here I will only make the observation that if a weapon of culture-war is going to be celebrated by some, they are going to have to accept it being used by every other political force as well. Waddayareckon? Stephen Smith's last article for Webdiary was It's a mad world - the rise of middle class angst.

by Stephen Smith

We’re jammin’, jammin’,
And I hope you like jammin’, too.

Ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow, we can do it anyhow...
Jammin’ till the jam is through.

- Bob Marley

The Left may be criticized for missing a sense of humour. Well, Richard Neville’s recent culture jamming of John Howard’s website has proven to be one of the best japes in years. Jammin’ may refer to dancing in Jamaican patois, but our own brand of creative jamming is in the spirit of another Marley line – “forget your troubles and dance!” Whatever your jammin’, diving into the media fray to rock the system from within has a lot to recommend it.

The brillance of Neville’s jam was that the funnier, most ironic side took a while to sink in. As a ‘speech’ by Howard on Iraq, the spoof exposes a long list of speeches by the PM that also lack credibility. His Iraq policy already lacks a moral base; it is a quicksand of lies and deceit. Therefore to dress up a phony speech as genuine is a case of faking the fake. The conclusion we can draw is that the hoax Howard speech is no less a fake than some of his ‘real’ speeches. Furthermore, this speech that never was works to create a simulation of John Howard. In its own way this replicant is more real than the original. We sense a shred of humanity. A heart and soul lacking in the Cyber-Minister who has hardened over his decade of power. His softer copy would speak to us thus:

Flying home from India, I started to ask myself what a leader like Mahatma Gandhi would do, but I feared I would not be able to live up to the answer, unless I have some wise advice from my longtime friends. Please look into your hearts and let me know what you find.

How do we define culture jamming? The website spoof set up by Richard Neville falls into the category of what is called Tactical Media.

Tactical media are what happens when the cheap ‘do it yourself’ media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by, or excluded from, the wider culture. Tactical Media do not just report events; as they are never impartial, they always participate and it is this that more than anything separates them from mainstream media.

Thus Neville was able to buy a cheap ($9.71) Yahoo domain and clone the look of the official Howard site.

We can find another stirring aspect to this hoax on Howard. It offers him redemption for at least one past appearance of culture jamming. This earlier escapade too saw the emergence of a Howard simulation. It took the shape of Greg Taylor’s statue of the PM. Known as “If the Boots Don’t Fit”, this bronzed Howard appeared briefly on the lakeside lawns facing Canberra’s Old Parliament House. But its statuesque satire was not on show for long. The ‘gardeners of the state’ quickly arrived with a truck and crane to hoist it from view.
boots 

In reaction to this view of Howard, art critic Sasha Grishin sees a man who hides in someone else’s clothes, in this case, those of an Anzac Digger. “A contrast is drawn between the smallness and ‘mean-spiritedness’ of the little man inside, and the greatness of the tradition through which he tries to conceal his pettiness.“ [1]

Taylor’s artwork captures the essence of the Howard era. The faking and feigning of his posture can be seen in the monuments to Howardism cast in the public stance on asylum and the war in Iraq. Remember children overboard; the Tampa; and now the AWB affair. Welcome to Howard’s ‘my life as a fake’: a place where exclusion, denial and forgetfulness displace the rule of law and Westminster traditions.

The above caricature draws us back to the irony of Neville’s culture jamming. Although the speech is a spoof, if we examine it side by side with Howard’s history of spin, we soon realize that the hoax version is no less valid than any other Howard address where the act of speaking is real but the words are false. One fake resembles the other.

John Howard should welcome the words from his website doppelganger. Were the words truly spoken from his lips they might transform the way people perceive his decade of power. The public allegedly ignores his lies in the face of economic ‘good times’. However history is not so easily satisfied. Howard is well advised to heed his ‘own’ words and reflect upon what it might feel like to have a heart.

Endnotes

[1] Sasha Grishin, “A Serious Work that Engages the Public”, in The Canberra Times, 20 March 2004; see also: ”Boots Take a Hike”, Stateline Canberra, ABC Online, 23 February 2004, and If the boots don't fit.

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How much proof is needed re Media "power"?

Someone unreasonably asked what I had against the media. Is that person taking notice of the way the media is spinning its disgusting web of lies around the misery of Pvte. Kovco's family and relatives?

Is he noting the disgraceful unconscionable spin being foisted on us by the TV and the printed media concerning the tragic drama of the three men buried alive in the Tasmanian mines?

Wake up Australia. There is no truth - only the powers that be.

Howard's advertising.

Since his suspect victory in the courts, Howard has continued his laundering of our money to the venal media with unnecessary and wasteful ads. Like the railroad crossing one - fair dinkum. One of the many employer unions, the Chamber of Commerce & Industry, describes the business de-regulating by the Howard Government as "not enough". However, the removal of the rights and entitlements of workers gathers pace even to the extent of employers refusing to employ those who are in, or intend to join, an employee's union. Indeed, Howard's use of the word "choice" really means "this or else" and is just another Howardism.

While it is certain that all forms of media advertising is burgeoning, including in pay TV, the "free to air" (at the moment) TV displays ads in conjunction with the actual program being watched. Even the internet is another victim of unwanted ads.

So when Howard said, in answer to a question, "we have no intention of introducing advertising to the ABC" or words to that effect, I sat up and took notice.

It appears that in Channel 2 (ABC) news bulletins, there is a pause when the presenter says "coming up next". This is the way in which the commercial stations break for ads.

Could this mean that Howard's denial was "not specific", "non-core" or hasn't anyone told him?

Weathercock Howard

If Richard Neville's words meant the survival of the PM or his downfall, I have no doubt that Howard would read that speech to a national TV audience. Unfortunately I wouldn't hear it delivered because I have taken to hitting the remote mute button every time he appears on the screen. It could be that I'm not alone in being tired of seeing and hearing him endlessly on electronic media. Soon he'll be talking to acolyte. Alan Jones, while showering.

Weathercock

Christopher Muir, if you are tired of seeing Howard on the electronic media one can only imagine what you feel like when you see the haggard looking Beazley on the screen.

If you keep hitting the mute button you will never learn anything.

a wasted opportunity

It was a shame DP Mason that Richard Neville wasn't a bit more cunning in getting the speech out there to be picked up by some major news outlets - apart from Webdiary. Had it been reported, as you point out, to the extent that reporters asked Howard questions it would have been most amusing to watch the PM actually denying the substance of the speech.

So a slap on the wrist for Neville but some marks for trying.

Neville Jamming A Hatchet Job?

So, Michael de Angelos, you think I did a 'hatchet job' on Richard Neville on the Your New Reality blog? I actually thought I went at him with a couple of machetes and left only a few deep, gruesome cuts, but no major organ damage.

I actually like the fake speech the more I read it, and had Howard actually uttered such words, admitted to such feelings of remorse in public, it would have impacted hard and heavy enough to change forever the perception most have of him in their minds, for the better.

While some whip themselves into a froth about Howard's 'stunning win' in the 2004 elections, it was actually only a slim victory, at best. A lot of people voted for him, but how many really respect him, or even believe him any more? How can a man hold his head up in public and stand proud when he knows so many people believe he can't be trusted to tell the truth about some of the most important issues of these tumultuous times?

Had the speech been believed, and quoted in the media as fact, Neville might have actually done Howard a favour.

As I tried to explain in the long version of the story 'How To Culture Jam Without Getting Jam All Over Your Face', published on my blog, it wasn't Richard Neville's attempt or the fake speech itself that disappointed me so much, it was the waste of opportunity.

Had just one international news agency been effectively tipped off to the speech and the site, before it was exposed, they may well have quoted it directly and run a wire story about Howard's regrets on how the War On Iraq has turned out, and the guilt he feels over having misled the nation, and the soldiers he sent into the deadliest war zone on earth.

The story would have been corrected later, and Howard would have denied ever having said he feels empathy for the battered people of Iraq, but the fake quotes would never be completely erased from the internet, and so there would always be a more sympathetic version of Howard living in words on the net, a virtual Australian PM that admitted to his mistakes, ‘fessed up to his deceptions and apologised for the most dangerous lies of the 21st century, thus far.

Yeah, the 'jape' didn't work, but then, who else in Australia is even attempting to subvert Howard's Kingdom Of Lies? Just Richard Neville, it appears. Better one than none at all?

Classic

Is Richard Neville up to his old tricks again (read OZ magazine, circa 1968)? Damn that man for having the gall to make fun of our Prime Minister.

Like your style Mr. Neville, that's a classic.

Jamming, adbusting, database power

As said on this thread, all sides of politics can use culture jamming. We need to be careful not to applaud one action while seeing similar tactics as 'dirty tricks' if used on someone else. (Eg the bizarre forms of disruption against the Greens in the recent Tas. poll.)

My interest in the Richard Neville hoax was how the fake speech worked to question the credibility of actual Howard speeches on Iraq. However this 'faking the fake' theme is my interpretation. It's not clear how far Neville himself intended such a level of irony. Perhaps this is how Neville might judge the success of his prank - to see it work in unintended and surprising ways.

What cultural jammers such as Neville might admit is that coopting the media places their own creation at fault alongside its target. In other words, they temporarily exploit and benefit from the power of a medium but leave it intact. This is entirely different from setting up an alternative media site (such as Webdiary).

The difficulty with culture jamming is that it covers such a broad range of actions. There are corporate and political targets. The 'adbusters' and 'buga up' campaigns are among the best known. It would be interesting to hear from anyone with some experience of such actions. But it seems these tactics are becoming more difficult to mount.

If so, it's partly a result of higher security and harsher penalties. A major drawback of culture jamming is growing media and public boredom. Culture jamming rarely gains attention unless it produces the ultra-spectacular. The pressure always grows for the next action to outdo the last.

Ads and marketing are massive industries almost immune from attack. One area beyond the reach of jamming is product placement in movies and on TV. Here, I've come across a very interesting website called www.brandhype.org. It documents so far about 100 movies making use of product placement. The site says it is designed for anyone to help log such movies. If we dislike undisclosed ads of this type, the brandhype database would damage DVD sales of movies with deceitful product placement.

Culture jamming may play with the 'wow factor' of using consumer culture and technology against its origins. But in terms of impact watch out for the humble database. 'Brandhype' and similar concepts might well provide the more effective weapon against corporate power.

Garbage in and out

Sorry Stephen, I did not find Richard's piece at all amusing and I'm not an old leftie or rightie. It was just boring and childish.

To create yet another ridiculous title for what is simply practical jokes to me is pretentious and just another example of spin, spin, spin. If Richard covered the toilet seats in Parliament House with Glad wrap would that too be culture jamming simply because of who did it? I think not.

It was a bore, childish and as to satire...  forget it, the basic idea he used has been done many times over on many blogs, in newspapers and so on for the last decade. The first couple of times I read similar stuff it was amusing but it has been a tired old joke for years already. There have been a number of similar writings on WD but not presented as truth but it's exactly the same idea.

I can only conclude that people are giving Richard credit simply because of his reputation 40 years ago. Sorry but I've moved on from then.

Sure Howard needs to be exposed, made fun of and all the rest as much as possible but how is Richard's effort either original or amusing when it's repeating old jokes?

Is it simply that some of you swallowed it and you now seek to call it amusing to cover your embarrassment at being deceived? I don't know but even the title "Culture Jamming" is rubbish. It's just a practical joke. Call it what it is.

Is "Culture Jamming" simply another term for deceit?

Garbage

Ross, I agree with you it was childish and a waste of time, it makes you wonder which bright spark in the Labor Party was behind it.

If Richard wants to make fun of anybody he should pick on Beazley whose popularity rating is slightly higher than Herpes.

Hamish: your point then Syd is that we should only make fun of unpopular politicians? I thought Ross was saying a bit more than that.

How we laughed at Richard Neville's japes. Haw Haw.

Stephen Smith: "The Left may be criticized for missing a sense of humour. Well, Richard Neville’s recent culture jamming of John Howard’s website has proven to be one of the best japes in years."

Naaah.

An even better "jape" was Richard's apologia for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's murder of peace activist Nick Berg.

Basically, Richard's line was that the video-taped beheading of Mr Berg was a propaganda disinformation stunt intended to frame up al-Zarqawi, whom he describes as a "militant".

"The clip was first "discovered" on an Islamic website in Malaysia," said Richard. (Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.)

The timing of the video was brilliant for the West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who? Surely not Uncle Sam. That's too dark, even for the CIA.

Such fun. Ha ha.

Hilariously, amongst the "evidence" Richard uses to hint that the whole thing was just a silly ploy to make al-Zarqawi look bad is that the hooded murderers were "well-fed, fidgety, and reveal glimpses of white skin."

Apparently  Richard hadn't noticed that Iraqi and Jordanians are typically white people.

And of course no self respecting "militant" would be fidgety while hacking a living human's head off with a nine-inch hunting knife.

Anyway, Richard's nauseating excursion into the realm of Lord Haw Haw is now endlessly recycled on Islamist, ultra-right, ultra-left, and racist websites to suggest that the malignant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is not a bad fellow at all, and just the victim of CIA disinformation.

great stuff

Although DP Mason does a good hatchet job on Neville on his excellent blog, you have to hand it to Richard for showing he still has it in him and hasn't sucummbed to Blue Mountains apathy. Only an old leftie with a solid background in advertising copy writing could keep the fires alive as long as Neville has.

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