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Reverend
Billy
NYT
Photo/ Fred Askew
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0101-09.htm
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Mimicking
the postmodern shift of power from nation-states to transnational
corporations that occured with the emergence of Empire,
political satire as resistance in the free-market, globalized
world overhauls its targeted subject from government leaders
and operations to corporate products, symbols, and logos.
As marketing and advertising fuel the globalization of commerce,
the satirization of these tools becomes central to political
resistance. "Culture jamming", defined by Naomi
Klein in No Logo as "semiotic Robin Hoodism" (230),
was the late-twentieth century satirical response to globalization,
and includes tactics that combine art, media, parody, and
subversion. Following the path of Guy
Debord and the Situationists, who used methods such
as détournement and dérive to lift an image
or message "out of its context to create a new meaning"
(Klein 232), culture jammers and other twenty-first century
political satirists aim to deconstruct globalized corporate
domination through the use of irony, sarcasm, and wit.
Adbusting
An Absolut Ad
http://www.subvertise.org
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Reverend
Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
is a New York City-based street theatre troupe that is
an example of how political satire is used to resist globalization.
The work of Reverend Billy, also known as Bill Talen,
is described on the web
site as combining "the forces of social and political
change with the means of theater arts to counteract our
media culture."
Dressed up and performing in the style of a televangelist,
Reverend Billy, accompanied by his gospel choir, urges
people to resist the temptation of consumerism pushed
by such corporate symbols of globalization as Starbucks.
The
magazine Adbusters,
along with other cultural criticism publications, popularized
the billboard-reconstruction-subvertisement form of culture
jamming. By parodying well-known corporate
images and logos, adbusting works to challenge the
domination of our public spaces and mental environment
by commercial messaging.
Works
Cited:
Klein,
Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.
London: HarperCollins. 1999.
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