Does Adbusters actually help?
It definitely raises awareness about issues or events... or does it? By completely lacking anchorage, it is arguable that audiences come away learning absolutely nothing about geopolitics, other than the world is in an absolutely awful state, and there is very little we can do
350ppm double page spread
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- This double page spread constructs a clear binary between to very different classes
- A complete lack of colour, which connotes a level of depression and misery. This could symbolise that no matter how rich someone is, everyone can struggle
- This binary opposition is reinforced through the MES of the dirt on the homeless woman, and the apparent extreme cleanness of the model
- The setting of both the images is urban, which brings a connection between the two individuals, that rich and poor live in built up urban areas
- The street can be portrayed in two very different ways: the high street, which is symbolic of wealth and consumerism, and the back alley, which is out of sight, and connotative of poverty
- Confrontational mode of address positions the audience as passer by, walking past a homeless woman. Her cup functions as a proairetic code, suggesting the action of putting money in to, forcing the audience in to making a choice. The high angle shot also positions the audience above the homeless woman, and in a superior position...
- The shot of the homeless person is completely integrated in to their surroundings, while the model is completely separate, which suggests the model is living in a completely different world. The homeless person is an example of reality, which is often cold and depressing, while the model is connotative of fantasy, daydreams, luxury
- Homeless woman atypical, subversive representation, and it is difficult to identify her gender.
- The model is also highly androgynous, where an individual has features of both genders. Here it is extremely fashionable and classy and striking and beautiful to be androgynous, yet the homeless person is androgynous for a completely different
- Because this article lacks any form of anchorage, the audience are forced to come to their own, often random conclusions
- 350ppm = 350 parts per million (molecules) refers to 250 molecules of carbon dioxide, the maximum safe amount of CO2. Anything higher than this causes global waring. Does this being placed over the models face reinforce the ideology that certain rich people damage the environment through a luxurious lifestyle (like private jets)
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- 350ppm refers to the ratio of CO2 particles in the air. It is the 'safe' level of carbon dioxide. This is a massive example of assumed knowledge, and even after googling and researching it, we're still a little confused...
- CO2 is a greenhouse gas which can influence global warming. When the number of PPM (particles per molecule) reaches a certain level, the temperature of the world increases
- The numbers 350PPM are placed on top of an image of a model, which presumably provides anchorage, although for what is not made clear
- The model is androgynous, which means it is difficult to determine whether the model is male or female. This may be symbolic of the fact that it is everyone's role to decrease CO2 emission, male or female (or other)
- However, the model may be symbolic of the distraction that media offers us. This striking and beautiful model distracts us from the issues that we really should be facing
- The model may be symbolic of the super rich various corporations, who contribute the lions share of the destruction of the planet
- The model's perfectly symmetrical face is symbolic of flawlessness and perfection, which creates a binary opposition with the homeless woman on the opposite page. The meaning constructed by this binary opposition is to contrast the super rich and the super poor, which suggests that financial instability and homelessness lie round the corner for everybody.
- This binary also outlines the huge disparity between rich and poor
- The quote from Justin Gillis, an environmental science writer offers no citation. We do not know where this quote is from, or even in what context. This is a classic example f culture jamming or detournement, where images and text are placed in to a new context to create new meanings
- Ultimately, this double page spread is deliberately highly confusing to challenge the preconceptions of the audience and to force them to reconsider the world around them. It is also an example of polysemy, where many meanings are offered to the audience
- Adbusters is deliberately confusing!
The letters page
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- The letters page of a magazine can be used to get valuable feedback for the producer
- It is also an excellent example of audience participation
- Clay Shirky: argues that there is no such thing as audience anymore, as audience can participate in media products and can engage in their own forms of production
- Audiences can build a relationship with a media product when they are allowed to participate, and this is especially important for a anticapitalist and anticommercial magazine like adbusters. Quite simply, it gives power to the people
- The first letter is a classic example of fan mail. Someone has written to announce that they really like Adbusters, and to provide them with content in the form of a cool billboard that they had seen
- The second letter is a rant, which claims to offer solutions to various world problems, but instead goes off an an angry and uniformed tirade, and ends up summarising the plots of a children's picture book.
- The whole point of Adbusters is violent and aggressive satire. So have the editors picked out two completely uniformed people to make fun of???
- Arguably, the primary target audience of adbusters simply do not 'get it'. This complicated and confusing magazine actually provokes only straightforward and uninformed responses. With a complete lack of context and anchorage, it complexly stands to reason that these are the sorts of reactions they would get
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- A letters page is a page of a magazine which publishes letters and emails from audience members, who wish to support, criticism, or otherwise comment on what the magazine is discussing
- Clay Shirky - Just thinking of audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer possible in the age of the Internet. Now, media consumers have become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways, creating and sharing content with one another - (taken from the 'theories and theorist' section of the blog)
- Is publishing positive letters just an example of manufacturing consent? By only publishing positive letters, Adbusters reinforces that their ideologies are correct and right!
- The other letter is a hateful and angry rant...