Selling(out)the Revolution (Published in BPM Magazine)

(Image by Adbusters)

A couple of years ago, in protest against the barrage of proposed by-laws that boasted a “zero tolerance” approach to all our social ills by banning everything from graffiti to the homeless, a friend and I were charged with defacing public property for spraying ‘free art’ on the bridges of the Mother City. Because we were middle-class whities and upstanding members of the community our little escapade got lots of media attention (isn’t graffiti code language for gangsters?) and fuelled the debate around the shortsightedness of Draconian laws that threatened to turn two already marginalized groups into criminals: the youth and the poor. People begging and living on the street are a symptom of poverty and graffiti is the voice of the youth refusing to be silenced. Our protest wasn’t just about graffiti we were demanding to know why our leaders aren’t providing viable, long-term solutions to uplift the communities that need it most. No wonder they’re threatened by the writing on the wall. A few weeks after our arrest, amidst raging debate about graffiti and youth culture, Diesel’s signature back-to-front ‘E’ began appearing on the walls of the city. Amandla comrades! While we’re celebrating our ‘freedom’ and nursing our hangovers, corporate branding is devouring counter-culture, re-packaging it and selling it right back to us.

What began in the early 1990’s on the international front has, in the last few years, taken root at home. Corporate branding and the hunters of cool are targeting the most lucrative generation of consumers, us. For the so-called ‘born-free’ youth, the struggle is over. We are a generation more pre-occupied with getting a good job and joining the ranks of the middle-class than social activism. We are a generation that has seen our freedom fighters turn into martyrs, politicians or managing directors. It hasn’t taken long for the marketing guys to figure out that we are too clued up to be taken in by the empty promises of politicians or outdated anti-establishment rhetoric, but we still, like every generation that came before us, yearn for a revolution. Taking advantage of this political vacuum, the boardroom has gone underground to create brands that have resonance with youth (sub)cultures. Tobacco companies throw ‘underground’ parties, trance-heads knock back tequilas at the bar that ‘gives you wings’, and skaters are mobile billboards. Nothing has been left un-branded, not even our social conscience. Corporate sponsors are quickly realising the potential of associating themselves with causes that bring together a cross-section of youth subcultures from Punks to Heads. Hijacking issues such as H.I.V. and poverty, the executives of cool sponsor events which, probably cost a fraction of their marketing budget and, as a charitable events, are most likely even tax-deductible. The danger of this kind of branding is that young people are duped into associating certain brands with social resistance and are lulled into a sense of complacency that wearing brands that merely symbolise your politics is enough

But wait! Before you throw that brick through the window of McDonalds – there is some good news. The boardroom culture-vultures have not gone unchallenged by activists on the front-lines. Their mission: to rescue the planet and the cultures of its inhabitants from further destruction at the hands of multinational corporations. A far cry from their back-to-nature hippie counterparts, these activists embrace all the technological innovation their generation has to offer and have targeted Big Business, hitting them where it hurts most. Sophisticated and sassy, culture jamming is a form of activism harnessing the power of consumer-culture and mass media in such a way that corporations are often left looking down the barrel of their own gun. Here, in South Africa, we’ve been cultivating our own breed of culture jamming. The antics of the self-proclaimed shirt-stirrers, Laugh It Off is home-grown activism at its best (who will ever forget the Black Labour, White Guilt T-shirt?)

Okay, but there is some more bad news. It hasn’t taken long for corporate cool to sniff out that culture-jamming is in itself something that can be co-opted to sell everything from soft-drinks to cell-phone contracts, and are now using a marketing strategy that appeals to a generation of consumers who perceive themselves as being too media-sussed to be taken in by bullshit advertising. But at the end of the day, that’s exactly what it is. South African youth need to wake up to the fact that our identities and sub-cultures are being reduced to pre-packaged goods in which the search for meaning and identity are captured in advertising slogans like “No Rules” and “Just Do It”. It is not just our music and our subcultures that are being colonised by corporate branding, but the only space of freedom that truly exists, our minds.