Adbusters

 Detourment and culture jamming 

- Makes the audience question what it really is

- Question what reality is 
- It is a painting of a pipe

Detourment' - French for rerouting 

Artists have taken something and rerouted it 

Detourment - Taking something that already exists and changing the meaning 

Culture jamming - taking something of culture and changing its meaning 

Adbusters 

Adbusters is a highly unconventional magazine - breaks the rules

A type of media product - genre

Adbusters genre:

• Satire - aggressive humour which attempts to draw attention to something in society 
• Political 
• Socialist 
• Alternative 
• Art and photography
• Social activism 

Adbusters features no paid for adverts - Anti advertising 

- fair usage policy 

Adbusters is a not for profit magazine

- Controversial

- No clear genre

- Unconventional cover image 

- No consistency between each cover

- Mast head changes every issue 

- Lacks a brand identity 

• Codes and conventions – changes over time? 
• Layout and design
• Composition - positioning of masthead/headlines, cover lines, images, columns 
• Font size, type, colour 
• Images/photographs - shot type, angle, focus
• Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up 
• Graphics, logos 
• Language – headline, sub-headings, captions – mode of address
• Copy 
• Anchorage of images and text
• Elements of narrative

Layout 

• Sans serif font used to show informality - no care for brand identity - connetive of seriousness and masculinity 
• Bold, striking layout to create a strong impression to the audience. 
• It appears to be making some kind of political statement
• Polysemic layout which allows the audience 

Mast head

• Covered 
• The masthead is plain white sans serif font of which looks deliberately bad - the black background is deliberate to create an anarchist message and it's own brand identity
• Lots different to every cover from Adbusters

Main image

•  Angry/raging facial expressions. Leaves audience feeling threatened and scared
• Mid shot of cover model emphasises anger and hate in his facial expressions which is further anchorage by his clenched fist, This magazine is clearly fixated on themes of aggression and violence 
• The image suggests they are excited by war, this implies that modern society gets excited by war and that it is woven into our society and that this magazine rebels against that
• Stereotypical terrorist with his big beard and middle eastern appearance and camo jacket

Mise en scene

• Dark colours: green, black create the impression of war and violence
• Camouflage worn by the man creates the impression of war and violence 
• Fist clenched creates the sense of violence 
• Grainy dust symbolic of war and violence - makes the magazine look deliberately unappealing which fits in with the not for profit ideology 
• Tilt on main image is highly reminiscent in action films - example of intertextuality 

Language

• Very little information featured on the front cover which brings a high expectation of social cultural knowledge of the reader
• The line 'Post - West' could symbolise the post western world, in particularly America - assumption of democracy and could end the civilisation 

Ancourage

• Not a lot anchorage leaves audience confused and left to create their own meaning of this means

Elements of narrative 

• Deliberately confrontational upsetting mode of address the audience are forced to observe and try to understand a stereotypical representation 

Adbusters is displaying an extremely pessimistic belief 

Nihilism - nothing matters 

Adbusters is a magazine which is published 6 times a year - bi monthly magazine 

- Has an infrequent frequently 

Adbusters media foundation  

- Specialised organisation 

• Published in May-June 2016 

• Established in 1989 

• Price is £10.99 - $8.99

• Circulation - 120,000 
• Based in Vancouver, British Columbia 
• Non profit magazine 

3 million copies of women magazine sold weekly 

Genres:

- Independent 

- Campaigning

- Culture jamming

- Political 

- Art and photography

• Adbusters employs 11-50 people 
• Anti capitalistic magazine 

Capitalism is society 

Roland Barthes and Levi Strauss 

Roland Barthes - Semiotic Codes - words have different meanings within them  

Levi Strauss - Theory of binary opposition 

Louboutin

• - Binary opposition shown between the rich and the poor (wealth and poverty) 
• - Binary opposition shown between the dark, black and white picture and the colourful 
• - No anchorage requires the reader to come up with their own meaning
• - Different images combined to create themes of poverty and inequality
•  - Logo placed underneath shocking image of poverty and deprivation to critic this luxury brand 
• - Red soles symbolic of bleeding feet- shown to criticize loubiton and the audience for living a luxurious lifestyle and not helping. 

• Preferred reading - sophisticated dark humour
• Oppositional reading - racist advert  (making fun of people in poverty)
• Minimalistic advert, minimalistic layout- presents a minimalistic and miserable life
• Barely any use of words and language reinforces themes of misery 
• Mise en scene of bottles symbolises how desperate of the desperately poor, forces audience to make stereotypical assumptions 
• Extreme close up shot positions the audience in an extremely close and uncomfortable mode of address, potentially belittling the person in poverty
• Low angle shot of model position the audience in a subordinate mode of address - diametric opposition to the shot of the African persons feet- the contrast of this is belittling the audience and making them feel less important, however we are in  position of power and disgust towards the African's persons image
• Africans person image looks blurry, fuzzy and pixelated reinforces themes of poverty 
• Bottles encode a strong theme of pollution and environmental destruction 
• Global west tend to produce a lot more pollution and environmental destruction 
• Potential reference to sweat shop labour

• Binary opposition is constructed between a well known high end fashion designer and the clearly home-made shoes worn by the model. Constructs an ideological perspective that the fashion industry is exclusive, and indeed harmful; to people in developing countries.
• High angle, birds eye view shot 'looking down' on the model is symbolic that we, as consumers of the shoes are having an impact on those in a developing country, and are indeed 'looking down' on those less fortunate than us

ZUCCHETTI

- Binary opposition: lack of water in the first picture and the amount coming out of the tap

- Lack of writing leaves audience confused and makes them come up with their own meaning 

- Close up shot of empty hands emphasize lack of water

- An advert does not sell products, it sells a lifestyle

- Outlines the insanity of branding water as a luxury product while some people struggle and others are able to afford up to £500 for a basic kitchen tap 

- Close up, high angle shot of women in a bath - we cannot see most of her body

- Van zoonen argues that women's bodies are inherently sexual in media products and are encoded for the sexual pleasure of heterosexual men 

- Mise en scene of a normal and relatable bath 

- Advert has the conventions of a luxury perfume ad 

- Constructs the idea that certain genders in society are more important 

- Hands are rough, wrinkled and masculine might suggest and industrial low paid job 

- Wrinkled pruned hands suggests an excess of water, even though this women does not have much she still has more- shows she needs to spend as much time as possible in the little water she has to make her money worth 

Cultural capital - force which keeps us all in place. Knowledge and understanding of the world around us

Colonialism - the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

Countries affected by colonisation:

-India

-Australia

- Falkland islands 

- USA

Factors that change due to colonialism: 

- Language 

- Food

- Religion

- Flag

 We are living in a post colonial word 

Post colonialism is a Metanarrative - a way of understanding the world around us

- Science 

- Religion 

We make sense of the world through metanarrative views. 

Paul Gilroy - Argues that we are living in a post colonial age. Racist ideologies are engraved into our culture due to post colonialism 

Campaigns like UKIP symbolise this.

British exceptionalism - idea that Britain has power 

Concept is called culture imperialism 

BRITISH VALUES:

- Creates a process called othering - dividing the world into us and them 

Symbolic annihilation- the symbolic removal of a certain group from a media product 

Women magazine:

British women - 'They're like snow-capped volcanos' showing that British culture is superior to other cultures

The only stereotypically attractive women in women magazine is white 

Adbusters:

Picture of feet wearing bottles symbolises that they are poor and in need of western help and cannot help themselves. British ideology - there are countries that can't be helped for themselves and must rely on others.

Adbusters presents an extremely detailed attitude to post colonialism and it acknowledges that international relationships are extremely complicated 

Front cover of middle eastern man in order to challenge the audience to their own prejudices 

Nihilistic mode of address in the article- everything is bad  

Positions the audience in a deliberately bleak and nihilistic mode of address by telling them that everything they do is somehow contribution to the destruction of the climate and that they may as well just kill themselves.

 They are being self aware, using dark comedy

- Trying to be shocking and edgy

- Deliberately trying to shock and upset you

- Positions us in a supermarket check out queue- put into a relatable mode of address

Does Adbusters actually help?

Issues that exist in our world today:

• Poverty
• Racism
• Homophobia
• Sexism
• War/Conflict

Adbusters offers many problems but no solutions 

- Close up shot of the person in the second photo

- Dark, black and white colours used - create a formal and serious sense 

- Anchorage shown in the first photo. The image of the homeless women is used to enforce the message created by the producers 

- Lack of anchorage in the second photo - leaves audience confused and left to create their own meaning 

-Binary opposition of the amount of text used in each photo

- Constructs a clear binary opposition of two very different classes 

- Complete lack of colour which connotes a level of depression and misery 

- Binary opposition shown between the dirty homeless women and the professional model in the second photo

- Photo of the homeless women is used as a controversial mode of address - positions the audience as a pass by 

- High angle shot of homeless women positions the audience above the homeless women and in a superior position - Adbusters isn't adding any solution as to how to help 

- Homeless person is an example of reality, model is connotation of fantasy, luxury

- Atypical representation of women difficult to identify gender

- Model is also highly androgynous - features of both genders classy striking and beautiful to be androgynous yet the homeless person is androgynous for a completely different reason 

- Because the article lacks anchorage the audience are forced to come to their own conclusions 

- 350ppm reinforces the ideology that certain rich people damage the environment through their certain lifestyle 

Clay Shirky - We can't keep passive audiences. Audiences can now write comments and send in feedback to interact with the producers.

By only publishing positive letters Adbusters enforces that their ideologies are correct 

Other letter is a hateful and angry rant 

- Blackspot unswoosher - environmentally friendly version of converse. 

- Replaced the Nike swoosh with a black spot