The metonym of Iwo Jima

Culture jamming is a process of parody. We have all seen culture jamming, though often without such a moniker. Whenever you see fake ads, comically skewed corporate logos or slogans, basically any satire or parody of something corporate it can be classified as culture jamming.
I think this process says something interesting about our society. We have the ability to openly slander powerful organizations without fear of repercussion. That takes an inherently free society to pull off.
Below I’ve included an example. A picture of American soldiers in Iraq, in a famous war pose. The picture is a reproduction of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Something has changed though, from that picture to this one, from that war to this one. The flag, which symbolizes what they are fighting for, has changed. It has changed from the original American flag, displaying the triumph of freedom and democracy to a consumer logo of an oil company. The culture jam is exemplifying the difference between this war and the last. This is not a war for people but rather a war for oil companies, they are the real winners in this.

Good culture jamming should do more than just make a statement though. It has to stir something in people, force a reaction. We see so many advertisements in our day to day lives we learn to tune out the vast majority of them. The whole idea of culture jamming is to stand out of these ads. This is a controversial parody. It could be interpreted as saying that Americans are dying for a needless war for profits invented by the oil industry. This may cause a lot of outrage in people, and that is exactly what culture jamming should be trying to do. If you want to get people to do something you need to spark something in them.
Just as Napoleon put it when referring to leading soldiers, “A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.” (qtd. in Fifield 218) The idea is equally true for leading people to a cause. You cannot expect people to really commit themselves to a cause they see no incentive to join. In order to rally people they need to understand that this cause is a moral imperative, such that the consequences to do nothing would be catastrophic.

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Work Cited

Fifield, Paul. Marketing strategy: the difference between marketing and markets. Butterworth- Heinemann, 2007. Print.