Within the Heart of the Media

Whirl-Mart. Oh the Art of Culture Jamming!

The event known as Whirl-Mart is an event that is part of what we like to call culture jamming. Culture jamming is characterized as a form of activism, generally in opposition to commercialism and the vector of corporate image which sometimes entails transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself. Whirl-Mart is a culture jamming ritual aimed at retail superstores, it consists of a group of supposed shoppers who get together at a large superstore and push empty shopping carts silently through store aisles. They will not purchase anything and seek to form a large line of non-shoppers who continually weave and whirl through a maze of store aisles for up to an hour at a time, they seek to mimic and mock what they perceive as the absurdity to the shopping process. When these participants are confronted by security or store management they simply state that they are ‘engaged in a peaceful consumption awareness ritual and when employees approach, Whirl-Mart participants generally scatter to various store aisles.
There are also different variations of this “awareness ritual”, some involve filling carts but then simply abandoning them or when checking out, claiming to have forgotten the money to purchase the items in the overflowing cart, leaving the cart and the items within it for the employees to clean up. Personally if I was a store clerk I would probably be very annoyed with the people who participate in this event although reading about it does actually sound quite comical. A Youtube video titled Master Chief’s Guide to Culture Jamming explains that with the help of the internet culture jamming has become very well known, “cyberspace has given a voice to those previously unheard, and it seems like these voices are not going to run out of things to say any time soon.” Which is very true, these ‘unheard voices’ have finally gotten a chance to voice their opinions over the internet for example, Ron English has a reputation of changing advertisements on billboards, changing the meaning in seconds. In an interview with Stephen Duncombe conducted by Henry Jenkins, Duncombe talks about YouTube videos in relation to politics and elections. “[The] accessible media production of technology, the semiotic tool box we’ve built in our life-long immersion in pop culture and the new distribution apparatus like YouTube have immense political potential.” (Duncombe) When someone is involved in culture jamming, whether it is through gorilla art, amateur video or re-facing billboards they are making not only a personal statement but a political one as well and voicing your opinion is never a bad thing. “Culture jamming is not something that is restricted to gorilla art, it isn’t something hidden deep within the internet, it can be found in mainstream media as well. Prime time television shows such as South Park, Family Guy and Futurama are expressing as many instances of culture jamming.” (Master Chief)

Works Cited
‘Whirl- Mart’ Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirl-Mart
‘Manufacturing Dissent: An Interview with Stephen Duncombe (Part One)’ Confessions of a Aca-Fan by Henry Jenkins
‘Master Chief’s Guide to Culture Jamming’ YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8eRY_uxWt0

posted by Brittany Pacitti's Mass Communications @ 6:29 AM