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Introduction to #14

I'm not sure what year it happened, but at some point I became, like, the most anal writer ever. Seems like it's taken forever to get the zine done, the writing process takes so long. I'm just constantly running across texts that make me want to rethink and reword things. At a certain point, you've just gotta say, "enough" and kick the puppy out of the park. Thus: Stay Free! #14. Theme-free, more or less, though as the issue evolved, a few ideas sorta took on a life of their own.

Should there be any doubt what our intentions are, I'd like to take a second and clear them up. Why criticize advertising? I get this a lot: "People should take responsibility for their own actions. If they don't want crap, they shouldn't buy crap."

Let me just say it right now: hooray for personal responsibility. People making intelligent decisions on what do with their money: great. Self-instruction: love it. When I started writing about this stuff, I wanted to promote a sort of media literacy, since knowing as much as we can about media and marketing is one of our greatest tools against it. Yay for media literacy!

But however essential personal responsibility may be, our actions are nonetheless influenced by the society that surrounds us. No one in these pages wants to simply moan and groan about corporate power, or blame "the media" and advertising for the evils of the planet. We do, however, acknowledge that these forces have an enormous impact on ways we do and don't see the world.

Our concern is not--as some people seem to think--with the lure of individual pitches. Individually, ads aren't "bad" or powerful. Our concern is with the big picture. We've started to think of everything--education, relationships, political involvement, you name it--as purchaseable commodities. Voting is "sold" by Rock the Vote, as if it were a fragrance. (In fact, voting actually was used to sell a fragrance, Paco, during the 1996 president election campaign.) Career guides instruct us how to sell ourselves as brands, while books such as The Marketing of Nations show that even governments can be used as products. A Japanese artist, Amano, celebrates his arrival in New York by plastering the town with an ad campaign and slogan ("Think Like Amano") indistinguishable from those of, say, Gatorade's ("Be Like Mike") and Apple ("Think Different"). Unlike the corporate campaigns, though, Amano's is considered "art."

Another argument I hear a lot: In criticizing commercialism (for lack of a vaguer term), we're limiting choice and denying personal agency. But this line limits the very meaning of choice to purchasing options. Under the free-market credo, choice equals consumer choice. Not buying or promoting other viewpoints, is not considered a choice.

Of course, it's always easier to critique consumer culture and media than to create viable solutions. As Mark Hosler says in his talk with Leslie Savan (page 20), just constantly reacting to something can stunt your growth. Better to work for something than against something. Then again, to fight a good fight you must access the enemy's power, and to see your own role in it, before deciding where to go from there.

And that's where we're at--figuring out where to go. Education or media literacy alone isn't going to pay Nike laborers, and it's not going to get Nike and Pepsi and AT&T out of our of schools. For one thing, we could study this stuff until until the cows come home and still not know the half of it. The world is getting more complex by the minute!

"So? What's your solution?" Well, just look around. There's no shortage of things to do if you turn off the TV for a second. Get involved in community issues. Create something totally unjustified by market values. Support your library. Make a zine, or as Stuart Ewen says (page 8), "be the media," because as long as we see "the media" as something beyond our grasp (even the media doesn't see itself as "the media!"), then we really are screwed. Rome wasn't built in a day, y'all!

Carrie McLaren
January 1998