Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Subvertisers Suck
I’ve never had much time for anti-globalistaion types.
They are, I think, timewasters lacking a coherent political philosophy; preferring instead to point out the crushingly obvious fact that unfettered free-market capitalism might not be all that great for poor people, without bothering to offer an alternate model. (More trivially, the fact that these revolutionaries invariably smoke roll-ups packed with Imperial Tobacco’s finest and wear Converse - owned by anti-globalisation nemesis Nike, fact fans - tends to make me want to laugh in their faces.)
Anyway, the other night at Mise En Scène - The Chateau’s excellent short film night - I watched Billbored, a brief guide to subvertising, ad-jamming, or whatever you want to call the act of reconfiguring hoardings to promote vague anarcho-hippie messages instead of shilling product for The Man.
You can watch it at the i-Contact Video Network Archive, assuming you have - oh look, another irony - RealPlayer installed. It’s a decent enough little video, explaining the trend well and offering a few tips for the budding subvertiserista.
One shot, though, reveals everything that is wrong with this brand (pun absolutely intended) of junior dissent: a masked operative, spraycan in hand, looms toward the corner of a billboard and strikes, obliterating the sick, twisted logo emblazoned there, doubtless paid for with filthy capitalist pig-dog lucre.
Who could be deserving of such ire? Which vile outfit are these urban guerillas attacking?
Yep, that Unison.
And that’s your anti-globalisation protester right there: someone so caught up in the glamorous world of covert twighlight missions against The System that they can’t tell the difference between a sinister multinational, gleefully counting its profits as impoverished Third World indentured slaves work themselves to death, and an organisation devoted to fighting for fair pay and conditions for the public sector workers of the UK.
Idiots.
Unison aren’t all their cracked up to be. They keep no records of their members subs, and are particulary bad at negotiating deals which have an effect on two seperate parties within their membership. Unison are very unpopular amongst medical secretaries at the momemnt, as my mother will testify. Pay freezes for three years, that sort of thing.
Posted by Donny at 11am on 26.05.04
Yeah - a couple of folk have said the same, but I still reckon that subvertising a union is just plain sucky - it’s not as if they were making some specific anti-Unison point, they were just altering adverts regardless of who placed them…
Update: Chris Applegate notices that they also have a pop at the Nationwide, a mutually owned building society (again, hardly a blameless beacon of loveliness, but again not exactly an enemy of all that is right and good).
Posted by Jack at 11am on 26.05.04
Heh. Nice blog. Anti-glob. does seem to have become an interesting fad, especially in the arena of the identikit goth/skate/whatever kids outside GOMA, just another fashionable add-on to a rebellious middle-class upbringing. Hm. That sounds very cynical, but it’s true ;)
Posted by Kevin at 6pm on 30.05.04
I’m kind of anti-globalisation in that I don’t think that the big boys of industry are taking enough responsibility for their actions in an environmental and exploitation sense, but I agree you need the markets. This is why I have adopted the Simultaneous Policy.
I’ll be spoiling my vote with the words ‘Simultaneous Policy’. There isn’t candidate who has pledged in Leeds, although there is one in Cambridge. From reading your weblog I reckon that Simpol-UK is something that you might want to check out too, in time for the next election perhaps…
Posted by Josie at 10am on 08.06.04
Does it actually say anywhere on the site what their ‘policy’ is, other than that it is ‘simultaeneous’?
Strange. I’ll stick with the Socttish Socialists, pledge or no pledge…
Posted by Jack at 1pm on 08.06.04
For now, policies are provisional. They will evolve and expand as more people, from expert policymakers to normal bods like me, adopt SP and join in designing a global, sustainable future.
(And directly from their Interntional site as the UK one is lacking in this area:)
There are two other very good reasons why SPâs policy content remains provisional for now.
Firstly, itâs clearly going to take some years for SP to be adopted by sufficient nations around the world. So if we fixed SPâs measures today, theyâd likely be out of date by the time SP came to be implemented.
Secondly, since new adopters are joining our ranks all the time, SPâs policy content must be developed in an ongoing, flexible, dynamic and democratic fashion and be capable of evolving right up to the point when implementation approaches. Only at that point need SPâs policy measures be fixed.
It’s foggy admittedly because it’s not like a PARTY as such, more an international movement based around the voting system. SP is only concerned with policies that must be enforced globally in order to work at all (a la kyoto). Once SP has worked to bring in the global ‘policies’ that SP adopters have decided should be enforced (and because of their nature these policies cannot be solidly defined until just before they are implemented) politicians are then freed up to practice party politics again without fear of upsetting corporations.
It pigs me off really that it is all so complicated to explain because it’s actually a very elegant solution to all those global problems that get me (and many other people) depressed. I’m more left than the lefties and more green than the greenies and probably have some blue qualities too (and a big streak of yellow - lol), but I know that whatever party I vote for, if in power they still cannot act to solve the problems that trouble me the most.
I don’t want to evangelise SP - I can’t think of anything that would put people off it quicker. I hate those people. But what can you do when you really think you’ve found the answer?
Posted by Josie at 7am on 10.06.04
Forgive me if this sounds cruel (because I don’t doubt your good intentions) but it’s exactly this kind of intiative that exemplifies all that’s wrong with the anti-globalisation movement. The circular reasoning behind not adopting a policy until enough people sign up so as said policy isn’t “out of date” (whatever that means; who’s judging the criteria?) isn’t really the most convincing argument for signing up. It’s little different to saying “we want to change the world for the better, but we’re only going to tell you how we’ll do it once enough people say they agree with us.” (I’m sure, in their heart of hearts, every movement on the political spectrum, from radical anarchists to the BNP, wants to “change the world for the better” in some way or other, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right.)
Apart from that, the belief that, come the glorious implementation of SP, in whatever form it takes, will mean that “politicians are then freed up to practice party politics again without fear of upsetting corporations” betrays a naive understanding of the way politics works and always has worked.
It’s an elegant and simple solution, yes, but like most simple solutions, it’s not a solution at all.
Posted by Leon at 11am on 10.06.04
Perhaps the way to illustrate simpol is to click one of the blogs where we start discussions on a topic, search who has deep human views, keep linking until some common sense seems to be emerging - try our water blog linked to my name above. Simpol is an open collaborative attempt to develop 50 or so most urgent conversations on policy - water being a first example…
Posted by chris macrae at 2am on 30.09.04