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Adbusters and the Art of SatireA magazine meant to parody advertising based in Vancouver, CanadaAdbusters attempts to satirize advertising and the corporate world through its magazine and web site. But does it work?
The idea of Adbusters is great. A seemingly very slick commercial magazine that appears to in some way parody or challenge the whole advertising industry. After all, we all can understand some of the surface dangers of advertising. What is Adbusters? This is from their website: “Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace” Advertising is notorious for suggesting that if you buy the right product you will be successful and well loved. The airbrushed cover model, a staple of those grocery store magazines suggests that we all must resemble these people to be accepted and loved. The very name of the celebrity suggests that this is someone we celebrate, if seemingly just for possessing extreme beauty. There’s a lot to poke fun at about advertising. Remember Zoolander? In a nutshell, advertising is often about surface appeal and therefore can be intrinsically despicable. One would think that the shiny appeal of advertising would be met with a similar shiny appeal from Adbusters, but it is not. The Spoof Ads on the Adbusters site use established branding campaigns such as Joe Camel, Obsession cologne and Absolut vodka to make statements on the bulimia, lung disease, and impotence that these products can potentially cause. These ads appear slick but even Mad Magazine, printed on newsprint, had better parodies and send-ups of advertising and corporations that were provocative and made us laugh. Here is where Adbusters goes wrong. Their message is not the happy message of most advertising that promises love and happiness. Their message is a bummer and it’s hard to sell a potential unhappy ending through a medium in which we are pre-conditioned to look for the happy ending. Also, it is the classic non-profit versus for-profit battle in that the non-profit does not have the budget or deep pockets to compete toe to toe with wealthy corporations. The magazine itself can sometimes be amusing for example, when they drilled a pea-sized hole through the whole magazine. It was stylish and self-deprecating all at the same time, but the articles can be full of style with little substance. The Harpers' Index often contains more meaningful and digestible information than the somewhat esoteric nature of adbusters. So while the idea of adbusters is great, the follow through is not. Sources: www.adbusters.org
The copyright of the article Adbusters and the Art of Satire in Art & Society is owned by Mary Rayme. Permission to republish Adbusters and the Art of Satire in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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