Rating: 
Summary: Great Book! I'm not cool either!
Review: I found Kalle Lasn's book to be a very good introduction on the topic of anti-consumerism. He points out what is wrong with the current Western way of life and gives very good reasons why we should actively seek change. This book gave me flashbacks to when i was a cubicle dwelling consumer drone. It also served as a good reminder to why i actively avoid that lifestyle now. It also motivates me to be a more active culture jammer, and help deconstruct other people's obsessions with labels, fashions, and other consumerist dreck. I found this book to be quite inspirational and an incredibly easy read. I gave it four stars because i found Naomi Klein's book No Logo to be more informative (and enjoyable) on the subject, although much longer and not as easy to read.
Rating: 
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: For me, reading this book put a lot into focus about what's wrong with the way we live here in America and what I can change about myself and work to change about our society. The truth presented in CULTURE JAM is nothing less than shocking and absolutely terrifying -- our ship is sinking as we sip champagne and watch MTV. Rather than induce pessimism, however, Kalle Lasn's book actually creates an urge in me to happily take immediate action and make immediate changes in my lifestyle. READ THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Real..."but" TRUE
Review: The book is very nicely written. i really agree with every sentence that kalle Lasn has mentioned on the book. i also find it really stunning. " I will too jam a quarter in a shoping cart" but any ways i just wanted to tell the person who missed the point---------> shame on you! you even studied English for god sakes... The book was not really that hard to understand! how could you miss the main point??psss. bye
Rating:
Summary: This book broke my stubborn mould.
Review: I am a 22 year old University Dropout / Self-Employed Small Business Web Designer. This book took everything I ever felt about corporate North America and gave it a name. The hopeless feeling I used to experience while flipping past MuchMusic (MTV to our American counterparts) or cheesy (no pun intended) McDonald's commercials has now turned to rage with a strong sense of hope. Kalle Lasn presents the problems of our current corporately dominated culture and corresponding solutions in a clear and powerful way that is impossible to ignore. I read the entire book in one sitting because it was like my gut feeling left my body, went and wrote a book, published it, and then got my best friend to shove it under my nose until I finally read it. I now consider myself a soldier for the coming revolution. I will use all my power of web production, word of mouth, billboard liberation, bus and subway ad rearrangement, etc. to help the cause that will free our souls so we can get back to the real human experience as whoever created our universe intended. P.S. To the person complaining about Kalle Lasn's notion that he shouldn't buy his favourite brand of peanut butter anymore, I really can't belive that you took post-secondary english and managed to completely miss the point of the book. P.S.S. Please excuse the run on sentences.
Rating:
Summary: an introduction to the new revolution
Review: culture jam shows the shallowness and destructiveness of our american culture that has been designed to keep us buying cra we dont need and our minds dormant of critical thought. for a long time i have known that i really dont need new nikes at the mall, and lasn shows us why we think we need them, and the steep environmental and cultural price we pay for overconsumption. after reading this book you no longer know these ideas to be true but you feel them in your gut and become liberated from false ideas and ideologies created by corporations. i highly recommend this. as an activist with interests ranging from human rights, to animal rights, i have walked away from this book with many new perspectives. lasn articulately identifies the reason for the lack of success in progressive politics. the reason being that citizens in america are no longer allowed the freedom of expression on our airwaves or in our papers, and the only voice heard is the voice of corporate america. the book concludes with a pimer for the new revolution and shows how each an every one of us can bring democracy back to america.
Rating: 
Summary: OK...but how?
Review: As a college student who has grown up in a cynical-about-consumerism-(and-everything-else) culture, I find this book's thesis -- that Americans ought to not only "tune out" or "drop out," but "break out" of the corporate stranglehold -- to be theoretically intriguing. But as a guy who enjoys occasional trips to the mall, shopping the Gap sales, and drinking Pepsi, I find the thesis practically questionable. Lasn is at his best in this book when he enumerates the several actions which he, himself, has taken in order to "topple the existing power structures". Like creating 30-second TV spots about deforestation, or print ads criticizing the ad campaigns of Phillip Morris tobacco and and the labor practices of Calvin Klein, Nike, et. al. But his suggestion that others can (or should) contribute to the Cause by doing the exact same stuff he has done is at least as egocentric as it is practical. I am the kind of person who might jam quarters into coin slots (a real suggestion of Lasn's), if I'm frustrated with a store, but I am not going to stop buying JIF peanut butter (my favorite brand) because I think it's dumb that Proctor & Gamble has created a ridiculous product called "Fit produce wash." Too far out to stir me to real action; not bad as a polemic argument (useful new buzz word: "detournement," a fancy way of saying "using the strategies of X to work against X"). Probably appeals best to those who like to sign petitions.
Rating:
Summary: Very Important Book for our Times
Review: As my title indicates, Culture Jam is a very important book for our times. Not many people are happy these, days, and most people are quick to point out that there's just something "wrong" with the way the world works.
In Culture Jam, Lasn identifies many of the wrongs of the world in this critique of American/Multinational corporate and media power. If you've ever been treated unfairly by a large corporation, or if you're worried about the unchecked power and billions of dollars that every corporation (from Walmart to Viacom to Rupert Murdoch's News Newtwork) uses to change the world in its own image, then get this book.
It's broken into four parts (named after the seasons), and shows exactly how bad the world has gotten and provides a light at the end of the tunnel. Lasn gets you fired up in the first half of the book, pointing out social injustices, and he proposes some ideas and hope for solutions at the end.
This book isn't a cure-all. It's a call for action. It's a call for fat Americans to wake up, take control of the horrible world we've let come to be, and streamline the system. For the sake of your self, your family, and your planet, start with this book and look deeper for ways to effect meaningful change. For more ideas and an overview of Lasn's philosophy, visit his website. Do a search for adbusters.
Rating:
Summary: Support corporate media giants and buy this book!
Review: Lasn rails agains corporate media giants and asks his readers to risk their livelihoods by commiting criminal acts of vandalism, even though he prostrates himself before his corporate pay masters. Despite being a well written polemic, no one has bothered to question why this book is not in the public domain? In fact, the publishers, William Morrow and Perennial Publishing, are subsidiaries of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, owners of Harper Collins, Fox Entertainment, Direct TV, The New York Post, and countless other mass media and advertising companies. Many of the billboards, TV commercials, and other advertising that have saturated our environment are produced by the same company that earns profits from your purchase of this book. To be precise: "News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) had total assets as of September 30, 2004 of approximately US$52 billion and total annual revenues of approximately US$22 billion. News Corporation is a diversified international media and entertainment company with operations in eight industry segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; direct broadcast satellite television; magazines and inserts; newspapers; book publishing; and other. The activities of News Corporation are conducted principally in the United States, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia and the Pacific Basin."
So support corporate America and BUY THIS BOOK! Brought to you by Adbusters, sponsors of "BUY NOTHING." And while you're buying "BUY NOTHING" posters and bumper stickers, why not try out "Blackspot Sneakers," a five buck sneaker for only 79 bucks, available exclusively from your Adbusters retailer. A great stocking stuffer for that would be revolutionary who already has everything.
Rating:
Summary: Motivational Reading for Postmodern Misfits
Review: Even though this book is only about five years old (published in 1999,) it reads like something of a relic from a bygone era. Lasn has a lot of good things to say - he targets cultural institutions and influences that are ripe and overdue for deflation and I will look for ways to contribute myself to the campaign that he's been waging. But he writes with the kind of populist idealism that doesn't always match up too well with our experience of reality. His predictions made throughout the book about a revolution about to break loose across the culture didn't really pan out too well.
Take this quote: "They (American consumers) will tire of the egocentric life of ungoverned consumption and the media hype that fuels it. When a stretch limo glides by in 2003, the pedestrian reflex won't be to peer through the smoked panes for the celebrity inside, but to curse and mock this ridiculous symbol of decadence and environmental harm."
Hmm, it doesn't seem to have really turned out that way now, has it? I know that a lot of people do get what he is saying and are living that way, but it seems like the "bling bling" culture is quite alive and well. That's not too surprising and I'm not even sure that Lasn really expected it to go away so quickly.
But if one can look beyond some of the dated premillennial (and pre-Bush, pre-9/11) enthusiasm, there is still a lot to recommend for anyone interested in getting a sharper insight into the problems of consumerism and mass-production/consumption that more or less define Western societies. His writing is easily digestible, not especially dense with jargon or unclarified assumptions, and punctuated with some good examples of his subversive takes on advertising.
For folks like me who were raised on Mad magazine and other forms of satirical nose-tweaking, Culture Jam takes us to the next step of deconstructing the brainwash we've been swimming in most of our lives and inspires us to exercise our own freedoms and potentials within the media outlets we have at our disposal. One has to be a bit naive and idealistic, as well as alienated from the mainstream, to appreciate a book like this, but that's not such a rare personality type these days. The key is to do something about it beyond just being an armchair griper.
Rating:
Summary: Angry but convincing
Review: A "What's wrong with things" book from the founder of Adbusters. Lasn's a radical, and has some radical views, but a lot of them make a lot of sense. He's more angry than someone like Wendell Berry, but his examples are more concrete. When I finished this, I felt like I needed to go do something. Very good.
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