The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed, (or, 'Nation of Rebels' in the U.S.) by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

As I was leaving Toronto after the MobileActive Convergence, this book caught my eye. The picture of Che Guevara on a coffee cup was an arresting front cover. The Rebel Sell. Yes. Of course. I later found out that the book is called 'Nation of Rebels : Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture'. Having just been in close contact with political activists from all over the world, and funding agencies from the North American continent, this book somehow seemed like something appropriate to read. It's somewhat annoying that the images on the book cover - the links here - don't have the image of Che Guevara on a coffee cup like the one I have does. It makes one wonder why the cover, and why the name, is different for the U.S. audience. Perhaps it's just part of the points that are made in the book.

Marketing and demographics have their place in the publishing business. And Cuba, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara aren't considered conservative; I suppose the bar coded fellow was deemed more appropriate to meet a larger audience in the United States.

Nation of Rebels: Why Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture

Right. Bought. It seems that if you want to sell something in Latin America, it helps to have that particular face on whatever it is that you are selling. To their credit, people of Latin America probably have a better idea of who Che Guevara was, and why his face is everywhere - but in a lot of other places, it's just 'cool'. And the cover made the point - quickly - that the book supported.The points made in this book point toward the illusion of challenging the status quo by becoming a part of the status quo... and just changing the brand. You don't want Coca Cola? Try (imaginary) 'Che Cola'. What's changed? The people you're buying it from. And in the end, it's still a corporation that you're paying, more than likely. That makes sense. Rebeling by buying a t-shirt with Che Guevara's classic image on it is the same as buying a t-shirt with Bill Gates face on it, in the end. A different corporation. So, where's the actual 'underground'?

From the back cover:

With the popularity of Michael Moore, Adbusters magazine and Naomi Klein's No Logo, it's hard to ignore the growing tide of resistance to our corporate-controlled world. But do these vocal opponents of the status quo offer us a real political alternative?

I don't often find a book where the cover and the content make sense with each other. Within the covers, there's a lot of witty and thoughtful analysis that doesn't take a stance on consumerism or capitalism, but instead explains the context change that is happening in the name of culture jamming. Criticizing mass society is nothing new;
Rabbit, Run became Fight Club. While Nation of Rebels didn't give a strong feel for solutions either way, it certainly did allow for a more circumspect perspective on two 'opposing cultures' in our world which really aren't too different. In fact, they aren't very different at all. The very same things that we're seeing now happened with the 'counterculture' of the 1960s. Show the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s - even 1980s - and you end up seeing the culture of the beginnings of the new millenium.

This is a book for the open-minded truth seeker out there who is trying to make sense of a world where a lack of a brand is a brand, and where changing a logo doesn't really change anything but which culture becomes dominant. A quote from the book:

There is no single, overarching system that integrates it all. The culture cannot be jammed because there is no such thing as "the culture" or "the system". There is only a hodge-podge of social institutions, most tentatively thrown together, which distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation in ways that we recognize to be just, but that are usually manifestly inequitable. In a world of this type, countercultural rebellion is not just unhelpful, it is positively counterproductive. Not only does it distract energy and effort from the sort of initiatives that lead to concrete improvements in people's lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for such incremental changes.

I recommend it, strongly.