The audience that Adbusters captivates are people who are concerned about our cultural environment and the physical relationships within them. They are people who don’t want to ignore the problems of the modern world. They are concerned about current issues about our environment and our cooperative culture.
Adbusters have organised events such as “Buy Nothing Day” and “Digital Detox Week”. This enables the community to engage in an event and to also see what impact their action is making. It will intrigue the outsider public, which therefore achieves their goal of spreading their beliefs.
Adbusters started as a collaboration of people from various backgrounds who shared similar passions and spiritual outlooks. They have made a stamp for themselves and created a global community. The general readers of Adbusters are people who seek other likeminded souls. They want to find opinions that can influence, shape or fire up their views. They want to see a change happen in the lives they lead and for the future generation. Struggles with modern life is an everyday occurrence, but it’s the people who take action are the ones that want to stop the simulation occurring in our 21st century world.
I am going to talk about the current article ‘Cocaine Culture – A global apartheid of decadence and death.’ Written by Blake Sifton, 01/10/10, featured in ‘The Revolution Issue’
He begins the article by stating how the American cocaine culture is affecting the Mexican drug culture. He constantly collides the two contrasting lifestyles to conjure a bigger impact on the reader. This direct blame makes the reader feel uneasy, as it causes you to question your place within the senirio. If the reader has participated in drug usage, they will feel guilty of being unaware of the crime that surrounds it.
Sifton takes the mickey out of the activist-hippie stereotype.
“And so they march in protest, volunteer abroad, shop ‘green’ and insist on drinking fair trade coffee.”
As Adbusters is a non-for-profit, anti-capitalist publication for mostly activist, he is making direct stabs at the audience. By doing so, he is fulfilling his aim to cause controversy and seek conflicting views. He aims to cause a direct emotional impact that will influence their original preconceptions.
He bluntly states they have no moral concerns, which paints a wrong impression of young people. This is just one example where he has created assumptions about today’s youth culture.
“They do not seem to care that for coke to make its way up their American noses, Mexican heads must roll in the streets of Juárez..”
The tone of the article is aggressive, bold and roofless. He uses words such as ‘poisoned’, ‘sick’, ‘brutal’ and ‘horrific’ to describe the Mexican cartel. It is trying to ingrain the message in the most efficient way by using descriptive yet clear language.
The last two paragraphs summarize the key issues being addressed and suggest a solution to solve these. It would be a pointless publication if it simply stated problems without voicing solutions to people who crave change. By discussing serious and frightening issues about a particular country, it creates a distance from us to them. To conclude the article, he puts the topic into a global perspective. He states that the US isn’t the only country dealing with the relationship between countries consumption, and how it’s affecting developing countries. There is no evidence for this statement, therefore, placing it at the end of the article entails he wants to leave it as an afterthought.
Is it a cry for help? a deep concern for our human race?; or on the other hand, it is a plead to legalize drugs for recreational usage?, or an ill-informed rant on a subject only the people living it can tell the tale and find a solution.
Whatever side you take, Adbusters was created to get people thinking about their presence on the planet, and if you didn’t feel any emotion after reading the article, then maybe you should get back to reading ‘Take a Break’ magazine….
