Parody is a weak form of critique. Its effect is typically to make us laugh off something we might actually think is wrong or bad, releasing our negative emotions in laughter. Parody is actually often welcomed by those it targets, because the parody nevertheless reaffirms them and their positions. Culture jams, on the other hand, excite only the bitterest laughter. They want you to feel differently about what they are appropriating and drawing your attention to. Parodies “make fun”; culture jams disrupt and upset.
Corporate Appropriation and Commerical parody
An example from the 2018 Super Bowl helps explain what postmodern decontextualization looks like, how parody is generally a weak form of critique, and what politicized appropriation looks like.
Background: The words being said by King in the ad come from a 1968 sermon called “The Drum Major Instinct,” which King had adapted from the work of an earlier writer. By “Drum Major Instinct,” King means our natural desire to be in the front of the line, at the top of the heap, Number 1. Against this, King urges his congregation to embrace the humbleness of a servant. He bases this on in an incident in the New Testament, where two of Christ’s disciples ask if they can have the seats of honour to the left and the right of him in the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells them it is not up to him to decide, but in any case they should be focused more on being servants (of God, or Good) than VIPs.
The ad shows an example of decontextualization, as King’s sermon is used out of context to sell trucks to Americans.
It is also interesting that the makers of the ad have chosen words from the sermon that play up the value of serving, and added in images of their own to show whom they imagine being served. MLK had in mind serving God, the ideals of Christianity, or one’s fellow man. But the people we see in the ad are serving their country (military), industry (work), their families, the consumer culture, etc. Another part of his speech that they’ve chosen to give prominence to is the anti-intellectual declamations which – out of context at least – seem to validate the ignorance of the typical American (as long as they are “serving”):
You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
Apart from trucks, then, it could be argued that the commercial uses parts of King’s sermon to encourage ignorance and servility, and that the imagery it employs pushes family values, hard work, and patriotism.
More background analysis: Though some of these would be in line with King’s own agenda in that sermon, they might be found less palatable by other African American activists. If Malcolm X had still been alive to hear King’s sermon, I’m sure he would have been disgusted to hear the emphasis on servility being presented in it, given the amount of servility that African Americans had already been forced or expected to endure during the 200 years of what he called “the American Nightmare” that had been unfolding since 1776. X liked to point out to Black Americans that Christianity had been given to them in part as a consolation for being slaves and then lowly members of society, and to keep them happy in those role, since the Judeo-Christian tradition did much to glorify the weak and the disempowered, those who suffer or are enslaved (Israel, Jesus), and suggested that “the meek shall inherit the earth.”
Though King might have acknowledged his belief in the value of service and hard work, I don’t think he would have been happy to see his words used as a justification for the ignorance of the mainstream populace, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have appreciated the overtones of patriotism and consumerism in the ad. Many people found the ad tasteless, and there was criticism in social media.
Parody
Stephen Colbert (who seems to have turned into Johnny Carson since I last saw him being clever) did a take-off of the ad a day or two after the Super Bowl that parodied the use of a spiritual leader selling trucks:
The Colbert Show, one might note, begins by showing the full ad so that people will be able to get their joke (did Dodge actually pay for this additional spot, perhaps?!) and then his comedy writers make another ad for the Ram, using the kind of dimestore irony that was being done on The Simpsons 20 years ago. Not sure what Dodge made of all this. No bad publicity? No bad complicity?
More radical detournement of the ad
But an amateur culture jammer, Nathan Robinson, had already done a much tougher or more to-the-point send-up of the ad, not on television, but on YouTube: “What Martin Luther King Actually Thought About Car Commercials.”
Using other parts of the very same sermon, Robinson deftly brings back two of the main themes of King’s sermon completely ignored by the Super Bowl ad: the pernicious activities of advertisers trying to sell us products to make us feel we are the best, and America’s own misguided “exceptionalism,” its desire to lead the world instead of serve it, and the ways in which American advertising tries to tap into its citizens’ desires to be better than other people:
Now the presence of this instinct [to lead, to be special, to be important] explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff.
…
[The part in italics is left out of Robinson’s take-off, but is actually what King is commenting on at the end of the Robinson’s redub] But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.“ And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America , because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.
Though the Colbert Show parodies the ad, making us laugh off what Dodge did with MLK, the Robinson culture jam hopes to make us aware of what MLK actually felt, and to make us feel different about consumer advertising, by hearing MLK directly address his own scorn for it, and about those who let it pander to their base desires to be better than other people.
It is worth considering some of the frequent differences between a parody and a culture jam.
| PARODY | CULTURE JAM |
| Light-hearted and sometimes even affectionate | Negative and not so smile- or laugh-inducing |
| Often done with permission, or at least not minded by whoever is made fun of | Not done with permission; not liked by those being targeted |
| Frequently made by the practitioners of mainstream commercial culture themselves | Made by those opposed to mainstream commercial culture and other powerful but regressive participants in culture |
| Makes the audience laugh off something that is actually yucky | Makes the audience feel yucky about something they have taken for granted, liked, or not noticed |
| Normalizes negative aspects of our culture | Critiques and undermines negative aspects of our culture |