adbusters decries remixing of culture (more or less).

Adbusters isn’t a publication I’ve ever found myself agreeing with.  Mostly because it’s core proposition is based on self-deceit: that you can create a worldwide brand based on anti-branding, anti-capitalist values, and still judge popular culture as deluded and vapid.

I did not, however, think I would find a place where Adbusters, and the copyright lobby, would agree with one another so precisely.

The final sentences of the article titled ‘Hipster: the Dead End of Western Civilization’ are as follows:

We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

The idea that combining previous ideas, previous works, cannot result in new culture, not only denies the entirety of popular culture’s history, but it also very clearly explains the distaste with capitalism that defines the magazine – if only wholly original creations count, there would never be a need for business to make things better, or more valued.  With this mindset, capitalism is a factory that re-hashes the beautiful and original, making it valueless.  Obviously, this is true in some cases.

But I’d argue that remix culture has resulted in profound statements, both from a political standpoint, and a beauty standpoint.  I’d argue that melding past elements into a new ideal or aesthetic, is how culture (and business) moves forward.  Adbusters disagrees, and wants you to stop doing what other people are doing, because it feeds the machine.  The copyright lobby also wants you to stop mixing and matching the work others are doing, unless you pay heavily for it, because that would stop the machine.

Someone, or everyone, has to be wrong here.