Magazine Review: Adbusters #1

By: Caity Cudworth

Posted: 9/27/06

09/27/06 - The barrage of advertising we face each day is eroding our cultural landscape; the conglomerates we thought of as our humble fast-food peddlers are, in fact, enslaving us. And if we don't stop buying into all of the glossy corporate deception we will turn into mindless, merchandise-thirsty zombies. The anti-consumption magazine, Adbusters, is taking on The Man, but the future looks pretty bleak.

Among the topics discussed: the impending destruction of the planet, the growth of right-wing fascism and the oil crisis. Serious issues.

The inside cover of the magazine launches immediately into a vivid, gruesome second person narrative describing the torture of detainees by U.S. officials abroad. The reader is placed in the role of the torturer and it makes for uncomfortable reading.

Adbusters is probably not the kind of magazine you'd want to skim through, say, in the doctor's office or while waiting in line at the supermarket. Unless, of course, you usually use that time to contemplate the fact that the human race is slowly killing itself through its compulsive desire to industrialize, urbanize and consume.

But the problem with Adbusters isn't the content - there can and should be a place for magazines that cover more pressing issues than the train-wreck that is Britney and K-Fed's marriage or which Olsen twin is feuding with Lindsay Lohan.

The main glitch is the magazine's preachy tone: Adbusters is up on its soapbox and it has no intention of getting off until big business is dead, world peace is finally achieved and right wingers realize the error of their ways. They're on a mission, damn it, and they won't rest until we turn off our televisions and see the light.

All the sermonizing just comes off as pretentious though. Adbusters describes itself as "a slick-subversive mindbomb full of intimate epiphanies, geopolitical insights and ad hominem attacks."

But if you wanted to find the page that was printed on, it might take a while given that Adbusters has neither pages numbers nor a table of contents. These handy guides are, as it turns out, "the signature of commercial compartmentalization."

It's just kind of hard to enjoy a magazine that treats pressing issues such as torture and global climate change with the same gravity as "how skateboard culture lost its soul."

To a certain extent Adbusters really is "a slick-subversive mindbomb full of intimate epiphanies, geopolitical insights," etc; the articles and pretentious layout challenge the way we think about our consumption-driven lifestyles. Adbusters does a good job of being what it is: an indictment of consumer culture.

But it tends to be a bit too righteous, a little too sure that it is on the right side of every issue. We, on the other hand, are wrong for wasting our lives chasing material possessions rather than going out and spending every waking moment protesting all the injustices in the world.

Maybe I've already been sucked in by the evils of capitalism, but halfway through the magazine all of the consumer bashing and doomsday scenarios were starting to wear on me. And so, thus schooled in the evils of mainstream media and corporate malfeasance, I did what any other self-respecting member of the brainwashed masses would do: I stopped reading and turned on the TV.