Julia Scott
He doesn’t like to watch
It's TV Turnoff Week, and its mastermind explains why thousands of culture jammers might be disrupting a sports bar near you.
That intrusive moment — in a bar, on a subway, at the airport — when a loud television dominates a public place was the original inspiration for TV-B-Gone, a lightweight remote control created by San Francisco engineer Mitch Altman. TV-B-Gone can hang on a keychain and can turn off almost any television, anywhere. The device was so popular that it sold out within hours of its launch in October 2004. And now Altman’s remotes are in particular demand, as Adbusters magazine promotes their use in conjunction with TV Turnoff Week, which begins Monday.
After Adbusters started it in 1994 with the goal of improving our quality of life, TV Turnoff Week has become a bit of a mainstay. The TV Turnoff Network, a Washington group that promotes TV Turnoff Week mostly in schools, estimates that 7.6 million people participated in the campaign last year. Still, publicity for the event has waned in recent years, so Adbusters took a more radical approach. The magazine’s staff believes that some 2,500 TV-B-Gone devices have been bought so far through Adbusters’ Web site; there’s no way to tell how they’ll be distributed in its “JammerGroup” network of more than 10,000 people. But, for $15 a pop, the small army can (temporarily) silence that fuzzy white noise in restaurants, coin laundries and waiting rooms.
But does every public TV need to be turned off? Do nature shows get privileged treatment? And does culture jamming run the risk of becoming more annoying than watching Bill O’Reilly in the grocery checkout lane? Salon spoke with Kalle Lasn, Adbusters’ editor in chief and the patriarch of TV Turnoff Week, from his home in Vancouver.
Why did you decide to combine TV-B-Gone with TV Turnoff week?
We brainstormed here at Adbusters and figured that TV Turnoff Week was losing a bit of its oomph over the last few years … TV-B-Gone has given our TV Turnoff Week campaign, which was sort of dormant, a bit of magic. TV-B-Gone doesn’t exactly give us our voices back, but it helps us get some control. It shuts up that corporate, commercial ad agency voice. In public spaces, they have the right to put up a TV, but I think that we the people who have to live in those public spaces have the right to switch those things off.
How do you see this working?
I go to a bank every Saturday here in Vancouver. When I’m standing in line I have this group of three TV sets that I’m looking at, whether I like it or not. Last Saturday, I had my TV-B-Gone with me while I was standing in line, and I pressed the button and I switched those TVs off. It was a beautiful moment. It was a moment where I felt that we were in control, rather than the bank with its TV sets.
People’s reactions were interesting. Before, everybody was kind of standing there with their heads slightly lifted toward the TV sets. Nobody was talking to each other. But a few seconds after those TVs went off, people were suddenly talking to each other and looking around. It felt like real life again. It was an epiphany — and the bank didn’t even notice.
But when is it appropriate to turn off someone else’s TVs?
I think everybody has to decide for themselves what’s off-limits. I know there are some edgy people who will, for the sheer fun of it, switch every damn thing off. But I was at the airport the other day, and there was a big TV set that a number of people were watching, and for some reason I didn’t want to switch it off because it was some nature show. I think it’s a decision that people can make in the moment it’s happening.
Do you anticipate a number of television vigilantes who will go into stores and bars, switching TVs off?
I think the real question here isn’t whether there’s going to be a few vigilantes who switch off TV sets. The question is, what right do airports and bank managers have to force us to watch TV in public places?
If you treat this device as a little lark, you’re missing the point. It’s the tip of the iceberg in addressing an incredibly polluted mental environment that is now causing mental diseases to the point where the World Health Organization is predicting that by the year 2020, mental diseases will be more widespread than heart disease. We live in an age of mood disorders and anxiety attacks, where depression has gone up by 300 percent in two generations. It’s gotten to the point where there are ads in fortune cookies, and here in Vancouver, you walk into the bathroom and a TV set suddenly goes on in front of you while you’re pissing.
What do you think of someone going into a sports bar — where people have gone to watch a game — and turning the TV off there? Do you think that’s a justified use?
Well, we’ve done that, and occasionally we had to hightail it out of there really fast because there was going to be a fight. But at the beginning of movements like this one, I think a certain amount of civil disobedience, even if it gets physical after a while, is good.
But are you sacrificing any educational aspect of TV Turnoff Week this way?
I don’t think the educational component has been sacrificed; I think what has been sacrificed is the debate over the larger issues: What is happening in our mental commons? What does a commercial do to you? What does media concentration really mean for a democracy? How can so many Americans still think there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida? There’s an incredible amount of disinformation floating around.
Pesticides indicted in bee deaths
Agriculture officials have renewed their scrutiny of the world's best-selling pest-killer as they try to solve the mysterious collapse of the nation's hives.
Gene Brandi will always rue the summer of 2007. That’s when the California beekeeper rented half his honeybees, or 1,000 hives, to a watermelon farmer in the San Joaquin Valley at pollination time. The following winter, 50 percent of Brandi’s bees were dead. “They pretty much disappeared,” says Brandi, who’s been keeping bees for 35 years.
Since the advent in 2006 of colony collapse disorder, the mysterious ailment that continues to decimate hives across the country, Brandi has grown accustomed to seeing up to 40 percent of his bees vanish each year, simply leave the hive in search of food and never come back. But this was different. Instead of losing bees from all his colonies, Brandi watched the ones that skipped watermelon duty continue to thrive.
Continue Reading Close“The world just fell out from under me”
Eight-year-old Devon Clark developed Asperger's syndrome after repeated exposure to mercury-based preservative thimerosal -- and his mom became an activist.
Early in 2003, Lujene Clark noticed that her 8-year-old son, Devon, was acting up more than he ever had. He had emotional outbursts, stopped responding to simple commands, and became extremely sensitive to noises and smells. When the family shopped at Wal-Mart, Devon would throw a tantrum, or race around, slapping his hands together. “He used to be the best-behaved child in a restaurant, but now we couldn’t take him inside one — the clattering of dishes was too much for him,” Clark says. “He would start to scream. It was like a nightmare we couldn’t wake up from.”
Continue Reading CloseAmericans: Do something about Darfur
Contrary to Bush administration policy, Americans overwhelmingly support U.S. action to stop the genocide.
Since terming the ongoing scorched-earth campaign against civilians in Darfur genocide several years ago, the Bush administration has done everything it can to avoid committing to substantial intervention in the region, even downplaying the number of dead. But a new poll by the International Crisis Group/Zogby International indicates that Americans overwhelmingly support U.S. action in Darfur to stop the genocide.
Continue Reading CloseThis is what democracy looks like?
President and Mrs. Bush miss an opportunity to promote democratic reform in Egypt.
The Bush administration is likely to portray Wednesday’s referendum in Egypt, in which voters officially approved President Hosni Mubarak’s plans to hold the first competitive presidential elections later this year, as a victory for democracy. But several opposition groups boycotted the vote, since the only candidates allowed to compete in the election will be handpicked by the government.
Outside polling stations Wednesday in Cairo, pro-democracy demonstrators were attacked by policemen and hired government thugs. “Women were surrounded, groped and had their clothes torn,” wrote a Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene. “Some demonstrators were thrown down flights of concrete stairs, dragged by their hair and kicked by swarms of young men.”
Continue Reading CloseIn the polls
New numbers today on Americans' attitudes about abortion, the judicial filibuster, and Bush -- and they don't look great for the right wing or the president.
Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University released a new poll this morning surveying Americans’ attitudes on abortion, the filibuster fight, and the Bush presidency. The numbers don’t look great for the right wing or the White House.
By 63 to 33 percent, Americans support the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, with men supporting it at a higher rate (68 to 28 percent) than women (58 to 37 percent).
Continue Reading ClosePage 1 of 13 in Julia Scott