No. 423 - Mickey Louse

Perhaps no cultural icon is more heinous than the big-eared antichrist himself, a rodent who's perpetrated nothing short of crimes against humanity, and along the way burnishing his three-circled symbol that gleams like a proud pentagram.

On the surface, the culture spawned from the Happiest Place on Earth is sunshine and rainbows, a utopian playland where everyone lives happily ever after, but the drivel spewed from this company's sundry TV stations, music label, movie production company, and all of the other pawns in its multi-media empire, is nothing short of toxic.

Disney Corp. is a prime example of a far-reaching enterprise gone awry, one that places a stranglehold on childrens' psyches at a time when their reality is still being shaped. The company's eponymous founder has long since passed, but his ideals live on in a mutated manner that was likely never intended by the Walt-astic forebear of all that is mouse; that aside, it's only fitting that Disney's current iteration, which has always been touted as "kid friendly," actually plays a large part in the deterioration of pre-teen culture.

Children are essentially instructed who to worship as the next tween celebrity -- Hannah, Jonas, Cody, Zach or Cheetah, or whoever else is instantly thrust into the kleig lights with shaggy hair and a winning smile.

This enterprise takes advantage of young minds during their most susceptible years, and that alone is not necessarily a vile act, although this demographic should be developing their imaginations throughout these years, not staring into the TV screen like zombies as they're spoon-fed pop culture junk food. They'll have their adult lives to indulge in mindless entertainment.

The real transgression lies in the way these pre-teen stars are hyper-sexualized and thrown into adult situations. Many of the current celeb icons are trust fund kids or silver spoon adolescents with stage parents, most of them with nothing better to do than answer their hormonal whims and party like it's 2099. And the message to pre-teenagers is to be innocent yet look like tarts, to consume but be moderate, to pursue intellect but villify the geeks of the world.

And parents worldwide are in turn subject to horribly written jokes and plot lines that couldn't even live up to the quality of a Mad Lib. Current Disney sitcoms reveal a theatrical and literary mastery that only Shakespeare himself could have created -- if Shakespeare had a full frontal lobotomy, that is.

Then there are the movies, revisionist propaganda at its finest, along with the historical dark skeletons that the Mouse Mafia itself can't even spin into profits, so they remain locked away like a bad drug habit. (Song of the South, anyone? How about the black handmaiden centaur in Fantasia? Get the blackface ready for the Disney on Ice rendition of these and other cultural embarrassments.)

Princesses and frail women weaken at the knees until the uber-male heroes come to their aid. Animals give life to the most deplorable of racial stereotypes, whether it's rasta lobsters, jive crows, Asian cats or derelict hyenas. Generations of bigotry, chauvenism and repressed dreams rolled up into one cute, castrato-esque, pants-less mouse.

This mouse must be stopped, or at least ignored into irrelevance. Might we suggest a lollipop laced with rat poison, sprinkled with a tad of pixie dust and arsenic?

No. 65 - Advertising Rage

Ads Hole

There's a giant eye in the sky, sinister and all-knowing, watching every one of us -- kind of like Sauron's eye in "Lord of the Rings," but not nearly as kick-ass (and a lot less friendly). This omniscient being sees what you do in your most private of moments, and yes, even watches you when you do that...thing that you do with the shampoo bottle and the cocoa butter. You know.

This eye is searching for something intangible, something no one can pinpoint. It's looking for coolness, and how to sell this coolness to you with lots of plastic and twistie ties and limited warranties.

There may not be a literal eye watching you at all times (notwithstanding those PCP users reading this right now), but we are being watched and communicated with via the thousands of messages that lurk everywhere we look. Execs in starched shirts and khakis are plotting our psychological futures, what we will think we need tomorrow, or in ten years.

What we see in ads are beautiful people having fun, more bliss than we'll ever imagine, the equivalent to approximately two million drunk circus clowns. Wow, does holding a candy bar really make someone that happy? We want in on that action. Is it possible that buying anything will make me this cool?

And then you think, if I open this bottle of beer, will a party spontaneously erupt in my tiny hole of an apartment with strobe lights and hundreds of people? If I buy this car, will hot models throw their panties at me while I'm driving by?

Messages are at every turn, swatches of rural highways lit up and animated like Times Square. We have enough personal distractions to begin with, yet we're bombarded with these messages every single day.

Even a trip to the most rural areas of this expansive nation are not exempt from advertising's evil grip. Just the other day, we were in the deep woods of Minnesota and witnessed a deer carrying a giant sign for Crazy Fanny's Furniture Factory, and nearby, a raccoon ran by with a Nike symbol shaved into its side. Shame.

Let's digress and be realistic: we would not turn down advertising of any sort, because we could abandon our desk jobs if advertising were generous enough. The point is, those creating advertising are not bad. It's the repercussions, the smiley mascots that take on lives of their own -- the babies who recognize McDonald's and Walt Disney characters before they even utter a word.

Bless the advertising gurus, some of whom are brilliant and funny, but damn them on the other hand for studying us and waging war on our psyches. But like Patton, we fight back. We record our television, only to skip the commericals, and what do they do? Infiltrate the shows themselves. Case in point: "The Office," a brilliant program, but also a blatant shill for HP and Cisco, among other products. But we tolerate this because the show is that good.

We would let advertisers tattoo messages inside of our eyelids if that's what it took to watch our favorite television shows or movies. Yes, this particular entry is inspired by Adbusters (http://www.adbusters.org/) for whom we thank graciously for opening our eyes to many new ideas and for introducing us to Culture Jamming.