Contested images: the politics and poetics of appropriation

432 Pages·2016·2.4 MB·English

University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online
Theses and Dissertations
Spring 2012
Contested images: the politics and poetics of
appropriation
Michael Alan Glassco
University of Iowa
Copyright 2012 Michael Alan Glassco
This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2875
Recommended Citation
Glassco, Michael Alan. "Contested images: the politics and poetics of appropriation." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of
Iowa, 2012.
https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2875.
Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd
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CONTESTED IMAGES:
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF APPROPRIATION

by

Michael Glassco

An Abstract

Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy degree
in Mass Communications in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa

May 2012

Thesis Supervisors: Associate Professor Venise Berry
Associate Professor Kembrew McLeod
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As a tactic of dissent and political protest, appropriation artists use commercial
and government images to critique power, by subverting the intended message and
displaying their critique in public spaces. Appropriation activists are revolutionary
subjects, graphic agitators, and rebellious bricoleurs who engage in the tactics of guerrilla
semiotics, ‘subvertising,’ fauxvertising and culture jamming, to expose advertising
imagery as a system of ideology that manufactures identity, sublimates desire, and
naturalizes the construction of race, class, and gender. Their tactics also indicate the
attempt to reclaim public space to address the privatization of culture and the unequal
access to cultural resources. The use of images and tactics of appropriation creates a
more diverse array of voices in the public sphere and opens spaces for active
participatory engagement with the public to address systematic asymmetries of power.
The appropriation tactics and images used by Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and
the Guerrilla Girls in the late seventies and eighties, for example, addressed the
normalizing representations of gender, sexuality and identity in advertising and the
idealized promises of consumption. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Billboard Liberation
Front, Adbsuters, Robbie Conal, and Shepard Fairey engaged in ideological warfare over
the right to own, access, produce and display appropriated images. From billboards
intended for commercial advertising to the display of ‘subvertisements’ in magazines,
and the un-commercials to promote Buy Nothing Day and TV Turn off Week, these
activists confront the prevailing cultural apparatuses of meaning and the political
economic structures that enable their power.
To capture the cynical trendsetting demographic more resistant to traditional
advertising, advertisers have co-opted the imagery, style and tactics of these artists. Their
tactical strikes and visual style now convey hip, new, edgy and cool brand identities.
Their images have also been commodified as commercial products and institutionalized
art and have become fashion. As appropriation artists and advertising agencies engage in
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the same tactics and use the same visual style, the lines between art, appropriation and
advertising have blurred and the public sphere overcome with a pastiche of visual codes.
The dissertation traces the tactics of appropriation of Barbara Kruger, The
Billboard Liberation Front and Shepard Fairey as exemplars of transgression and
commodification within the changing commercial conditions of neo-liberalism. Their
works, tactics and strategies are emphasized as points of insight into the practices and
conditions of subversion as well as the limits of hegemonic containment that reproduces

the political and economic structure within which they operated. The dissertation furthers
and contributes to the theoretical and methodology of critical cultural studies as it
emphasizes the role of the economy and ideology in reproducing the prevailing
hegemonic order. Critical cultural studies hinges on the concepts of hegemony as lived
discursive and ideological struggles over meaning and communication resources within
historically specific and socially structured contexts. This framework emphasizes the
poetics of appropriation - the use, meaning and spaces of articulation of visual
representations with the politics - the socio-economic and discursive conditions that
reproduce the dominant social order.

Abstract Approved: ______________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor

______________________________________________________
Title and Department

______________________________________________________
Date

______________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor

______________________________________________________
Title and Department

______________________________________________________
Date
CONTESTED IMAGES:
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF APPROPRIATION

by

Michael Glassco

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Mass Communications in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa

May 2012

Thesis Supervisors: Associate Professor Venise Berry
Associate Professor Kembrew McLeod
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_____________________________

PH.D. THESIS
____________

This is to certify that the Ph. D. thesis of

Michael Glassco

has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Mass Communications
at the May 2012 graduation

Thesis Committee: ______________________________________________
Venise Berry, Thesis Supervisor

_____________________________________________
Kembrew McLeod, Thesis Supervisor

_____________________________________________
Gigi Durham

_____________________________________________
Tim Havens

_____________________________________________
Don McLeese
To You!

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The constitution of the resistant subject depends upon the ability to formulate
cultural meanings from the materials that are available and can be appropriated
from the dominant culture…cultural appropriation operates not only as a means
for the development of an alternative subjectivity on an individual level, it also
opens up cultural space for the formation of collective identities…The interplay
of culture and identity - how culture forms the self and how culture may be
subversively utilized for the definition of one’s self-becomes a thoroughly
political matter with no predetermined outcome. Instead, the process is an
ongoing struggle for identity, which itself is a product of culture or, more
accurately, the outcome of a contestation over the meaning of cultural artifacts.

Rosemary Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Property

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………...………………………………………………1

Organization of Chapters………………………………………………………...16

CHAPTER ONE THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF APPROPRIATION…..………22

Poetics of Appropriation…………………………………………………………24
Futurism………………………………………………………………….25
Dada…………………………………………………………...…………31
Situationist International…………………………………………………38
Punk…...……………………………………………………....................43
Radical Subjects………………………………………………………….46
Counter Public(s)………………………………………………...............51
Gaining Access…………………………………………………………..53
Politics of Appropriation………………………………………………………....56
Ideological Power………………………………………………………..56
Articulation……………………………………………………………....57
Hegemony………………………………………………………………..58
Incorporation……………………….…………………………………….64
Containment……………………………………………………………...66
Commodification.………………………………………………………...67
Subversive Limits………………………………………………………..69

CHAPTER TWO IDENTITY IN THE FIELD OF VISION……….…………………..71

Jenny Holzer……………………………………………………………………..71
Electronic Revolution……………………………………………………74
Image-Text……………………………………………………………….80
Barbara Kruger…………………………………………………………………...82
You are Not Yourself………………………………………………….....92
Your Body is a Battleground………………………………………….....96
Inciting Questions………………………………………………………104
Guerrilla Girls…………………………………………………………………..108
Rewriting Herstory….…………………………………………………..110
As Recognizable as Coca-Cola…………………………………………………114
It’s a Small World………………………………………………………118
Concluding Comments………………………………………………………….123

CHAPTER THREE MEACONING, INTRUSION, JAMMING, INTERFERENCE...125
Billboard Liberation Front……………………………………………………...125
Jujitsu…...………………………………………………………………133
MIJI……...……………………………………………………………...143
Fauxvertising and FSU-ism…………………………………………….146
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Culture Jamming………………………………………………………………..152
Adbusters……………………………………………………………….154
Subvertisements……………………………………………………...…158
Kill your TV and Buy Nothing…………………………………………165
Interference……………………………………………………………………..170
Concluding Comments………………………………………………………….178

CHAPTER FOUR UNDERMINING THE ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER…...…….181
Robbie Conal…………………………………………………………………...181
Adversarial Tactics……………………………………………………..190
Shepard Fairey………………………………………………………………….194
Phenomenology and De-familiarization………………………………..202
Dis-obey………………………………………………………………...205
Semiotic Disturbance…..……………………………………………….212
Banksy…………………………………………………………………………..216
Ready-mades and Inter-textuality………………………………………219
Obey™………….………………………………………………………………223
Institutional Giant………………………………………………………228
David the Giant…………………………………………………………233
Concluding Comments………………………………………………………….235

CHAPTER FIVE THE SUBVERSIVE LIMITS OF APPROPRIATION…....……….237

Rise of Neoliberalism…………………………………………………………..237
Media Conglomeration…………………………………………………240
Marketing Revolution and Revolutionary Marketing…………………………..246
From Hunting Cool to Manufacturing Authenticity……….…………...250
Guerrilla Marketing…………………………………………………………….254
Counter Culture Brand..………………………………………………...259
United by Hegemony……………..…………………………………….277
Branded Legitimacy…………………………………………………….284
One and the Same………………………………………………………290
Concluding Comments………………………………………………………….292

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………294

Poetics of Appropriation………………………………………………………..295
Politics of Appropriation….…………………………………………………….301
Future of Appropriation (Research)…………………………………………….315
Appropriation and Co-optation…………………………………………317
Guerrilla Marketing and Intellectual Property………………………….318
Appropriation and Protest: Occupy and the 99%...................................321

END NOTES…..……………………………………………………………………….327

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