>I agree with a lot of this. But one thing I like about Adbusters is their
>understanding of the importance of design and aesthetics. It's a nice
>magazine to look at.
>
>Seth
I don't think I've ever seen a copy -- at least I haven't looked at one closely enough to remember what it looked like. My guess is that the appeal is to a youthful audience, one who doesn't know much about marxist theory yet, so their goal is to grab attention--and to grab the attention of people who've bathed in advertisements all their lives. Having taught a few sociology of the media courses, teens and twenty-somethings (and even the 30 somethings in non-trad courses) were already primed for the hipster, ironic stance toward advertising. it's a kind of knowing that many pride themselves on--the ability to see through the sales ploys and to stand apart from it as an observer who, ostensibly, doesn't get sucked in by the ploy.
k
(who notes that, if any lefty outfit needs a sense of aesthetic design for their magazine, I'm available for hire! :)))
p.s. Yoshie, I hope you can find temporary work -- or are you restricted as to where you can work, which was the case for many of my friends who were international studs in grad school. if you're not, ever thought about translation work? friends who do localization work for companies say business is booming: they need people to translate GUIs, tech docs, manuals, spec sheets, marcomm, you name it. You could freelance part-time and still have time for the dissertation!
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling