An Interview with Carrie McLaren of Stay Free

From Wally Wood&Mac250;s 1967 pen and ink drawing titled “Disneyland Memorial Orgy,” a work which depicts the entire family of Disney characters engaged in hedonistic sex acts, to the more recent mass production of altered Starbucks logos in which the coffee giant’s mermaid mascot is labeled a “Consumer Whore,” there is a rich history in this country of people appropriating and repurposing those cultural icons that have been hoist upon them.
Carrie McLaren, working with Stanford copyright scholar Lawrence Lessig and others, recently brought these works of art together in a traveling exhibition Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age. McLaren also happens to be the woman responsible for Stay Free!, a brilliant independent magazine that focuses on issues surrounding American consumer culture. A few months ago, I had an opportunity to speak with Carrie about her life, her well-documented pranks, the appropriation of intellectual property for artistic purposes and the battle that’s shaping up between the Rip-Mix-Burn generation and corporate copyright owners.

MM: How is it that you came to be interested in the subject of copyright?

CM: I wrote about Negativland’s problems with the U2 EP and started learning about copyright then. Mark Hosler (of Negativland) and I became friends through that. I’ve followed intellectual property issues ever since but it’s not like I’m an expert.

MM: Were you writing about Negativland for Stay Free!?

CM: No, Stay Free! didn’t really get going until 1993. It was for an alternative newsweekly, Creative Loafing, and also an earlier zine of mine, Sonyland.

MM: Should I assume that the name Sonyland was chosen at least in part because of the syllable it shares in common with Negativland?

CM: No, Sonyland had nothing to do with Negativland. I was a college rep for Sony Music and started doing this zine sort of as a joke but also because I wasn’t doing any work and was afraid they were going to fire me. The zine was surprisingly successful; the local hipsters loved it. Even though I wrote in the zine that it was sponsored by Sony Music, people didn’t believe me. My bosses at Sony loved it, too, even though it made fun of the Sony bands. It was a lot like that “ironic” advertising that would become popular a couple of years later. I would never do anything like that now but at the time I thought I was being subversive.
After I was fired from my other job, at a copyshop, I had to quit doing Sonyland and so I quit working for Sony as well. And after a turn of events too boring to mention, I started doing Stay Free! as a local, newsprint zine a couple of years later, in 1993. (The first official issue was in 1992; it was a just few pages, included in a 7” single Carrie put out by the Archers of Loaf.)

MM: How would you say Stay Free! was different from Sonyland?

CM: Yeah, it was similar, but minus the lousy bands. Stay Free! had more of a feminist slant, though. And there were ad parodies, which was new. I was working at a record store and really needed a creative outlet.

MM: I’d like to ask about the copy shop and why your were fired, but I should probably stay focused... I’m interested in how Stay Free! has changed over time and how the different themes that you’re interested in have developed. Music seems to have moved into the background while this critical view of advertising and consumerism in general has come to the forefront. Why do you think that is, and how do you see feminism fitting into the mix?

CM: Well, I moved to New York to work in the record industry in 1995. When I revived Stay Free! the following year, I wanted to get away from music coverage. I knew too many people in bands and too many people working at record labels; it would have been one conflict-of-interest after another. Plus, Stay Free! was largely about the North Carolina local scene and the local scene is very different here. Or, at least, I didn’t feel a part of it. I was always interested in commercialism. One of my favorite writers was Leslie Savan, who wrote a brilliant advertising column in the Village Voice. She was one of the first people to start seriously looking at this stuff from a lay perspective.

MM: Not too long ago, you executed a campaign in New York where you were ticketing SUVs with official-looking citations that outlined violations against the environment, national security and common sense. Among other things, you questioned the sexual security of the men driving these enormous vehicles. Could you speak for a moment about the advertising being done by the manufacturers of SUVs and what tactics they’re using to push their products, what demographics they’re speaking to? Is it largely men with self-esteem issues?

CM: We did that anti-SUV prank in December 2001. I had fake traffic signs printed up that read “NO SUV PARKING” and some friends and I hung them around town. The tickets you mention were a part of that — we gave tickets to all the SUVs in those areas.
The SUV ads that piss me off the most are the ones where the car is racing through the mountains or over some other scenic landscape; these monsters are pitched as a way of getting closer to nature when they are in fact destroying it.
As for demographics, there’s a book about SUVS that came out recently called High and Mighty and the author, a New York Times reporter, discusses the auto industry’s research on SUV owners. According to this research — and, again, this is from the auto industry itself — the typical SUV driver is insecure, self-centered and very concerned about what others think.
So automakers have been designing and marketing these things to appeal to the aggressive nature of consumers. One commercial that comes to mind has a typical soccer mom racing to get a parking spot and practically mowing over everything in her path. It’s supposed to be funny, I guess.

MM: I’ve heard that people in other parts of the country have picked up on this idea of anti-SUV citations. Would you have any advice for these people given the response that your prank were met with?

CM: Only that they should try to avoid saying anything that’s going to come off as too mean or self-righteous. That was the problem with one ticket I saw.

MM: Have there been any other pranks in the spirit of this one against SUVs in Brooklyn? What other subjects have you addressed?

CM: Yeah, we made some stickers that said “Warning: Genetically Modified” and encourage people to randomly tag items in grocery stores. This was shortly after a period when the FDA said it was considering labeling GM foods, but it had become obvious that it had no intention of doing so.) We also made a fake tourist map of Manhattan featuring nothing but outdoor advertising; we went and handed them out to tourists in Times Square. That was probably our most most successful stunt because the timing was right. There was alot of public opposition to billboards and the press was angling to cover it.

MM: With interests that range from restrictive copyright legislation to SUVs, from advertising in public spaces to genetically modified food, do you have any difficulty focusing on one issue? Is there a hierarchy to these interests? And, are there subjects that you simply don’t have time for as a result?

CM: I used to say that Stay Free! focused on “American media and consumer culture,” but now I find that a little limiting. In the broadest since, I’m interested in how money and power shape society and culture. There’s no real science to determining whether something is worth covering; Alexandra (Stay Free! “Vice President”) and I go with our gut instincts, trying to avoid topics that have been covered elsewhere. We haven’t said much about Iraq, for instance—not because it doesn’t have anything to do with corporations and culture but because there’s been a ton of great coverage by writers who know more about the Middle East than we do.

MM: How would you define Stay Free! in relation to Adbusters?

CM: We started around the same time and we share a similar prankster-like outlook. Adbusters is glossier and more design-focused; Stay Free! is nerdier and more analytical.

MM: If you don’t mind my asking, is Stay Free! a full-time gig for you? To put it more bluntly, does it pay the bills?

CM: No, it makes enough money to cover the costs of publishing but that’s about it. I work at a private school here in my neighborhood.

MM: It would be nice to live in a world where a magazine like Stay Free! had the readership of a Martha Stewart publication. Speaking of Ms. Stewart, do you see any similarities between your empire and hers?

CM: We both use cheap labor. In fact, my assistant, Ryan Creed, used to intern for Martha Stewart.

MM: Has he been subpoenaed?

CM: No, he only even met Martha once, when she conducted a focus group with her interns.

MM: I’m curious to know what you think of Martha Stewart, and the melding of the woman with the corporate entity.

CM: If she considers branding herself good for business, more power to her. But personally I’d rather have someone stab me in the eye than try to “brand” myself. Whenever journalists ask me about “the Stay Free! brand” I just want to tell them to fuck off. You know, give me a break. I find the assumption that every possible human endeavor or emotion should be branded profoundly depressing. Martha Stewart was a symbol of how successfully all that could be done. If I blame her for anything, it’s that.

MM: Do you have any positive brand associations? Is anyone, in your opinion, doing it well?

Continued...

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