Subvertising and Detournement

Do the subvertisements employed by anti-corporation groups like Adbusters practice Debord's ideas of detournement? After reading Debord's A User's Guide to Detournement, I am still not entirely sure what it means to detourne something. Should the detournement retain aspects of the object it is detourning? Should it be the exact opposite? Should the detournement be familiar yet different in order to be most effective?

In the User's Guide, Debord writes, "It goes without saying that one is not limited to correcting a work or to integrating diverse fragments of out-of-date works into a new one; one can also alter the meaning of those fragments in any appropriate way, leaving the imbeciles to their slavish reference to 'citations'," noting that the best examples of detournement can be found in the advertising industry--where ads frame songs, literature, history, and culture in ways that completely replace the detourned object's meaning.

So then, would subvertising then always be a detournement because it takes an existing object that already has a narrative and changes it? In the case of advertisements by well-known brands and corporations, the message of the ad has already filtered into the everyday lives of people and is that constant, background information and noise of our lives. The alteration of these ads creates a dialogue between the old and new, rather than a complete replacement of the old with the new.



LINEKER
Burnham-On-Sea March 2006
Comments added to a crisp advert featuring the annoying Gary Lineker display the realities behind his attempt at a junk food makeover.



Road Deaths
Bedminster, Bristol, Aug 2002
The message of the indispensability of the car in the modern age, subverted to give a realistic image of its effect on current lifestyles.