With her eyes blackened and her mouth defaced, the leggy blonde pictured eating yogurt on the advertising poster was not looking so hot by the time "Robert Johnson" had finished with her.
"Advertising makes you aggressive," scrawled 30-year-old Johnson across the poster in Paris' Republique metro station before glancing furtively over his shoulder, tucking his black marker into his pocket and jumping back on the train.
Johnson is not just a bored young delinquent. He and hundreds like him -- they all use the same pseudonym -- are at war with what they call the "tyranny of advertising" and they use paintbrushes, markers and spray cans as their weapons.
The Paris metro system is their main target.
Activists have defaced thousands of the poster adverts that line its walls, angering authorities and provoking a 1 million euro (US$1.22 million) lawsuit, in what they say is an unprecedented campaign against the invasion of public space by big business.
`No logo'
Inspired by the Canadian-born author Naomi Klein's No Logo -- the anti-globalization bible that adorns the bookshelves of generation X-ers from Seattle to Stockholm -- the metro warriors say they are tired of being force-fed advertising.
"We are not terrorists, we are not vandals, but there is no legal way of fighting back," said 34-year-old Alexandre Baret, one of 62 activists being sued for damages.
"I feel like I've been taken hostage by advertising, and this is the only way I can make my voice heard."
Metrobus, a unit of advertising major Publicis which manages the advertising space on Paris's public transport, and metro operator RATP, are determined to smash the movement and are suing the activists for 1 million euros in damages.
The case goes to court today.
They say talk of politics is nonsense and that the graffiti is straightforward vandalism.
"Everyone has the right to protest against advertising -- that's democracy -- but they don't have the right to destroy my posters," Metrobus chief executive Gerard Unger said.
"I think there are too many cars in Paris but what would you say if I started going round slashing tires? These people are vandals and they need to be punished."
Unger said that putting up new posters and reimbursing advertisers hit by the graffiti cost one million euros and he was confident the court would order the activists to pay.
He says there is less advertising in the Paris metro than in its London counterpart and that the number of posters is falling because of the design of new stations.
Advertising is in the public interest, he said, because it provides state-owned RATP with 65 million euros (US$80.4 million) a year -- enough for 20 new metro carriages or 300 buses.
Brand-smashing has been a central tenet of the anti-
globalization movement which exploded into protests at the World Trade Summit in Seattle in 1999.
Anti-adverts
The anti-advertising movement is nothing new, but lawyers for the 62 people charged in Paris say theirs is the biggest and most successful anti-ad campaign.
About 1,000 people, many of them young students or artists, but also housewives and middle-aged engineers from Paris's smarter suburbs, joined a metro raid last November. About 270 people were arrested. Of those, 62 were charged.
Alexandre Fera, their chief lawyer, says there is no official body behind the movement although an anti-advertising Web site "Stopub" issues details of each raid.
Philosopher and teacher Vincent Cespedes, who has written several books about the impact of advertising on young people, said an average Parisian is exposed to 2,500 adverts a day, and that this feeds greed, alienation and depression.
He says that in France, unlike in other European countries such as Britain, there is no strict code for advertisers, only a watchdog that rarely intervenes.
In France, sex is used to sell almost anything from holidays to handbags, prompting campaigns by feminist groups which write graffiti over naked breasts and buttocks emblazoned onto metro walls and street-side billboards across the capital.
"Advertising, particularly in France, totally warps the image young people have of women," said Cespedes. "One of my pupils said the other day he reckoned white women were all whores because they'd sleep with you for a yogurt."
Ahmed Meguini, another of the 62 defendants, says the movement is a sign that French youth has recovered its zest for politics, rekindling memories of student riots in 1968 and more recently of protests over anti-immigrant leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's success in finishing second in the 2002 presidential election.
"We got a wave of interest after [the elections] then everyone said the protest movement in France had died," said Meguini, 27. "This just goes to show it's alive and kicking ... And we are not going to be scared off by a court case."
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