Those damn ads

The big youth movement here in Paris is a little bit of everything--somewhat goth but also into Bob Marley, pro-Palestinian but also frequently pro-anarchy--but the movement's focus is clearly its "anti-pub," or anti-advertisement, activities. (No, the French are not protesting British drinking holes; "pub" is short for "publicité.") Scrawled over nearly all ads in the Metro--ads for department stores, electronics, Uma Thurman movies; ad content doesn't seem to be the issue--is "marre de la pub," or, often, "la honte" ("the shame"). Apparantly the seemingly innocuous posters urging you to, say, buy a different brand of deoderant are actually something to get worked up about. Why, of all things to protest, of all anticapitalist things to protest, have ads in population become such a popular target?

Many Parisian ads are merely gratuitously sexual images that may or may not be urging you to buy any identifiable product. In one such ad on the Metro, a man is whipping himself, which, I've been told, means he wants a better long distance carrier.

I am honestly curious as to why so many radicals here seem so hell-bent on tearing down and defacing ads on the Metro, and am wondering whether this is a big movement in NYC and Chicago, too, but one that I had somehow missed.