Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Argument
Addressing the typical historiography of 60s advertising and fashion which posits that industries co-opted countercultural youth values merely to sell products, Frank argues that advertisers and fashion designers were not cynical co-opters but, more complexly, believed and enthusiastically embraced countercultural ideals: namely, non-conformity.
On another level, Frank explicitly takes Cultural Studies and John Fiske to task, arguing that the trend toward focusing merely on reception and consumption ignores a more complex story on the production side.
Specifics
Led by the agency DDB (Doyle Dane Bernbach, particularly Bill Bernbach) and its groundbreaking Volkswagon ads, advertisers adopted frankness, self-deprecation, and anti-conformist tactics. They did so, Frank demonstrates through advertising archives, because they were anti-conformists themselves. The advertising agency was exactly the kind of stifiling bureaucratic office that was under attack in anti-conformist business literature, most notably Whyte's The Organization Man. Advertisers yearned for greater creative leeway, and saw the countercultural movement and critique as an argument for greater freedom at work.
Examples of Ads
Alka-Seltzer: "That's a spicy meatball!" self-consciousness about the fact that ads are artificial as a way to sell Alka-Seltzer.
Cola Wars: "The Pepsi Generation" v. old school Coke
Anti-obsolescence: ad for VW model for years 51-61. Same car. Ironically, obsolescence was key to men's non-conformist fashion boom of 60s, and continues to drive the essence of the fashion industry.
Conclusion
"The sixties are more than merely the homeland of hip, they are a commercial template for our times, a historical prototype for the construction of cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent. Co-optation is something much more complex that the struggle back and forth between capital and youth revolution; it's also something larger than a mere question of demographics and exploitation.Every few years, it seems, the cycles of the sixties repeat themselves on a smaller scale, with new rebel youth cultures bubbling their way to a happy replenishing of the various culture industries' depleted arsenal of cool. New generations obsolete the old, new celebrities render old ones ridiculous, and on and on in an ever ascending spiral of hip upon hip. As adman Merle Steir wrote back in 1967, "Youth has won. Youth must always win. The new naturally replaces the old."" (235)
Showing posts with label Consumerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Consumerism. Show all posts
Friday, May 6, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Harris - Cultural Excursions
Harris, Neil. Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Chapters 1, 8, 9, 13, 14 (Different essays)
Chapter 1
Addresses changing appeal of the city by constructing an overview of urban culture as its institutions developed in America during four periods: 1. coloniol, 2. early republic to 1870s, 3. 1870s to before WWII, 4. Our own times
Concludes that interest in fostering urban public institutions (museums mainly) peaked before World War II and has since declined, reflecting a broader decline in the appeal of the city.
Chapter 8
Utopian Fiction and its Discontents: Rather than examine turn-of-the-century utopian fiction for the way it reveals the classic, broad anxieties about modernization, Harris uses it to explore relatively more mundane "subterranean anxieties" of the age. "Their urge to describe other worlds was rarely based on any need for artistic fulfillment. More often they wrote from a passion to commnicate some secial idea. Their books, in fact, demonstrate the impact of modernization upon American life, presenting worlds ruled by strange machines, crowded with masses of people, and reverent toward scientific truth. The novels' solutions to political and economic problems built on the classic anxieties we associate with this period. But their fictional details answered more intimate and perhaps more fundamental personal fears. These crudely written books offer surprising insights into long-vanished sensibilities." 150-151
"...faced with disorder the utopians sought to structure and even confine life, rather than expand it. The revolutions we have marked, until recently, as milestones of scientific progress sobered them. Their optimism about the future rested on the achievement of an environmental stasis. Unlimited growth seemed as dangerous as decay." 173
Chapter 9
The Drama of Consumer Desire
Exams 1. ideological national problems in 19th century growing consumer nation, 2. reference to age of consumer consciousness in fiction at end of 19th century, 3. description of 20th century trends, particularly 1920s, which intensified American object consciousness, and 4. examples of the way mass distribution affected novelistic sensibilities.
"mass-produced objects and object relationships came increasingly to enter the American novel, both as symbols and as experiences. But the very standardization which produced such triumphs for the manufacturing and distributing systems is here defined as a major problem for the creative imagination. Thus a national style of purchasing began to be adumbrated by our literary figures, and fixed upon as a cultural metaphor."
To sum: novels revealed consumer consciousness of the importance of objects as representing their own identity.
Chapter 13
The changing Landscape of America
Development of shopping centers
Rise and decline of hotel lobbies
Parking garages
Chapter 14
We need to consider the incredible importance of the turn-of-the-century development of the halftone effect as way to cheaply reproduce images in newspapers. Images burst into mass production, for mass consumption.
Definition of Culture
"[The word culture] has had a complex history and is the subject of continuing debate. Until the nineteenth century changed its meaning, culture was more an activity than a state of being; it represented growth or nourishment and could be applied to almost anything. Some years ago Raymond Wlliams showed how Victorians made culture into a noun signifying the highest and most valued human activities, connected particularly with the high arts. People were defined as cultured according to their interest or proficiency in certain traditional areas: music, painting, architecture, belles letters. In the twentiethc century the word culture has been transformed again, made more comprehensive and catholic. We assume that every people, every civilization, and even every subgroup possesses a culture of some kind, that is, a pattern of value structures, mores, and institutions." 14
Connections
Jackson - Crabgrass Frontier, Cohen - A Consumer's Republic, Marchand - Advertising the American Dream
Chapter 1
Addresses changing appeal of the city by constructing an overview of urban culture as its institutions developed in America during four periods: 1. coloniol, 2. early republic to 1870s, 3. 1870s to before WWII, 4. Our own times
Concludes that interest in fostering urban public institutions (museums mainly) peaked before World War II and has since declined, reflecting a broader decline in the appeal of the city.
Chapter 8
Utopian Fiction and its Discontents: Rather than examine turn-of-the-century utopian fiction for the way it reveals the classic, broad anxieties about modernization, Harris uses it to explore relatively more mundane "subterranean anxieties" of the age. "Their urge to describe other worlds was rarely based on any need for artistic fulfillment. More often they wrote from a passion to commnicate some secial idea. Their books, in fact, demonstrate the impact of modernization upon American life, presenting worlds ruled by strange machines, crowded with masses of people, and reverent toward scientific truth. The novels' solutions to political and economic problems built on the classic anxieties we associate with this period. But their fictional details answered more intimate and perhaps more fundamental personal fears. These crudely written books offer surprising insights into long-vanished sensibilities." 150-151
"...faced with disorder the utopians sought to structure and even confine life, rather than expand it. The revolutions we have marked, until recently, as milestones of scientific progress sobered them. Their optimism about the future rested on the achievement of an environmental stasis. Unlimited growth seemed as dangerous as decay." 173
Chapter 9
The Drama of Consumer Desire
Exams 1. ideological national problems in 19th century growing consumer nation, 2. reference to age of consumer consciousness in fiction at end of 19th century, 3. description of 20th century trends, particularly 1920s, which intensified American object consciousness, and 4. examples of the way mass distribution affected novelistic sensibilities.
"mass-produced objects and object relationships came increasingly to enter the American novel, both as symbols and as experiences. But the very standardization which produced such triumphs for the manufacturing and distributing systems is here defined as a major problem for the creative imagination. Thus a national style of purchasing began to be adumbrated by our literary figures, and fixed upon as a cultural metaphor."
To sum: novels revealed consumer consciousness of the importance of objects as representing their own identity.
Chapter 13
The changing Landscape of America
Development of shopping centers
Rise and decline of hotel lobbies
Parking garages
Chapter 14
We need to consider the incredible importance of the turn-of-the-century development of the halftone effect as way to cheaply reproduce images in newspapers. Images burst into mass production, for mass consumption.
Definition of Culture
"[The word culture] has had a complex history and is the subject of continuing debate. Until the nineteenth century changed its meaning, culture was more an activity than a state of being; it represented growth or nourishment and could be applied to almost anything. Some years ago Raymond Wlliams showed how Victorians made culture into a noun signifying the highest and most valued human activities, connected particularly with the high arts. People were defined as cultured according to their interest or proficiency in certain traditional areas: music, painting, architecture, belles letters. In the twentiethc century the word culture has been transformed again, made more comprehensive and catholic. We assume that every people, every civilization, and even every subgroup possesses a culture of some kind, that is, a pattern of value structures, mores, and institutions." 14
Connections
Jackson - Crabgrass Frontier, Cohen - A Consumer's Republic, Marchand - Advertising the American Dream
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Marchand - Advertising the American Dream
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Argument
In the 1920s and 30s the advertising industry in America boomed. Marchand studies advertisements from the period (and the men who created them) in an attempt to understand what they can (and can't) tell us about American society as a whole. The title indicates two key parts to Marchand's argument. First, he credits advertising as playing a key role in shaping American consumer values that would resonate with the middle class after World War II. Second, he argues advertising men (and they were mostly affluent white men) saw themselves as serving society by advancing the benefits of modernity.
Key Terms
Modernity - Essentially, "progress;" advertisers saw themselves as "town criers" for new technology, styles, and ways of life. (1) Marchand also notes the heavy influence of modern art on advertising design.
Uplift - Recognizing that the masses of consumers to which they were advertising occupied a lower status on the socio-cultural-intellectual scale than they, some members of the advertising elite saw their role as affecting improvement among the American masses on these terms. Skilled advertisers could find a way to communicate with the ignorant masses and offer them products and services that might improve their life and, in the long run, improve their minds.
Social Tableau - a category of advertisements that depict several persons and their relationship to each other, thus offering a glimpse of the perceived social structure.
Studying Advertising to Understand Society as a Whole
The careful yet nonetheless evocative ways Marchand used advertising as sources was interesting for my own desire to use film and television as sources. The social tableau chapter was one example.
He also identified several "great parables" used as a formula for many advertisements. Marchand argues these parables "reinforced (and even encouraged conversions to) a modern, secular 'logic of living'..." (207). They "subtly redefin[ed] the terms of [the American dream]" as "the older values of discipline, character-building, self-restraint, and production-oriented achievement were subordinated to the newer values of pleasure, external appearance, and achievement through consumption." (234) Thus, advertising played an important role not only reflecting but inspiring the shift in American values of the 20th century. In the final chapter, Marchand goes on to show how by the end of the period advertising methods were firmly engaged in offering therapeutic solutions to the dilemmas of modern life.
Marchand also identifies several common cliches in advertising, such as "the office window" portraying the male CEO surveying his domain and "the family circle" demonstrating the relationship between father, mother, and children. He suggests such cliches can be useful in understanding values of the age.
He also explore depression era developments in advertising, revealing shifting tactics. Advertisers strove to emphasize the equalizing power of consumerism, as well as the dangers of ill-advised purchasing decisions.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Cohen-Consumer's Republic - This is something of a prequel to Cohen with a more specific focus. Advertisers in the 20s and 30s were laying the groundwork and fighting for the shift to a "Consumer's Republic" of purchaser consumers who saw their buying power as a way to self-improvement rather than community- or national- improvement. According to Marchand, advertisers painted a picture of consumption as the secret to individual and family happiness relative to individuals and families around them, rather than consumption as a way to improve the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Critique
Well-written, clear and interesting. Marchand was also able to include numerous black-and-white and color examples throughout the pages that really drive his point home. His chapters are nicely organized and accessible. His methods are clear and his argument is well-made.
Argument
In the 1920s and 30s the advertising industry in America boomed. Marchand studies advertisements from the period (and the men who created them) in an attempt to understand what they can (and can't) tell us about American society as a whole. The title indicates two key parts to Marchand's argument. First, he credits advertising as playing a key role in shaping American consumer values that would resonate with the middle class after World War II. Second, he argues advertising men (and they were mostly affluent white men) saw themselves as serving society by advancing the benefits of modernity.
Key Terms
Modernity - Essentially, "progress;" advertisers saw themselves as "town criers" for new technology, styles, and ways of life. (1) Marchand also notes the heavy influence of modern art on advertising design.
Uplift - Recognizing that the masses of consumers to which they were advertising occupied a lower status on the socio-cultural-intellectual scale than they, some members of the advertising elite saw their role as affecting improvement among the American masses on these terms. Skilled advertisers could find a way to communicate with the ignorant masses and offer them products and services that might improve their life and, in the long run, improve their minds.
Social Tableau - a category of advertisements that depict several persons and their relationship to each other, thus offering a glimpse of the perceived social structure.
Studying Advertising to Understand Society as a Whole
The careful yet nonetheless evocative ways Marchand used advertising as sources was interesting for my own desire to use film and television as sources. The social tableau chapter was one example.
He also identified several "great parables" used as a formula for many advertisements. Marchand argues these parables "reinforced (and even encouraged conversions to) a modern, secular 'logic of living'..." (207). They "subtly redefin[ed] the terms of [the American dream]" as "the older values of discipline, character-building, self-restraint, and production-oriented achievement were subordinated to the newer values of pleasure, external appearance, and achievement through consumption." (234) Thus, advertising played an important role not only reflecting but inspiring the shift in American values of the 20th century. In the final chapter, Marchand goes on to show how by the end of the period advertising methods were firmly engaged in offering therapeutic solutions to the dilemmas of modern life.
Marchand also identifies several common cliches in advertising, such as "the office window" portraying the male CEO surveying his domain and "the family circle" demonstrating the relationship between father, mother, and children. He suggests such cliches can be useful in understanding values of the age.
He also explore depression era developments in advertising, revealing shifting tactics. Advertisers strove to emphasize the equalizing power of consumerism, as well as the dangers of ill-advised purchasing decisions.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Cohen-Consumer's Republic - This is something of a prequel to Cohen with a more specific focus. Advertisers in the 20s and 30s were laying the groundwork and fighting for the shift to a "Consumer's Republic" of purchaser consumers who saw their buying power as a way to self-improvement rather than community- or national- improvement. According to Marchand, advertisers painted a picture of consumption as the secret to individual and family happiness relative to individuals and families around them, rather than consumption as a way to improve the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Critique
Well-written, clear and interesting. Marchand was also able to include numerous black-and-white and color examples throughout the pages that really drive his point home. His chapters are nicely organized and accessible. His methods are clear and his argument is well-made.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Cohen - A Consumers' Republic
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Argument/Key Terms
Consumer's Republic - During the two decades of post-WWII prosperity, Cohen perceives the broadly-held belief that America's mass consumption would lead not only to widespread prosperity but also help achieve social and political ambitions for a more equal, free, and democratic nation. (13) There was an underlying assumption that the government would support the consumers in the marketplace, even more than they supported the producers. This lasted until Nixon, Ford, and Carter began to pursue supply-side policy even before Reagan.
Cohen is essentially writing a traditional history book that supports the criticism raised in intellectual history/cultural critics of the Lasch variety. Writing in the 70s at the tail end of the Consumer's Republic, these critics were musing about how individualism went to far. Cohen traces its slide.
She is also preoccupied with the ramifications of the Consumer's Republic on Blacks and Women. Blacks notably exercised their position as citizen consumer, through boycotts and sit-ins, to negotiate and improve their position in society. The rise of segmented marketing coincided with the rise of Black Nationalism, strengthening Black identity. However, segregated neighborhoods and (thus) schools remain as evidence of the suburbanization that left the poor- mostly black - population behind. The ideal of equality within the Consumer's Republic thus failed largely to benefit black citizens.
Cohen analyzes advertising strategies to show how after WWII women lost the gains they had made during the war, both as laborers and as consumer citizens. Ads emphasized the father as the primary consumer of the house, and thus advertised accordingly, the ads themselves (as well as ad-driven TV shows like Father Knows Best) emphasizing women's proper role as submissive wife. Women eventually gained social status at the end of this period, and organized as consumer citizens - boycotting and protesting for key consumer issues.
Other Big Concepts
citizen consumer - The Roosevelt administration thought of consumers as a self-conscious body of Americans on par with labor and business, and courted their political support. For the first time on a broad level, Americans began to consider how their purchasing actions could shape society. Also, they became concerned with fairness in the marketplace.
purchaser consumer - The idea that consumers held the key to economic recovery. Strongly influenced by Keynes.
First-wave consumer's movement - Progressive Era
Second-wave consumer's movement - 1930s and 40s, Notably, consumers were given a voice and official position in New Deal agencies, most importantly in the NRA.
Third-wave consumer's movement - 1960-78. (p.360) Typified by Ralph Nader. Pursued greater protection of the consumer in the marketplace (Cohen calls this level 1) and the reinvigoration of Government regulation in consumer interest (level 2). Despite a long struggle, consumer interest groups failed to place a consumer advocate in a permanent government position.
Consumerization of the Republic - Cohen's term for what followed the Consumer's Republic, typified by a desire not for a marketplace that could be molded, both by consumer action and government policy, to shape a stronger society but rather for a marketplace that favored individual interests. This was brought about in no small part by the rise of segmented marketing strategy.
Chapter Ideas
Ch. 1 "Depression: Rise of the Citizen Consumer" - Second Wave consumer's movement and the New Deal
Ch. 2 "War: Citizen Consumers Do Battle on the Home Front" - Consumers supported price fixing measures, and received them. Meanwhile, Blacks had to fight harder for price protection just as they had to go so far as to threaten protests to be an equal part of the wartime labor force.
Ch. 3 "Reconversion: The Emergence of the Consumers' Republic" - Out of post-war recession, the G.I. Bill helped returning soldiers and their families reach higher standards of livings. However, Cohen shows that Blacks and uneducated G.I.'s were left behind by the bill's benefits.
Ch. 4 "Rebellion: Forcing Open the Doors of Public Accommodations" - Civil Rights Movement gained access to public accommodation...
Ch. 5 "Residence: Inequality in Mass Suburbia" - ...just in time for prosperity, including public accommodation, to depart the cities for white suburbia.
Ch.6 "Commerce: Reconfiguring Community Marketplaces" - The rise of shopping centers moved shopping from the public space of the city to the private space of the mall. Cohen discusses court cases fighting to make the mall a public place for political action: initially these cases had success, such as the 1968 Logan Valley Plaza decision to allow union members to picket the plaza, which was the equivalent of a sidewalk. After that, the malls gradually gained back rights, as the Court granted the states the right to decide whether their own constitutions protected access.
Ch.7 "Culture: Segmenting the Mass"- Segmented advertising
Ch.8 "Politics: Purchasers Politicized"- Third-wave consumer's movement
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Christopher Lasch et al -In the final pages, Cohen mentions Lasch and Michael Sandel as critics who have argued liberal faith in a growing economy to solve America's problems failed to consider traditional criticism of individualism. Cohen is more realistic in her criticism, admitting it is difficult to overturn a century of transformation that has turned voters from civic-minded to consumption-minded.
Critique
Cohen breaks new ground with her concept of a Consumer's Republic. I just wish she had done so with a shorter book that relied a bit less on endless statistical examples. She warns in her prologue that she is going to use northern New Jersey, where she grew up, as a frequent case study and I thought it worked well as the changes in that area seemed representative for national trends.
Argument/Key Terms
Consumer's Republic - During the two decades of post-WWII prosperity, Cohen perceives the broadly-held belief that America's mass consumption would lead not only to widespread prosperity but also help achieve social and political ambitions for a more equal, free, and democratic nation. (13) There was an underlying assumption that the government would support the consumers in the marketplace, even more than they supported the producers. This lasted until Nixon, Ford, and Carter began to pursue supply-side policy even before Reagan.
Cohen is essentially writing a traditional history book that supports the criticism raised in intellectual history/cultural critics of the Lasch variety. Writing in the 70s at the tail end of the Consumer's Republic, these critics were musing about how individualism went to far. Cohen traces its slide.
She is also preoccupied with the ramifications of the Consumer's Republic on Blacks and Women. Blacks notably exercised their position as citizen consumer, through boycotts and sit-ins, to negotiate and improve their position in society. The rise of segmented marketing coincided with the rise of Black Nationalism, strengthening Black identity. However, segregated neighborhoods and (thus) schools remain as evidence of the suburbanization that left the poor- mostly black - population behind. The ideal of equality within the Consumer's Republic thus failed largely to benefit black citizens.
Cohen analyzes advertising strategies to show how after WWII women lost the gains they had made during the war, both as laborers and as consumer citizens. Ads emphasized the father as the primary consumer of the house, and thus advertised accordingly, the ads themselves (as well as ad-driven TV shows like Father Knows Best) emphasizing women's proper role as submissive wife. Women eventually gained social status at the end of this period, and organized as consumer citizens - boycotting and protesting for key consumer issues.
Other Big Concepts
citizen consumer - The Roosevelt administration thought of consumers as a self-conscious body of Americans on par with labor and business, and courted their political support. For the first time on a broad level, Americans began to consider how their purchasing actions could shape society. Also, they became concerned with fairness in the marketplace.
purchaser consumer - The idea that consumers held the key to economic recovery. Strongly influenced by Keynes.
First-wave consumer's movement - Progressive Era
Second-wave consumer's movement - 1930s and 40s, Notably, consumers were given a voice and official position in New Deal agencies, most importantly in the NRA.
Third-wave consumer's movement - 1960-78. (p.360) Typified by Ralph Nader. Pursued greater protection of the consumer in the marketplace (Cohen calls this level 1) and the reinvigoration of Government regulation in consumer interest (level 2). Despite a long struggle, consumer interest groups failed to place a consumer advocate in a permanent government position.
Consumerization of the Republic - Cohen's term for what followed the Consumer's Republic, typified by a desire not for a marketplace that could be molded, both by consumer action and government policy, to shape a stronger society but rather for a marketplace that favored individual interests. This was brought about in no small part by the rise of segmented marketing strategy.
Chapter Ideas
Ch. 1 "Depression: Rise of the Citizen Consumer" - Second Wave consumer's movement and the New Deal
Ch. 2 "War: Citizen Consumers Do Battle on the Home Front" - Consumers supported price fixing measures, and received them. Meanwhile, Blacks had to fight harder for price protection just as they had to go so far as to threaten protests to be an equal part of the wartime labor force.
Ch. 3 "Reconversion: The Emergence of the Consumers' Republic" - Out of post-war recession, the G.I. Bill helped returning soldiers and their families reach higher standards of livings. However, Cohen shows that Blacks and uneducated G.I.'s were left behind by the bill's benefits.
Ch. 4 "Rebellion: Forcing Open the Doors of Public Accommodations" - Civil Rights Movement gained access to public accommodation...
Ch. 5 "Residence: Inequality in Mass Suburbia" - ...just in time for prosperity, including public accommodation, to depart the cities for white suburbia.
Ch.6 "Commerce: Reconfiguring Community Marketplaces" - The rise of shopping centers moved shopping from the public space of the city to the private space of the mall. Cohen discusses court cases fighting to make the mall a public place for political action: initially these cases had success, such as the 1968 Logan Valley Plaza decision to allow union members to picket the plaza, which was the equivalent of a sidewalk. After that, the malls gradually gained back rights, as the Court granted the states the right to decide whether their own constitutions protected access.
Ch.7 "Culture: Segmenting the Mass"- Segmented advertising
Ch.8 "Politics: Purchasers Politicized"- Third-wave consumer's movement
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Christopher Lasch et al -In the final pages, Cohen mentions Lasch and Michael Sandel as critics who have argued liberal faith in a growing economy to solve America's problems failed to consider traditional criticism of individualism. Cohen is more realistic in her criticism, admitting it is difficult to overturn a century of transformation that has turned voters from civic-minded to consumption-minded.
Critique
Cohen breaks new ground with her concept of a Consumer's Republic. I just wish she had done so with a shorter book that relied a bit less on endless statistical examples. She warns in her prologue that she is going to use northern New Jersey, where she grew up, as a frequent case study and I thought it worked well as the changes in that area seemed representative for national trends.
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