Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940It has become impossible to imagine our culture without advertising. But how and why did advertising become a determiner of our self-image? Advertising the American Dream looks carefully at the two decades when advertising discovered striking new ways to play on our anxieties and to promise solace for the masses. As American society became more urban, more complex, and more dominated by massive bureaucracies, the old American Dream seemed threatened. Advertisers may only have dimly perceived the profound transformations America was experiencing. However, the advertising they created is a wonderfully graphic record of the underlying assumptions and changing values in American culture. With extensive reference to the popular media—radio broadcasts, confession magazines, and tabloid newspapers—Professor Marchand describes how advertisers manipulated modern art and photography to promote an enduring "consumption ethic." |
Contents
Practical heroics and versatility | 5 |
Side by side with the consumer | 13 |
Selling satisfactions | 22 |
3 | 52 |
4 | 88 |
Superadvertising and the specter of saturation | 94 |
Interweaving the commercial | 105 |
5 | 117 |
6 | 164 |
Other editions - View all
Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 Roland Marchand Limited preview - 1985 |
Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 Roland Marchand Limited preview - 1985 |
Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 Roland Marchand Limited preview - 2023 |
Common terms and phrases
adver Advertising Age advertising agency Advertising and Selling advertising leaders advertising tableaux advertising writers advertising's advice agents American advertising American Magazine appeared artists BBDO beauty Better Homes Bruce Barton campaign Chicago Tribune Christine Frederick clients color Company consumption ethic copy copywriters cultural depicted depression Durstine elite ensemble Fisher Body George Batten Home Journal Homes and Gardens Hoover Company illustrations Ink Monthly July June JWT Archives JWT News Letter Kotex Ladies Listerine living Lord and Thomas manufacturers mass Minutes of Creative Minutes of Representatives modern mother motor N. W. Ayer parable photographs popular Printers radio readers Representatives Meeting role Ruthrauff and Ryan Saturday Evening Post scenes Sept skyscraper soap social society style suggested T. J. Jackson tabloid taste Tide tising True Story urban visual clichés Walter Thompson woman women