Even if a shorter working day became an acceptable strategy during the Great Depression, the economic systems orientation toward profit and its bias toward growth made such a trajectory unpalatable to most captains of industry and the economists who theorised their successes. Although the period after World War Two is often identified as the beginning of the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialised world, the historian William Leach locates its roots in the United States around the turn of the century. By 1951, regular TV programming reached the West Coast, establishing national coverage. Observing her daughter, Barbara, playing with paper dolls, Ruth Handler (19162002) had the idea that dolls could be styled as adults. During this time period, goods became much less expensive and some products were able to sell on a very large scale due to effective marketing campaigns. Though it has become fashionable in recent decades to brand scholars and academics as elites who pour scorn on ordinary people, Bernays and the sociologist Gustave Le Bon were long ago arguing, on behalf of business and political elites, respectively, that the mass of people are incapable of thought. . Vance Packard echoes both Bernays and the consumption economists of the 1920s in his description of the role of the advertising men of the 1950s. In researching his excellent history of the rise of PR, Ewen interviewed Bernays himself in 1990, not long before he turned 99. According to Le Bon, A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first; crowds can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations of ideas, leading to the utter powerlessness of reasoning when it has to fight against sentiment. Bernays and his PR colleagues believed ordinary people to be incapable of logical thought, let alone mastery of abstruse economic, political and ethical data, and saw the need to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it; PR could thus ensure the maintenance of order and corporate control in society. It would be feasible to reduce hours of work further and release workers for the spiritual and pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, and creative or educational pursuits. The postwar boom and popular culture In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as the world's leading industrial power. It replaced the radio as a family's primary source of entertainment and information. By the mid 1960s, some of American youth took a turn in a far out direction. She bases her information on facts and historical evidence. People would be encouraged to give up thrift and husbandry, to value goods over free time. While often criticized for her unrealistic physical proportions and for promoting gender stereotypes, Barbie has also evolved with the times to reflect social and cultural changes in American culture. People, of course, have always consumed the necessities of life food, shelter, clothing and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century. But it ended with many Americans questioning the promises of consumer capitalism. Conformity was common, as young and old alike followed group norms rather than striking out on their own. "Goods are plentiful. In his second major critique of the culture of consumption, "The Waste Makers", Packard identified both functional obsolescence, in which the product wears out quickly and psychological obsolescence, in which products are "designed to become obsolete in the mind of the consumer, even sooner than the components used to make them will fail". During the 1950s, the automobile industry saw growth and change, particularly in its design departments. Shop Lululemon We Made Too Much For Up to 50% Off. Once WWII was over, consumer culture took off again throughout the developed world, partly fuelled by the deprivation of the Great Depression and the rationing of the wartime years and incited with renewed zeal by corporate advertisers using debt facilities and the new medium of television. Fifties Fashions, the peak of the Baby Boomer Years where following the end of the great depression and then World War II people wanted to live a normal life raising a family, teens found rock and roll music and Elvis, parents found more consumer choice and jobs were abundant. Some of features most common to the 20's and 50's were consumerism and the accompanying optimistic mindset, the extent to which new ideas entered society, and discrimination in terms of both sexism and racism. The 1950s was an important year for fashion and for African Americans. *This is an edited version of an article thatoriginally appearedinThe MIT Press Reader, and is republished with permission. In the 1950s, the greater geographic diversity in designers meant more styles from which to choose. In his classic 1928 book "Propaganda," Edward Bernays, one of the pioneers of the public relations industry, put it this way: "Mass production is profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained." Instead, it features many happy human faces and all their wonderful stuff! The two decades led to historical breakthroughs as well as setbacks; they are imperative to the history of the United States. The first one was the mid to late 50s when rock 'n' roll was first sort of invented. Victor Cutter, president of the United Fruit Company, exemplified the concern when he wrote in 1927 that the greatest economic problem of the day was the lack of "consuming power" in relation to the prodigious powers of production. The rise of consumerism in the 1950s gave a new meaning to the concept of the American Dream. The economy was a category that experienced a significant growth in the 50s. The DuMont Companys Revere model wrapped modern technology in colonial revival cabinetry. Thus, just as immense effort was being devoted to persuading people to buy things they did not actually need, manufacturers also began the intentional design of inferior items, which came to be known as planned obsolescence. In his second major critique of the culture of consumption, The Waste Makers, Packard identified both functional obsolescence, in which the product wears out quickly and psychological obsolescence, in which products are designed to become obsolete in the mind of the consumer, even sooner than the components used to make them will fail.. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels; the traditional objective of making products for their self-evident usefulness was displaced by the goal of profit and the need for a machinery of enticement. From fashion to politics, this period is known as one of the most explosive decades in American history. Men were back home and ready to work and women were back to doing their womanly duties again (cooking and cleaning) this reflected the social position of the women following the war. During the Consumer Era, production boomed and consumerism shaped the American marketplace, which spread from cities to suburbs. As television grew, Americans worried about its effect on children. Prospects for further economic expansion were thought to look bleak. If profit and growth were lagging, the system needed new impetus. "Surely this is the ultimate source of the problem. The main thing Americans miss about the those days is the stability. Vance Packard echoes both Bernays and the consumption economists of the 1920s in his description of the role of the advertising men of the 1950s: They want to put some sizzle into their messages by stirring up our status consciousness. Many of the products they are trying to sell have, in the past, been confined to a quality market. The products have been the luxuries of the upper classes. In the 1950's, they were usually office jobs. Marcuse suggested that this voluntary servitude (voluntary inasmuch as it is introjected into the individual) can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrastructure of man [sic], a political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values.. African American and Latino families received no support from the government. Teenagers as a consumer group - "SELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT" Motor car registration rose from eight million in 1920 to more than 28 million by 1929. Overall, products such as the washing machine and dishwashers made life easier and more efficient for families at home. TV ads evolved with the creative revolution and the civil rights movement, embracing hip consumerism and incorporating more underrepresented consumers. In 2008, a similar unravelling began; its implications still remain unknown. Though the television sets that carried the advertising into peoples homes after World War II were new, and were far more powerful vehicles of persuasion than radio had been, the theory and methods were the same perfected in the 1920s by PR experts like Bernays. However, by the, Automobiles allowed for travelling and the transporting of goods to be easily accomplished. Children were precious assets and the center of the family. For those who do not know exactly what happened in the Great Depression and just figure it was a time of famine and unemployment and wasn 't thought of as a big deal, but it sure was. World War II greatly stimulated Americas economy by creating millions of jobs and nearly wiping out unemployment. Plumb in their influential book on the commercialization of 18th-century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich. During this Era there were more and more automobile companies popping up all around the United States. Mexican workers were being booted out of their low laboring jobs because whites needed the money more than them, in result over half a million, In this time it was known as the Gilded Age of American Autos. Each decade had its own unique style of advertising, but one period of time really stands in stark contrast to what we're accustomed to today. But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population. She begins her argument by stating some reasons why the nostalgia for the 1950s exists. The historical issues and events of the fifties and sixties was often propelled by popular culture through art and media such as television, paintings and music. The people became comfortable on how they were living their lives. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were several highly-publicized espionage trials that convicted leading scientists and government figures of espionage, culminating in the 1953 execution of scientist Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel for passing information about the atomic bomb to Russia. There are two simple reasons why. Although inflation has shown signs of peaking . Even if a shorter working day became an acceptable strategy during the Great Depression, the economic systems orientation toward profit and its bias toward growth made such a trajectory unpalatable to most captains of industry and the economists who theorized their successes. In 1959, she convinced her husband, co-owner of Mattel, to develop an adult fashion doll, Barbie. 3. In the 1920s, the target consumer market to be nourished lay at home in the industrialised world. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels. But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population. Edward Cowdrick, an economist who advised corporations on their management and industrial relations policies, called it the new economic gospel of consumption, in which workers (people for whom durable possessions had rarely been a possibility) could be educated in the new skills of consumption.. Release from the perils of famine and premature starvation was in place for most people in the industrialized world soon after the Great War ended. 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