Consumerism on TV

Popular Media from the 1950s to the Present

Alison Hulme

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317161165
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Presenting case studies of well-known shows including Will and Grace, Birds of a Feather, Sex and the City and Absolutely Fabulous, as well as 'reality' television, this book examines the transformations that have occurred in consumer society since its appearance and the ways in which these have been constructed and represented in popular media imagery. With analyses of the ways in which consumerism has played out in society, Consumerism on TV highlights specific aspects of the changing nature of consumerism by way of considerations of gender, sexuality and class, as well as less definable changes such as those to do with the celebration of ostentatious greed or the righteousness of the 'ethical' shopper. With attention to the highly delineated consumer field in which 'shopping' as an embedded practice of everyday life is caught between escapism and politics, authors explore a variety of themes, such as the extent to which consumerism has become embedded in forging identity, the positing of consumerism as a form of activism, the visibility of the gay male consumer and invisibility of the lesbian consumer, and the (re)stratification of consumer types along class lines. An engaging invitation to consider whether the positioning of consumerism through on-screen depictions is indicative of a new type of non-philosophical politics of 'choice' - a form of marketised, (a)political pragmatism - this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and cultural and media studies, with interests in class, consumption and gender.

Chapter 1
Blurring Fiction with Reality: American Television and Consumerism in the 1950s

Susan Nacey

Introduction

On the evening of 15 October 1958, veteran correspondent Edward R. Murrow stood at the podium and looked out over the attendees of the annual Radio Television Digital News Association gala. He waited until complete silence descended, and then launched into a speech that he had written and typed himself, to be sure that no one could possibly have had any forewarning about its contents. What followed was a scathing attack on the state of the radio and television industries, all the more meaningful coming from a man who was widely acknowledged as not only the architect of broadcast journalism but also a staunch champion of ethics and integrity in broadcasting.¹ This was the correspondent who had stood on the rooftops of London with bombs exploding in the background to bring Americans news of the Blitz, whose voice was familiar to millions of Americans. This was the man who had publicly eviscerated the redbaiting Senator Joseph McCarthy, helping to put an end to a shameful period in America’s history (see e.g. Mirkinson, 2014; Sperber, 1986). And it became apparent that evening that this was also a man bitterly disappointed with the “incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news” that the broadcasting industry had become:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

(Murrow, 1958)

The generation of Americans represented at that gala had lived through the 1930s, a decade dominated by the effects of the Great Depression. They had also survived the 1940s, overshadowed by the uncertainties of war. No one series of events, however, clearly stands out to easily characterise the 1950s. Rather, a decade that opened with the Korean conflict drew to a close one year after Murrow’s speech with a debate between the Soviet Premier and a future President in which the esteemed American statesman vociferously defended the merits of consumerism as being one of the greatest advantages of democracy. Perhaps more than anything else then, the 1950s are marked by the development of a general perception favouring the overwhelming importance of ‘things’ and the joy that may be derived from buying and owning them. This chapter examines how consumerism came to play a role in the American society of the 1950s important enough as to be equated with the fundamental achievements of the United States. The discussion focuses on the interplay between consumerism at home and consumerism on screen – the ‘decadence’ which so incensed Murrow. Central factors include the historic development of a new suburban lifestyle and the widespread acquisition of television, together with the dominance of that new medium by advertising agencies and sponsors eager to sell their products. These facets are explored here, after an initial look into exactly how the many popular dramatic series of the 1950s served blatant lessons in capitalism and consumerism. Links between the fictional portrayals of family life as seen on television are then drawn to the real-life Kitchen Debates of 1959. Finally, the late 1950s quiz show scandals and their consequences are explored. Did the bubble of consumerism then burst, or did it only slightly deflate?

Soaps, Suburbanites, and Modern Appliances

By the mid-1950s, the family melodrama had become one of the most popular types of television programming available. Week after week, real-life families tuned in to watch the exploits of the Cleavers, the Andersons, the Nelsons, and the Stones on the well-known shows Leave It to Beaver (1957–1963), Father Knows Best (1954–1963), The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–1966), and The Donna Reed Show (1958–1966). Remarkable about all these shows was a certain ‘sameness’ in plots and settings, together with a central role of consumer goods in the lives of the characters. The homes of these well-known television families were fairly indistinguishable from one another. Always located in the suburbs, each home contained a formal dining room, living room, kitchen, dinette, formal entryway, a den, a few bedrooms, and a backyard complete with a picnic table. These houses were filled with books, comfortable furniture, and the latest consumer appliances, as well as a car of the latest make and model parked in the garage (Leibman, 1995: 230–231).

Not only were the starring families suburban, they were decidedly (white) middle-class, with middle-class common sense. No maid for these families; Mom made the family’s meals and cleaned the home. Each family was financially secure. Neither Mom nor children had to earn money to help support the family, although occasionally a child would work (boys would take a paper route, girls would baby sit) to earn extra money for some especially attractive purchase. Although the Puritan work ethic was valued, home and its accompanying pleasures were more important than any job. Workaholic fathers were to be pitied, and the father protagonists all managed to return home from the city in time to effectively and fairly deal with their children’s various transgressions. Unlike most real-life fathers commuting between the suburbs and city (see Halberstam, 1993: 157), Jim Anderson and Ward Cleaver were usually home before school let out; Ozzie Nelson was shown only on weekends, and Alex Stone conveniently maintained his pediatrician’s practice at home. Extravagant wealth was disapproved of, since one clearly cannot appreciate any particular commodity if one has much too much; poverty too was mostly ignored because the poor were still trying to meet their basic needs and therefore lacked the purchasing power to buy gadgets. All these suburban families led a sheltered life, with no deprivation (Leibman, 1995: 231–247).

The material necessities of these TV families being thus easily met, stress was laid upon material desire and the need to purchase products with discretion. Besides their ubiquitous presence, ‘things’ formed the basis of one out of every eight plots, although buying for its own sake was typically frowned upon. In order to best appreciate what one buys, one must be discerning in choice of products. Moreover, consumer items were frequently used as incentives or tests of character. The girl must show her determination to buy that dress by working in the store; the boy must demonstrate frugality by saving money to buy that boat. Consequently, these television shows sent the message that although hard work is its own reward, hard work also enables one to buy (particular) consumer goods which are in themselves important for their reward function (Leibman, 1995: 234–236). An effective way to shock the family was for the teenage girl to announce that she wanted neither party nor gifts on her 18th birthday.

The targeted audience for such dramatic programmes with their message of continuous consumption consisted of a new breed of American: the suburbanite. With both the Depression and the Second World War in the past, young people turned towards other preoccupations. The marriage rate increased significantly after the war, with the average age for marrying dropping to 20 in the 1950s. A baby boom, which had begun during the hostilities, continued until 1964; the nation’s birth rate by the end of the 1950s almost surpassed that of India (Macdonald, 1988: 321–322). Americans faced a severe housing crisis at the beginning of the 1950s, brought about by the decline in residential construction that had begun during the Depression and continued throughout the war-time years, and which had been further aggravated by the needs of returning GI’s to establish homes for their young families. In response, a new model for living quickly gained popularity: mass produced tract houses. This suburban development started in 1947 with the establishment of Levittown on Long Island, where William Levitt first adapted Henry Ford’s technique of mass production to housing. Unable to send the product through an assembly line, Levitt in effect brought the assembly line to the product. Specifically, he broke the construction process down into 27 separate steps, each of which became the designated speciality of a single mobile team whose job then became to move from house to house to carry out their particular task. In this way, a community offering roughly 17,000 affordable Cape Cod colonials and ranch houses virtually grew overnight within easy reach of Manhattan, in what had until then only been farmland (Halberstam, 1993: 131–137). Thanks to help from the Federal Housing Administration and veteran mortgage loans, these quintessentially identical houses offered newly-established families the chance to afford their slice of the American Dream (Marling, 1994: 253). President Eisenhower’s ambitious highway programme further spurred the attractiveness of the suburbs, as families living there could still enjoy ease of mobility (Boyer, 2005: 104–105).

This mass movement away from the cities created new communities of primarily young, middle-class adults who were cut off from the traditional community life available in urban areas. Suburbia provided an alternative sense of community, giving people a new sense of belonging and identity; television did the same, as fictional TV families came to be more frequent visitors to the home than now-distant relatives (Cross, 2000: 95–96; Halberstam, 1993: 195; Spigel, 1992: 100–101). An American identity soon came be realised through a pressing need to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ through acquiring a ‘standard package of consumer goods’ (Marling, 1994: 254), made possible in a society that not only had more disposable income than ever before but also had access to easy lines of credit (Halberstam, 1993: 473, 505). Reservations about indebtedness held by earlier generations were swept away as post-war Americans no longer felt they should deny themselves immediate gratification, even when purchasing big-ticket items (Halberstam, 1993: 505; Young and Young, 2004: 6). The 1951 launch of the first modern credit card that came to enjoy widespread use, Diner’s Club, proved to be a sign of the times. BankAmericard (now Visa) and American Express later followed suit in 1958 with the introduction of their cards (Rosenberg, 2014; VISA, n.d.; Woolsey and Gerson, 2009).

Popular media throughout the 1950s glorified this frenzy of acquisition, and the dream of a suburban house with all the accompanying modern appliances became central to the American concept of success. Appliances came to represent more than simple tools; they became statements about a household’s possibilities and aspirations. Indeed, modernity and technology became focal motifs of the post-war American identity, as the Americans of the 1950s bought three-fourths of all appliances then produced in the world. Foreign critics maintained that the United States underwent a shift of values towards materialism: ‘The only way to catch the spirit of the times is to write a handbook on home appliances’ (Marling, 1994: 267). Manufacturers, eager to take advantage of a market which they hoped would never be saturated, advanced a number of different strategies to stimulate purchases. In the early 1950s, cars and kitchen equipment were decorated with ‘gorp’, chrome ornamentation that was supposed to identify a deluxe product. Later, fearing that the market might be filled, manufacturers dropped the gorp and instead featured trendy shades, emphasising the importance of a colour-coordinated, integrated kitchen. Such design changes, plus product development and ‘heavy doses of psychology’ all combined to part Americans from their income (Marling, 1994: 255–265).

Television was undoubtedly the 1950s product which best represented the crowning expression of societal advancement and which also proved the perfect tool for manufacturers’ psychological manoeuvrings. Although television was virtually unknown at the start of the decade, both its availability and popularity increased dramatically in the course of the 1950s. A rarity in American households at the beginning of the decade, television sets were commonplace by its close. By 1960, 90 per cent of all households had at least one set and the average viewer watched an average of five hours per day (Cohen, 2003: 302; Cross, 2000: 100). Magazine advertisements promoting the sale of television sets suggested that television was a means to bring the family closer. Sets were often pictured as a replacement for the traditional hearth, depicted as surrounded by contented family members sitting in a semi-circle. Some 1950s studies showed that many Americans optimistically believed that television would strengthen family ties, bring back romance, and cure juvenile delinquency (Spigel, 1992: 43–45).

Along with the proliferation of television sets appeared a slew of related products such as the TV tray table, introduced in 1952, to allow the family to enjoy dinner while not missing a moment of television entertainment. The convenience and portability of the toaster was promoted, as it allowed the housewife to make nutritious snacks for her family in any room of the house. TV dinners became popular after their 1953 introduction by Swanson because they allowed viewers to ‘dine in the company of TV stars’ (Marling, 1994: 232–235). Furniture manufacturers designed special furniture and lighting to enhance the family’s sense of being in a theatre while watching television; even Western motifs on wallpaper were created as TV tie-ins (Spigel, 1992: 106–109). Girls of the 1950s were encouraged to knit the ‘Saturday Night TV Sweater’ for Dad to enjoy while watching the tube (Macdonald, 1988: 330). And the Western-Holly Company went so far as to design a combination television/stove in 1952, allowing the housewife to keep an eye on her roast and her TV screen at the same time (Spigel, 1992: 73). Television entertainment thus came to influence nearly all aspects of American social lives, in a way that was unprecedented in consumer history: Swanson, ‘after all, [ … ] had not tried to market Radio Dinners’ (Edwards, 2004).

Advertising Agencies and Sponsors: How to Influence People

Quick to recognise a potential gold mine, advertising agencies and the sponsors whom they represented did their best to influence the new medium. In the past, the home had served as a barrier to the enticements of commercialisation, as nothing beyond print advertisements and the occasional door-to-door salesman had managed to penetrate its outer façade. The home-as-sanctuary ideal first changed with the advent of commercial radio in the 1930s and 1940s, but the persuasive powers of television in the 1950s came to rapidly surpass that of any other medium (Young and Young, 2004: 39). Studies conducted after the completion of the first national coaxial cable had been laid showed that toilets flushed across households on cue immediately after a popular programme ended, indicating that Americans were adjusting even their most personal habits to accommodate the broadcast schedule (Halberstam, 1993: 184). Television networks and sponsors also learned from past experiences in radio broadcasting. Whereas the first advertisements in radio (in 1922) had sparked protests, advertising on television had been a foregone conclusion. Rather than asking whether advertising on television should be permitted, debates revolved around how advertising should best be carried out. Would a TV audience tolerate commercial interruptions? Would television require a darkened room and the viewer’s complete attention? Could television possibly replace radio, or would the housewife continue to listen to radio broadcasts as she performed her daily chores (Boddy, 1990: 18–20)?

The initial task of television producers was therefore to teach the family how to consume television itself. The industry targeted the housewife, whom it was assumed was the primary purchaser for the entire family, and designed programmes to fit into her day. Television soap operas proved to be one solution; their constant reiteration of previous plots together with abundance of repetitive dialog permitted women to divide their attention between television and work. By 1954, Search for Tomorrow was the second most popular daytime television show, where viewers followed the ups and downs in the life of a Midwestern housewife. Another solution was found in the segmented variety show, which allowed women to tune in or out of the different segments. And the magazine format, which debuted with NBC’s Today in 1952, perfected the integration of housekeeping advice with sales messages (Spigel, 1992: 75–83).

By making housework pleasant, television sponsors hoped to instill the habit of television viewing. And if Mom discovered that she was missing out on prime time because of her chores in the home, then the sponsors were the first to suggest ‘a corrective cycle of commodity purchases’ – buying a dishwasher, for example – to allow her the luxury of enjoying her evening in front of the set with the family (Spigel, 1992: 92). As ABC Vice President Alexander Stronach Jr. exclaimed, “It’s a good thing electric dishwashers and washing machines were invented. The housewives will need them” (quoted in Spigel, 1992: 77). Television seemed particularly suited to small-ticket consumer items like those of Proctor and Gamble and General Mills, because it stimulated impulse buying of brands which had already been ‘pre-sold’ through advertising. As a consequence, the type of television advertisers shifted in the course of the decade away from manufacturers like Ford, RCA, and GM, who produced expensive (and recession-sensitive) products (Boddy, 1990: 157–158).

While striving to ensure an addicted day-time audience, sponsors and networks also devoted more energy to targeting audiences during the prime time television hours of 7:00–10:30 pm because so many sets were then in use, and there were more viewers per set than during the day. However, disputes between the networks and the sponsors over control of prime time programming were rampant during the 1950s. Sponsors, who paid production costs, were eager to have their programmes shown at the optimal hours; as a result, programming became almost haphazard, with no clear direction. Networks strove to remedy this and gain control over programme scheduling to create ‘block programming’ of a logical successio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Blurring Fiction with Reality: American Television and Consumerism in the 1950s
• Chapter 2 From Make do and Mend to Your Country Needs You to Spend: Constructing the Consumer in Late-Modernity
• Chapter 3 Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Conspicuous Consumption and the Imaging of the 1980’s Essex Girl
• Chapter 4 Absolutely Ethical?: Irony, Subversion and Prescience in Absolutely Fabulous
• Chapter 5 The Good Life on the Small Screen: Ethical Consumption, Food Television and Green Makeovers
• Chapter 6 Consuming the Lesbian Body: Post-Feminist Heteroflexible Subjectivities in Sex and the City and The L Word
• Chapter 7 Effeminacy and Expertise, Excess and Equality: Gay Best Friends as Consumers and Commodities in Contemporary Television
• Chapter 8 A Thousand Diamonds: Gypsies, Romanies and Travellers and Transgressive Consumerism in Reality Television
• Chapter 9 Shopping for Identity: Post-Feminist Flâneuses in Sex and the City and In the Cut
• Index