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. Strong consumer spending led to even more demand for clothingand accessories to accompany every style. The 1950s are most often remembered as a quiet decade, a decade of conformity, stability, and normalcy. Architect and poet Paolo Belardi traces the many conditions and situations that have inspired extraordinary ideas across the arts and sciences. 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. By the mid 1960s, some of American youth took a turn in a far out direction. Since the 1980s she has taken on many new careers, from police officer to paleontologist to presidential candidate. Consumerism In The 1950's. The 1950s was an exciting time for many, the war was over and the economy began to flourish once more. The non-settler European colonies were not regarded as viable venues for these new markets, since centuries of exploitation and impoverishment meant that few people there were able to pay. 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 1950s ushered in an era of consumerism that has rolled on virtually unopposed to the present. But business did not support such a trajectory, and it was not until the Great Depression that hours were reduced, in response to overwhelming levels of unemployment. She begins her argument by stating some reasons why the nostalgia for the 1950s exists. The great corporation which is in danger of having its profits taxed away or its sales fall off or its freedom impeded by legislative action must have recourse to the public to combat successfully these menaces.. The 1950s were sometimes referred to as "the advertiser's dream decade." The short depression of 19211922 led business leaders and economists in the US to fear that the immense productive powers created over the previous century had grown sufficiently to meet the basic needs of the entire population and had probably triggered a permanent crisis of overproduction. Surface Studio vs iMac - Which Should You Pick? ", Galbraith quotes the Presidents Materials Policy Commission setting out its premise that economic growth is sacrosanct. The capitalist system, dependent on a logic of never-ending growth from its earliest inception, confronted the plenty it created in its home states, especially the US, as a threat to its very existence. Scrappy upstarts challenged established networks, innovated programming, and catered to under-served audiences. The television was one of the most popular home appliances in the 1950s. During the Consumer Era, production boomed and consumerism shaped the American marketplace, which spread from cities to suburbs. Charles Kettering, general director of General Motors Research Laboratories, equated such perpetual change with progress. The front-line thinkers of the emerging advertising and public relations industries turned to the key insights of Sigmund Freud, Bernayss uncle. During the 50s, there was a deeply ingrained social stigma against divorce, and the divorce rate dropped. On the other hand, issues arose during that time as well, such as the fear of communism. This department store took window shopping to a new level with a machine called the "Tell-it-to." Consumerism in the 1950s Susan Nacey 2. They started new lives in suburban, middle class utopias hoping to achieve the American dream (Shmoop Editorial Team). After WWI, America became one of the worlds most formidable superpowers. She is the author of "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet," from which this article is adapted. During the 1950s, a sense of uniformity pervaded American society. To Galbraith, who had just published "The Affluent Society", the wastefulness he observed seemed foolhardy, but he was pessimistic about curtailment. In a 1929 article called "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied", he stated that "there is no place anyone can sit and rest in an industrial situation. The 1950s was an exciting time for many, the war was over and the economy began to flourish once more. With many new additions, advertising was able to exponentially grow and did so through the use of the newspaper and television (technological . He argued that business "cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable". 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 cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society, Leach writes in his 1993 book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. Significantly, it was individual desire that was democratized, rather than wealth or political and economic power. While the consumption of goods can drive economic growth, overconsumption can also have devastating effects on the environment, the financial situations and mental health of the general public. Facts about the American Consumerism 1920s for kids. Harlem Renaissance Dbq 928 Words | 4 Pages This was a period of economic boom that followed World War II. Consumerism - The 1950's: An age of affluence Consumer Demand Spurs Economic Growth Rising incomes, easy credit, and aggressive marketing helped create a culture of consumption in the 1950s. The United States began to transition from the heavy industry of war materials into a consumer based economy, pumping out billions of different products for consumption. In 1930, Kellogg adopted a six-hour shift to help accommodate unemployed workers. 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. Post-war consumerism reflected the traditional values promoted by politicians and popular culture. Its apparent the 1950s & 1960s varied from one another. Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Conspicuous Consumption and the Imaging of the 1980's Essex Girl Rachel Rye 4. Print advertisements allowed the consumer to read the ad more than once, and so it could include more specific details on the product than a television or radio advertisement (Young 39). Want creation advertising is a ten billion dollar industry.. Predicated on debt, it took place in an economy mired in speculation and risky borrowing. 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. Coontz explains that the sexism, As I mentioned previously, the sixties were a time of change. After cars became more popular as people saw them. Over the course of the 20th Century, capitalism moulded the ordinary person into a consumer. Overall, products such as the washing machine and dishwashers made life easier and more efficient for families at home. The opening page of Propaganda discloses his solution: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. During that decade, the U.S. economy grew by 37%. throwaway. But there have been unexpected benefits, too. Further, there was a rise in consumerism which resulted in a domino effect on the economy. 2/10/2003 The rise of American consumerism has not come without hits to the social, political, and cultural landscape. The introduction of time payment arrangements facilitated the extension of such buying further and further down the economic ladder. Magazines in mid-century became vehicles for dissemination of consumerist attitudes and the promotion of group and professional . In 2008, a similar unravelling began; its implications still remain unknown. What of the appetite itself?, he asks. Motor car registration rose from eight million in 1920 to more than 28 million by 1929. While the decades were similar in heightened . Stuart Ewen, in his history of the public relations industry, saw the birth of commercial radio in 1921 as a vital tool in the great wave of debt-financed consumption in the 1920s "a privately owned utility, pumping information and entertainment into peoples homes". 1950s Important News and Events, Key Technology Fashion and Popular Culture. By accepting these. Nationwide, manufacturers efforts to expand consumption coincided civil rights activists goal to desegregate business. The consumerism of the present day has roots that go back at least a century (Credit: Getty Images). It was an idea also put forward by the new "consumption economists" such as Hazel Kyrk and Theresa McMahon, and eagerly embraced by many business leaders. During this Era there were more and more automobile companies popping up all around the United States. The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War One, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. The 1920s was a time of great change. Americans purchased homes, cars (sometimes two), television sets, new home furnishings, modern refrigerators, clothes for work and their new found leisure time, barbeque grills, lawn mowersthe list is endless. "First we share the belief of the American people in the principle of Growth," the report maintains, specifically endorsing "ever more luxurious standards of consumption". 1950s American culture was characterized by a boom in consumerism, which bolstered the economy and left cultural impacts as well. In fact, the American consumer was praised as a patriotic citizen in the 1950s, contributing to the ultimate success of the American way of life. examples of traditional American TV. This weathervane used the iconic image of Colonel Sanders as the companys unifying brand. The U.S. was recovering from World War II and GIs were coming home. A few things that were important in the fifties was segregation, fashion and the influence that the fifties had on fashion. President Herbert Hoovers 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration "on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires", hailed an "almost insatiable appetite for goods and services", and envisaged "a boundless field before us new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied". In the 1950's, they were usually office jobs. Consumerism became a way of framing the economy and day-to-day life in the 20th century. Unless [the consumer] could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.. In 1960, more than 70 percent of families still looked much like the family of the 1950s, with a man who brought in the family 's sole income, children and a stay-at-home wife and mother. U.S. production was more than 12 times greater in 1920 than in 1860, while the population over the same period had increased by only a factor of three, suggesting just how much additional wealth was theoretically available. The fifties were the decade of reform to the better led by president Eisenhower. Requiring no significant degree of literacy on the part of its audience, Ewen writes, radio gave interested corporations unprecedented access to the inner sanctums of the public mind. The advent of television greatly magnified the potential impact of advertisers messages, exploiting image and symbol far more adeptly than print and radio had been able to do. This was followed by a rapid proliferation of radios, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators. It would be the most influential youth movement of any decade - a decade striking a dramatic gap between the youth and the generation before them. Racism was also a huge factor that seems to be hid by the appearance of the 1950s. . As the popular historian of the time Frederick Allen wrote, Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. From 'Make do and Mend' to 'Your Country Needs You to Spend': Constructing the Consumer in Late-Modernity Alison Hulme 3. 5 Ways to Connect Wireless Headphones to TV. Families had 30% more spending power in 1959 compared to 1950 figures. In these circumstances, there was a social choice to be made. marketing strategy convincing American consumers they need new and better products. The postwar boom and popular culture In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as the world's leading industrial power. such as the early civil rights movement's demand for access to public accommodations in the 1940s and 1950s and the consumer and environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s . Kentucky Fried Chicken weathervane, 1960s. 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. Post World War I, the era marked the beginning of modern times with new and worthy developments. It was seen as the calm before the storm of social chaos that swept over the country in the more contentious 1960s. It was indeed a time we perceive as innocent, wholesome, and peaceful. 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.. This research paper briefly gives examples from advances in technology, transportation, and entertainment while discussing their benefits to the United States. Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. . Key Points. Unless he could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets. Progress was about the endless replacement of old needs with new, old products with new. This new burst in debt-financed consumerism was, again, incited intentionally. 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. Also Political battles centred around communism and capitalism dominated the decade. Although the period after World War II is often identified as the beginning of the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialized world, the historian William Leach locates its roots in the United States around the turn of the century. It was marked by major events such as the Cold War, rise of capitalism and consumerism, the civil rights movement, and anti-communism, which changed the fate of the country. 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". Some messages were so strong that people were told they weren't patriotic if they chose to save money instead of spending it. Founded: 1950 in Quincy, Mass. The Vietnam War was widely seen as a controversial conflict and opened insight to Australians as to what was actually happening through music and television which in turn swayed the public opinion of Australias involvement with the war. Business and political leaders claimed consumerism was more than shopping: it defined the benefits of capitalism. The products have been the luxuries of the upper classes. Here began the slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts, write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. The Czech writers darkly humorous novel, published in 1936, anticipated our current reality with eerie accuracy. 50,000,000. number of tv sets by 1960. While some of the youth became politically active, others escaped into the counterculture disbanding their faith in government and the ideals, In her essay, What We Really Miss About the 1950s, Stephany Coontz talks about the myth of the 1950s. The prospect of ever-extendable consumer desire, characterized as progress, promised a new way forward for modern manufacture, a means to perpetuate economic growth. The commodification of reality and the manufacture of demand have had serious implications for the construction of human beings in the present day, where, to quote philosopher Herbert Marcuse, "people recognise themselves in their commodities". From fashion to politics, this period is known as one of the most explosive decades in American history. Though it is status that is being sold, it is endless material objects that are being consumed. In researching his excellent history of the rise of PR, Ewen interviewed Bernays himself in 1990, not long before he turned 99. Kyrk argued for ever-increasing aspirations: a high standard of living must be dynamic, a progressive standard, where envy of those just above oneself in the social order incited consumption and fueled economic growth. Notions of meeting everyones needs with an adequate level of production did not feature. Bernays saw himself as a propaganda specialist, a public relations counsel, and PR as a more sophisticated craft than advertising as such; it was directed at hidden desires and subconscious urges of which its targets would be unaware. In Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s, Traci Parker offers a historical link between the current struggles and the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, the target consumer market to be nourished lay at home in the industrialized world. Though men and women had been forced into new employment patterns during World War II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed. Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer and historian. 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