ANXIETY AND CONSENSUS REVISITED: CONSUMERISM, DOMESTIC IDEALISM, AND "THE ELECTRONIC HEARTH"

Summary: Today we will continue our consideration of the postwar cultural moment, focusing on consumer culture, domestic ideology, and the impact of television. We will place these topics within the cultural dialectic of anxiety and consensus discussed on Monday. We will continue to think about the place of technology in the postwar American imagination, shifting from military technology to television. Our continuing attention to technological themes will be useful context for the Kurt Vonnegut stories in your photocopy packet. If technology is one of the central themes for today's lecture, the other is domestic idealism. Focusing on I Love Lucy, we will consider television's reinforcement of dominant gender and family arrangements.

I. Introduction: Themes of Consensus and Anxiety Revisited

II. Consumerism, Suburbia, Domestic Idealism

A. Postwar affluence enables growth of consumer culture

1. "The Kitchen Debate": Consumerism is the American way

2. Sample print advertisements: What do such documents suggest about American culture after 1945?

a. conformity and consensus

b. personality and appearance as means to success

c. ads directed at mothers reflect difficulty of post-WWII maternal role

B. Suburban growth and the home-centered American dream

1. social and material consequences of suburbanization

2. William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956) [see excerpt] and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950)

C. Domestic Idealism: The family as a haven in an uncertain world

III. Television's revolutionary impact on American culture

A. Decline of movie industry

B. Television

1. the "major discursive medium in postwar America" (George Lipsitz)

2. reinforces postwar emphasis on comfort, consumerism, and complacency

3. helps Americans to adapt to changing cultural landscape of postwar America

C. Impact on family life: "the electronic hearth"

D. Impact on business and consumerism

1. competition for advertising revenues reshapes television programming

2. commercials: "the message of the medium is the commercial"

E. Popular postwar programs

1. sitcoms focusing on middle-class family life: I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best

2. police dramas and westerns

3. urban, ethnic sitcoms: I Remember Mama,The Amos 'n' Andy Show

a. reflect television's function in helping audiences to adapt to new social and cultural realities

b. reinforce ethnic and racial stereotypes

4. overall, television reinforces consumerism and conformity

F. In-class screening: I Love Lucy episode and commercials

1. reinforces traditional gender division of labor

2. illustrates close connection between program content and commerical sponsorship

3. reflects ethnic stereotyping typical of postwar television: the humor of Desi's "un-American" accent

To us, diversity, the right to choose, . . . is the most important thing. We don't have one decision made at the top by one government official. . . . We have many different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machines so that the housewives have a choice. . . . Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets?

-Vice President Richard Nixon at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959

(quoted in Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound, 1988, 17)