Artifacts: The dream factory of mid-century American ads

Graphis, Sep/Oct 2002 by Alden, Todd

If advertisements passively reflect dominant social values and ideologies already existing in their own culture and time, they also actively reinscribe and reproduce them on a mass level. In the context of the rise of print media in the '40s and '50s, the cultural importance of these ads should not be underestimated. Indeed, along with movies, television, and the magazines themselves, they helped construct ideal images of the nuclear WASP family as the anointed, dominant representatives of "all-American" desire. Such mid-century ads are ripe for reconsideration not only in terms of their design or visual appeal, but moreover, for their place in the machine of American myth making and their role as cogs in the factory of American dreams.

Los Angeles-based graphic designer, Jim Heimann deserves kudos for bringing together these slices of neglected American ephemera into two volumes of mid-century print advertisements, AllAmerican Ads of the 40's and AllAmerican Ads of the 50's. Ads, which originally appeared mostly in magazine contexts, take center stage in these volumes. Typical of recent Taschen-style publications, however, these offerings emphasize image and visual style at the expense of substantive, textual componests. "A visual feast," as Taschen's book promoter puts it, the rhetoric of the images is mostly left to speak for itself in stylish, full color lay-outs, including many splashy and lavish full-bleed, double-page spreads, fragmented close-ups, and winking juxtapositions.

Both volumes are divided Into thematic sections: consumer products, entertainment, cars, travel, Industry, fashion and beauty, food and beverage, defense and Interiors. it is fascinating to consider, for example, the popular appeal of canned meats in the 1940s which, like so many other consumer products, were sold by advertising their connection to the war effort. Not surprisingly, World War II and patriotism exerted a particularly strong influence on the ads of the 1940s, whereas the Cold War and post-war prosperity permeated the increasingly idealized ads of the following decade.

In the 1950s, a large number of ads related to frivolities and fads (pink poodles, hula-hoops, Tiki-themes) and other noveles promising "the latest, newest, or fastest." A surprising number of this decade's ads, on the other hand deal with atomic themes, exposing deep-seated fears side-by-side with innocent naivety; both of which were frequently exploited (no surprise) in the service of commerce and patriotism. From a contemporary perspective, we are tempted to read many of these ads in a campy light, but this misses the mark in terms of understanding their original reception. it is not contemporary irony, but dead-pan earnesty-however manipulative and absurd-which helped concoct these Iconic myths: a travel ad for Las Vegas touting nearby nuclear explosions, Ronald Reagan extolling hair products, smiling (white) mothers cooking turkeys in front of pink ovens, smiling (black) Aunt Jemimas hawking flapjacks, perky ladies in girdles, doctors recommending Old Gold cigarettes and so on. This is the iconography of American desire.

Unfortunately, these books barely scratch the surface of the weightier social and political implications. Taschen just wants to have fun and, by and large, the design and tone of these books successfully reaches for the level of entertainment. This Is best exemplified by the author's periodic, drum-roll schtik at the end of each chapter which falls under the heading ("And the Winner Is"), highlighting various superlatives with typically jesting repartee and treating the subject (and for that matter the reader) as contestants in taste-sponsored game shows (with your host, Jim Heimann).

Both volumes are accompanied by "introductions" approximately twice the length of this review. Willy R. Wilkerson II handies the '40s ("From Rationing to Prosperity, American Life in the 1940s") and Heimann takes on the '50s ("The 1950's: From Poodles to Presley, Americans Enter the Atomic Age"). These preambles, as their titles suggest, offer Monarch Notes-type summaries of each decade and are sprinkled with a smatterIng of journalistic statistics ("While 222,862 passenger cars were built in 1943, a staggering 2,148,699 were built in 1949 with General Motors selling the lion's share of 1,240,418"). Among the many things missing, however, is a sustained critical discussion of the ads themselves and their relationship to constructions of race, class, gender, power, desire, Ideology and so on.

Even in the most basic gloss on the ads, formal elements are absent. Also missing is the slightest whiff of an historical appreciation for the ads as they relate to the history of 20th century design. How do the ads differ, for example, from the emerging strategies of television advertisements? How did the advertising industry change as an institution during this period? Every picture tells a story; unfortunately the reader barely gets more than the pictures. While these volumes seem to be gathered as resources for graphic designers and advertisers, not a single graphic designer or advertising firm is credited by name.