Consuming women: Images of Americanization in the "American Century"

Diplomatic History

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 479-497

  Rosenberg, Emily S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0043284522     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0145-2096.00178     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. There is a substantial theoretical literature discussing the relationship between "Americanization" and "modernity." Is modernity a process that takes firmest root in America and thus becomes confused with a unique national culture? Is Americanization a process that becomes so globalized that it comes to be recognized simply as modernity? An introduction to some of the literature on these issues is John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, 1991). While I am mindful of the various objections to either term, and the ideological implications of linking them together, I am nonetheless using the terms "modernity" and "Americanization" to signify similar discourses that describe the culture (elaborated in America) that accompanies modes of mass-production/mass-consumption/mass-mediazation, a culture in which advertising and communications and transportation revolutions have led to greater physical and psychic mobility. It is this culture, I believe, that has marked both the American Century and the more globalized process that Arjun Appadurai describes as Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996).
2. There is a substantial theoretical literature discussing the relationship between "Americanization" and "modernity." Is modernity a process that takes firmest root in America and thus becomes confused with a unique national culture? Is Americanization a process that becomes so globalized that it comes to be recognized simply as modernity? An introduction to some of the literature on these issues is John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, 1991). While I am mindful of the various objections to either term, and the ideological implications of linking them together, I am nonetheless using the terms "modernity" and "Americanization" to signify similar discourses that describe the culture (elaborated in America) that accompanies modes of mass-production/mass-consumption/mass-mediazation, a culture in which advertising and communications and transportation revolutions have led to greater physical and psychic mobility. It is this culture, I believe, that has marked both the American Century and the more globalized process that Arjun Appadurai describes as Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996).
3. Frank Costigliola, "'Unceasing Pressure for Penetration': Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan's Formation of the Cold War," Journal of American History 83 (March 1997): 1309-40, argues that tropes related to gender can heighten the emotional content of structured images.
4. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983), 52. Acceptance of the idea that slave women should work in the fields (denying them, in effect, status as "women") similarly confirmed and reinforced, among white Southerners, the essential inequality of people of African descent that was the foundation of race-based slavery. See Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985).
5. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983), 52. Acceptance of the idea that slave women should work in the fields (denying them, in effect, status as "women") similarly confirmed and reinforced, among white Southerners, the essential inequality of people of African descent that was the foundation of race-based slavery. See Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985).
6. These ideas are developed in Ian R. Tyrrell, Woman's Work/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1800-1930 (Chapel Hill, 1991) and Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the Century China (New Haven, 1984). Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, 1997), 75-81, discusses such views in the context of what she calls "feminist Orientalism."
7. These ideas are developed in Ian R. Tyrrell, Woman's Work/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1800-1930 (Chapel Hill, 1991) and Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the Century China (New Haven, 1984). Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, 1997), 75-81, discusses such views in the context of what she calls "feminist Orientalism."
8. These ideas are developed in Ian R. Tyrrell, Woman's Work/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1800-1930 (Chapel Hill, 1991) and Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the Century China (New Haven, 1984). Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, 1997), 75-81, discusses such views in the context of what she calls "feminist Orientalism."
9. Quoted in Roland Marchard, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, 1985), 162.
10. Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago, 1985), 187-275, Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York, 1998), and Janet Staiger, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis, 1995), 6, all discuss the meanings of the "new woman." Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York, 1988) emphasizes the connection between projections of modernity and thin body images. It should be noted that throughout the foregoing discussion the emblem of the American "new woman" was clearly (at least into the late Cold War period) bound by race. Since the 1970s, with the "Madonna revolution" and the growing prominence of African-American models, a somewhat different international projection of the "American woman" may have emerged, but this essay will concentrate on the earlier periods when American nationality was almost exclusively represented abroad in terms of "whiteness."
11. Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago, 1985), 187-275, Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York, 1998), and Janet Staiger, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis, 1995), 6, all discuss the meanings of the "new woman." Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York, 1988) emphasizes the connection between projections of modernity and thin body images. It should be noted that throughout the foregoing discussion the emblem of the American "new woman" was clearly (at least into the late Cold War period) bound by race. Since the 1970s, with the "Madonna revolution" and the growing prominence of African-American models, a somewhat different international projection of the "American woman" may have emerged, but this essay will concentrate on the earlier periods when American nationality was almost exclusively represented abroad in terms of "whiteness."
12. Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago, 1985), 187-275, Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York, 1998), and Janet Staiger, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis, 1995), 6, all discuss the meanings of the "new woman." Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York, 1988) emphasizes the connection between projections of modernity and thin body images. It should be noted that throughout the foregoing discussion the emblem of the American "new woman" was clearly (at least into the late Cold War period) bound by race. Since the 1970s, with the "Madonna revolution" and the growing prominence of African-American models, a somewhat different international projection of the "American woman" may have emerged, but this essay will concentrate on the earlier periods when American nationality was almost exclusively represented abroad in terms of "whiteness."
13. Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago, 1985), 187-275, Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York, 1998), and Janet Staiger, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis, 1995), 6, all discuss the meanings of the "new woman." Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York, 1988) emphasizes the connection between projections of modernity and thin body images. It should be noted that throughout the foregoing discussion the emblem of the American "new woman" was clearly (at least into the late Cold War period) bound by race. Since the 1970s, with the "Madonna revolution" and the growing prominence of African-American models, a somewhat different international projection of the "American woman" may have emerged, but this essay will concentrate on the earlier periods when American nationality was almost exclusively represented abroad in terms of "whiteness."
14. Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York, 1991), 53-54 (quote), 85-87, 115; Marchard, Advertising the American Dream, 158, 161.
15. Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York, 1991), 53-54 (quote), 85-87, 115; Marchard, Advertising the American Dream, 158, 161.
16. N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
17. J. Walter Thompson Archives, microfilm, reel 41, International Advertisements, Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
18. A discussion of the market research is in Jeffrey L. Merron, "American Culture Goes Abroad: J. Walter Thompson and the General Motors Export Account, 1927-1933" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1991), 142-51.
19. J. Walter Thompson Archives, microfilm, reel 41, International Advertisements.
20. Walter Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945-1961(New York, 1997), 131-41.
21. Richard Nixon, "Russia as I Saw It," National Geographic Magazine 116 (December 1959): 717.
22. Reinhold Wagnleitner, "The Irony of American Culture Abroad: Austria and the Cold War," in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago, 1989), 285-301.
23. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 43-49; Robert Rydell, Worlds of Fairs: The Century of Progress Exhibitions (Chicago, 1993), 193-211 (203, quote). Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture abroad in the 1950s (Washington, 1997), 104-68 (159, quote) discusses the roles of Katherine Howard and Lee Canfield.
24. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 43-49; Robert Rydell, Worlds of Fairs: The Century of Progress Exhibitions (Chicago, 1993), 193-211 (203, quote). Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture abroad in the 1950s (Washington, 1997), 104-68 (159, quote) discusses the roles of Katherine Howard and Lee Canfield.
25. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 43-49; Robert Rydell, Worlds of Fairs: The Century of Progress Exhibitions (Chicago, 1993), 193-211 (203, quote). Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture abroad in the 1950s (Washington, 1997), 104-68 (159, quote) discusses the roles of Katherine Howard and Lee Canfield.
26. Picture captions in Richard Nixon, "Russia as I Saw It," 718, 721.
27. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 185-213.
28. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War (New York, 1988), 18-19. See also Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1991), 73-75.
29. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War (New York, 1988), 18-19. See also Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1991), 73-75.
30. "Encounter," Newsweek (3 August, 1959): 16-17 (and section heading quote).
31. Marling, As Seen on TV, 281, 283.
32. On the display of the ideology of universalism in the Cold War international exhibit "Family of Man," see Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (Albuquerque, 1995).
33. Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II (New York, 1997).
34. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
35. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
36. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
37. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
38. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
39. This common description of America is discussed, for different countries, in many works, including Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); Pells, Not Like Us, Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994), 108-27; Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, 1996), 1-42; Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993); and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994). The following paragraphs rely heavily on these works.
40. Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman, Modernism's Other," in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, ed.Tanya Modleski (Bloomington, 1986), 188-207.
41. Frank Costigliola, France and the United States: The Cold Alliance since World War II (New York, 1992).
42. Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall, xiii; Nolan, Visions of Modernity, 5.
43. Kroes, If You've Seen One You've Seen the Mall, xiii; Nolan, Visions of Modernity, 5.
44. Georges Duhamel, America, the Menace: Scenes from the Life of the Future, trans. Charles Miner Thompson (London, 1931), 70-71.
45. Outlook and Independent 153 (6 November 1929): 383.
46. Simone de Beauvoir, America Day by Day, trans. Patrick Dudley (London, 1952), 254.
47. De Beauvoir, America Day by Day, 251; Mathy, Extrême Occident, 74-76.
48. De Beauvoir, America Day by Day, 251; Mathy, Extrême Occident, 74-76.
49. The Cold War classic that popularized an influential critique of "momism" was Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York, 1942).
50. Jackie Stacey, Star-Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London, 1994).
51. J. Walter Thompson Archives, International Advertisements, folder: England, Unilever-Lux.
52. See, for example, Deniz Kandiyoti, "Gendering the Modern: On Missing Dimensions in the Study of Turkish Modernity," in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Sibel Bozdogan and Reşat Kasaba (Seattle, 1997), 126-27.