An examination of commodity culture's impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three metaphors for personhood - the ad man, the female consumer, and the often female advertising model or spokesperson - Simone Weil Davis traces the emergence of the pervasive gendering of American consumerism. Materials from advertising firms - including memos, manuals, meeting minutes and newsletters - are considered, alongside the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, Bruce Barton, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald. To illuminate the subjective, day-to-day experiences of 1920s consumerism in the USA, Davis juxtaposes print ads and industry manuals with works of fiction. Capturing the maverick of voices of some of the decade's most influential advertisers and writers, she reveals the lines that were drawn between truths and lies, seduction and selling, white and black, and men and women.
By:
Simone Weil Davis
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 549g
ISBN: 9780822324461
ISBN 10: 0822324466
Series: New Americanists
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 16 March 2000
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Doubled Truth: Uplift and the Bottom Line 22 Chapter 2 The Pep Pardigm: Masculinity, Influence, and SHame in Babbitt and The Man Nobody Knows 46 Chapter 3 ""Complex Little Femmes"": Adwomen and the Female Consumer 80 Chapter 4 ""Lending an Air of Importance"": Vehicles at Work 105 Chapter 5 In the Tutu or out the Window: Zelda Fitzgerald aand the Possibility of Escape 142 Epilogue 186 Notes 191 Bibliography 227 Index 243"
Simone Weil Davis is Assistant Professor of English at Long Island University.
Reviews for Living Up to the Ads: Gender Fictions of the 1920s
"""A strikingly thoughtful study of a crucible period in American cultural and literary history. Bristling with intelligence, highly engaged, and critically informed, Living Up to the Ads investigates the shifting nature of selfhood as commodity capitalism and public relations converge on the subject.""--Jennifer Wicke, author of Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading ""Davis offers a new and provocative perspective on a cultural shift that, even in the 1920s, was marked as much by its subtle presence in fiction as it was by its heavy-handed presence in print media. This book will contribute a great deal to interdisciplinary studies of commodity culture.""--Jennifer Scanlon, author of Inarticulate Longings: ""The Ladies' Home Journal,"" Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture ""A very stimulating book. Davis explores the complexity of the relations between advertising and personal identity, and between advertising and literature, with a lively, sharp, idiosyncratic style.""--Rachel Bowlby, author of Shopping with Freud"
