Consumer Culture

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David K. Johnson, “Physique Pioneers: The Politics of 1960s Gay Consumer Culture”

Class Exercise• In small groups, look at issues of

Physique Pictorial.

• David K. Johnson writes that “the importance of individuals’ relationships to consumer goods [is] a key to understanding their sense of self, community, and even national identity.”

• How do you think consumer items like physique magazines help gay men to develop a sense of self, community, and national identity?

• How did physique magazines promote a “gay consumer rights revolution”?

Anti-Obscenity Campaigns

What did gay liberation owe to gay consumer culture in the 1960s?

Television and Postwar America

“The Electronic Hearth”

Impact on business and consumerism:

• Competition for ad revenues reshapes TV programming

• Commercials: “the message of the medium is the commercial”

See See Pepsodent ad

Popular Postwar Programs

Queen for a Day, Hosted by Jack Bailey (1947–1964, 1969–1970)

Dragnet, 1952-1959

Gunsmoke, 1955-1975

Amos ‘n’ Andy ShowTV 1951-1953; continued in syndicated reruns 1954-1966

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1956)

Lynn Spigel, “The Suburban Home Companion”

“The central preoccupation in the new suburban culture was the construction of a particular discursive space through which the family could mediate the contradictory impulses for a private haven on the one hand, and community participation on the other.” (Spigel, 32)

Television...held out a new possibility for being alone in the home, away from troublesome busybody neighbors in the next house. But it also maintained ideals of community togetherness and social interconnection by placing the community at a fictional distance. (45)

• Television provided an illusion of the idea neighborhood -- the way it was supposed to be. (43)

• Sitcoms externalized the private world by including neighbors who functioned as life-long friends to the principal characters. (43)

• Examples: Lucy and Ricky, Ethel and Fred; Ozzie and Thorny Ozzie and Thorny in The Adventures of Ozzie and

Harriet