An absorbing study of the role of style and design in early postwar
American culture. Marling (Art History and American Studies/Univ.
of Minnesota; coauthor of Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American
Hero, 1991) examines the period when TV first leveled its
electronic gaze at American life and a dynamic new set of visual
and cultural values were born. She describes leisure pursuits like
amateur painting - and its ghastly derivative, the paint-by-numbers
set - that rose with the country's self-conscious new prosperity;
the growth of automobile fetishism; kitchen gadgets and their
meaning for ever-busier women; Elvis's nouveau-riche stylistic
pretensions; and national unease over the comparative worth of less
frivolous Soviet accomplishments. The book begins slowly, detailing
the national obsession with Mamie Eisenhower's hair and clothing,
but gathers momentum in describing Disneyland's antecedents, the
psychosexual lure of chrome-laden cars, and the growing hegemony of
design over function in the development of American products.
Marling writes with flair, and her text engages the reader even
when profound insight is lacking. Readers may disagree with her on
occasion (that "the French [fashion] salon is a woman's place,
ultimately governed by her preferences and skills" seems
debatable). And sometimes the breezy tone is less appropriate -
memoranda showing how Betty Crocker psychologists exploited women's
fears of failure in the kitchen arouse no comment from the author.
Assertions that designers provided buyers a sensation of mobility
and choice, and that these aren't bad aims, on the other hand, make
sense. And Marling's right in noting that critics often missed what
was pleasurable - and antielitist - about "populuxe" fashions of
the '50s. Though Marling chooses to remain more chronicler than
critic, this archaeology of our recent visual past is as important
as any recent political history of the period, and far fresher in
approach. (Kirkus Reviews)
America in the 1950s: the world was not so much a stage as a
setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when
how things looked--and how we looked--mattered, a decade of design
that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. From the
painting-by-numbers fad to the public fascination with the First
Lady's apparel to the television sensation of Elvis Presley to the
sculptural refinement of the automobile, Marling explores what
Americans saw and what they looked for with a gaze newly trained by
TV. A study in style, in material culture, in art history at eye
level, this book shows us as never before those artful everyday
objects that stood for American life in the 1950s, as seen on TV.
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