History 479B

Devine

Fall 2012

Thomas Hine, Populuxe

1. What does “Populuxe” mean? What kind of style, attitude, and way of life does this word describe?

2. What role did advertising play in creating, sustaining, and popularizing the “Populuxe” style? To what extent was the advertising during this period deceptive? Or, was it simply confirming for consumers the preferences they already had?

3. In what sense did Populuxe suburban homes offer Disney’s choice between “Frontierland” and “Tomorrowland?”

4. What distinguished the Populuxe years (1954-1964) from the immediate postwar years (1945-1954), a period also characterized by an “orgy” of consumption and spending?

5. What were some of the economic, technological, and demographic trends that made the Populuxe years possible?

6. Why did the look of the suburbs become fairly standardized across the entire country?

7. How did American eating habits change during the Populuxe years? Why did they change?

8. In what sense did advertisers send consumers contradictory messages? How did advertisers make use of consumers’ interest in psychology and respect for so-called “experts?”

9. The author argues that both historians and the contemporary critics of the suburbs were out of synch with suburban residents. What evidence does he offer to suggest that the conventional wisdom about the suburbs of the 1950s is wrong?

Shelley Nickles, “More is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar America”

1. What was the significance of rosebuds? What significance did working class women attribute to them? Why does the author use this anecdote about rosebuds to open her article?

2. What factors contribute to the formulation of a class identity? What are examples of “class markers”?

3. In what specific ways did the “more is better” ethos differ from the “less is more” ethos? Why did white working class women associate themselves with the “more is better” ethos?

4. According to Nickles, why did working-class taste not only persist as blue-collar families became more prosperous but also pervade the mass market?

5. What is “Sloanism”? What is the symbolic significance of the tail fin?

6. What does the “design war” at Servel refrigerators reveal about the power of consumers to influence the market?

7. During the 1950s, the cultural critic Vance Packard accused marketers of designing status symbols like the tail fin and chrome covered refrigerator as a way of fostering status anxiety and encouraging conspicuous consumption. How does Nickles’ article call into question Packard’s notion of a conspiracy of manipulating marketers?

8. What was “motivation research”? How did it differ from more traditional and purely quantitative research? What use did marketers make of motivation research?

9. What was the difference between “middle-income” and “middle-class”? Why was it important for marketers and manufacturers of durable goods to understand this difference?

10. In what ways did working-class and middle-class women view their kitchens (and kitchen appliances) differently? How did these views shape their purchases?

11. How could looking at someone’s living room furnishings reveal what class they belonged to? What were the specific “class markers”?

12. Why might one argue that by the 1950s “taste” had become an “entrance requirement” to the middle class?

13. What would you say are the main points the author makes in this article? To what extent does the specific evidence she introduces support her points?