Advertising Novels: 50's Critique

Why Use Advertising for This Critique

What do they Critique

Why look at Films and Novels (and TV)

The Hucksters

 * About young ad. worker who labors for an eccentric older President
 * Written by Wakeman
 * Claims Radio sucks b/c it was over-sponsored.

Aurora Dawn

 * Written by Herman Wouk
 * Took up radio as a subject again.

Mad Men Clips

 * From an episode I saw
 * Episode 5G
 * About the idea that advertising men wrote fiction in their spare time

Why The Novel & Advertising

 * Twenty three novels between 1946 and 1958 written by advertising execs presenting on advertising industry
 * Popular resistance to commercialism
 * Deep dark look at the world "through the bottom of a martini glass"
 * All of the authors were disenchanted with advertising -> wrote about ppl disenchanted with advertising as ell

Model

 * Man coming back from war, wisecracks about new life in advertising
 * He is a single honest man, made true by the war
 * Lives large:
 * Screws the common man
 * Serving the client
 * Sleeps around with secretaries
 * Meets demands of the executives
 * Ends up making things right by recognizing the errors of his ways
 * And the ways of the ad agencies

Advertising as Presented

 * Morally Corrupt
 * Double-articulation
 * Ad must be sold to
 * Clients
 * Consumers


 * People must be convinced that they must advertise (again)


 * Radio was usually a focus
 * Because it was a new battle front
 * Because industry needed to be convinced AGAIN that they must advertise


 * Bares resemblance to internet advertising

Frankfurt School

 * German thinkers highly skeptical of advertising
 * Benjamin, Adorno, Hockhemeier

New York School

 * American academic intellectuals
 * Marxist, based around NYC.

The Beats

 * Ginsberg, Mailer, Kerouac
 * Highly critical of mass society

The War

 * The War causes former advertising employees to become highly skeptical of their industry
 * War changed their outlooks
 * New need for 'meaning' in life's work that advertising doesn't allow 4


 * As presented by 'Mad Men'
 * Don Draper comes back from Korean War, bothered

What Do Novels Critique

 * Dishonesty of the business
 * Manipulation of clients and consumers
 * Inherent misrepresentation by the ppl who worked in this industry


 * Conformity
 * Advertising as yes men
 * Encourages cultural homogeneity


 * Emptiness of consumption
 * Meaninglessness of advertising as a profession

Redemption of the Ad Man

 * Usually the ad man is redeemed by an honest man
 * The ad man asks the honest man to do something dishonest
 * Who confronts him and forces him to become honest

Anglo-Saxons vs. Italians

 * Connects culture of the advertising with suburbs and whatnot
 * Suggests that the Italian men are real

Consumption Patterns

 * WASPs building a house outside of town in Connecticut

Why Novels

 * Ad men can't somehow return to academic or political writing
 * So their critiques of their industry are almost cultural products
 * objects of consumption
 * Novels are also historically about individuals
 * So the focus is on the ppl of the world of advertising
 * Also there is the question of realism
 * Are novels real
 * Or fiction