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Review

 

            What do a hot pink dress, a sparkling new Chevy and a bright green Jell-O mold all have in common? Karal Ann Marling asserts that Americans became obsessed with such colorful new objects during the 1950s, and that mass marketing and advertising convinced Americans to display such items as signs of their success and affluence. Aesthetics is the key word Marling uses to describe the consumer culture of the 1950s, with a growing emphasis on the new, bright, fresh and colorful. As Seen on TV centers not on the study of television, but on the transformation of visual culture coinciding with the emergence of commercial television. Contrary to the historians who view the 1950s as an era of conformity, Marling states that such new choices within the mass market signified democracy, freedom and individuality to the American people. .
             After the Great Depression and World War II, Americans were eager to exploit new American abundance and wealth and to put deprivation and war rationing behind them. Manufacturers and designers offered Americans a variety of aesthetic choices. A new disposition towards form over function led to fluctuating trends in the market, including drastic yearly changes in items ranging from clothing to automobiles to home appliances. Americans exercised their new purchase power by investing in new chrome-laden automobiles, purchasing colorful home furnishings and appliances, and keeping current with the latest fashions. People also took advantage of new leisure time by going on family outings to modern amusement parks, such as Disneyland, or by taking up a hobby, such as the new paint-by-number craze. Culture in the 1950s surrounded how things looked and how one wanted to be perceived. With the television at the center of this new visual culture, Marling contends, "Life in the fifties i!.
             mitated art "as seen on TV" (6). .
             When presidential first ladies and fashion are spoken of in the same sentence, the first image that comes to mind is the infamous Jackie Kennedy.


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