In Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920 – 1940, Roland Marchand argues, “The illustrations in American advertising portrayed the ideals and aspirations of the system more accurately than its reality. They dramatized the American dream” (pg. xviii). Marchand cautions that the ads do not reflect life as it was, but rather serve as “a Zerrspiegel, a distorting mirror that would enhance certain images” (pg. xvii). Despite this distortion, “by disseminating certain incessantly repeated and largely uncontradicted visual clichés and moral parables, the ads were likely to shape or reinforce the same popular attitudes they sought to reflect” (pg. xx). Marchand’s work draws upon social history, cultural history, and gender history, specifically when he describes advertising agencies methods of marketing to women and how they conceived of women’s roles in society.
Describing the role of advertising in modernization, Marchand writes, “As it came to accept the paradox of its role as both apostle of modernity and buffer against the effects of modern impersonalities of scale, and as it developed strategies for accommodating the public to modern complexities, American advertising in the 1920s and 1930s took on what we now recognize as a distinctly modern cast” (pg. 9). Admen developed advertisements with the goal of forming a relationship with the consumer. According to Marchand, “Thus what made advertising ‘modern’ was, ironically, the discovery by these ‘apostles of modernity’ of techniques for empathizing with the public’s imperfect acceptance of modernity, with its resistance to the perfect rationalization and bureaucratization of life” (pg. 13). In doing so, the admen created those clichés that they sought to reflect.
Advertising defined consumer’s roles within society. Marchand describes an analogy to voting, in which admen focused on “one dollar, one vote” (pg. 64). This, however, served to limit their focus. Marchand writes, “Those whose income fell below the effective equivalent of ‘one dollar’ in the marketplace were disenfranchised. Thus the first basic distinction lay not between class and mass buyers, who at least were buyers at the minimum one-dollar level, but between buyers and those who economically did not qualify as ‘citizens’ at all” (pg. 64). Similar to their delineation of class, admen defined women as symbols for modernity. Marchand writes, “…Never did advertising artists distort and reshape men’s bodies as they did when they transformed women into Art Deco figurines. Women in the tableaux, as symbols of modernity, sometimes added more than a foot to their everyday heights and stretched their elongated eyes, fingers, legs, arms, and necks to grotesque proportions” (pg. 181-182). Admen used women as objects to evoke class, with exaggerated physiques suggesting the higher class of some women over those with more realistic features. Marchand summarizes, “Women took on the contours and angles of their modern art backdrops more decisively than men, suggesting their pliability in the service of art” (pg. 185) and reinforcing their objectification.
Marchand draws upon the archives of the J. Walter Thompson Company, N.W. Ayer, BBDO, E.R. Squibb and Sons, Inc., and more. He has extensive research not only about the materials advertising agencies created for clients, but also from their own trade press, Printer’s Ink, which demonstrates how contributors viewed their work and what messages they hoped to convey to their fellows in the business. ( )