Merchandisers of the Dream
KIMMEL, ARTHUR
Merchandisers of the Dream The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators By Stephen Fox Morrow. 384pp. $16.95. Reviewed by Arthur Kimmel Few enterprises can match...
...Had he not confused the ads and the industry with advertising, he might have recognized that making history miraculously evaporate is characteristic of its function...
...By definition, no special skills or expertise are required to see and put words (or pictures) to the obvious...
...Without content or author, moreover, they need bear no relationship to what has been said in the past or will be said in the future...
...But anyone looking for an in-depth analysis of advertising will be disappointed in Fox's survey...
...Reviewed by Arthur Kimmel Few enterprises can match the hold that the advertising business—shrouded in mystery, secrecy and intrigue even as it basks in the aura of glamour and big money—has on the American imagination...
...The voice of the eternal collective addressed to Everyman can be represented by any man or woman...
...Stephen Fox does well as far as he goes in The Mirror Makers...
...Within its frames of reference, to disagree is to prove yourself an outsider who either is unaware of or rejects the legitimacy of "what goes without saying...
...It is not surprising in these circumstances that ads appear unsigned by their authors...
...Although compelling and highly readable, Fox's account is not, as his subtitle declares, A History of American Advertising and Its Creators...
...We experience advertising as a historical...
...They flunk out of membership in advertising's "we...
...It is depoliticized, the ultimate speech of total, undifferentiated consensus...
...And those currently trying to fill their shoes will be assured that the eccentricities and hassles of the industry are nothing new...
...The curious will find the "inside scoop" on the people who have been most influential in bringing the business to where it is today...
...For various reasons related by Fox, some agencies are successful and prosper while others fail and disappear...
...The industry similarly comprises recognizable entities with documented or documentable pasts...
...This is perfectly sensible, for advertising denies human intervention altogether...
...Advertising is best understood abstractly, however, as one of the most dominant forces of our time: a pattern of social expectations that not only reflects but works to create and maintain a community around the idea of an ideal social order...
...Although Fox alludes several times to "historical amnesia," he nevertheless seems to regard memory lapses as remediable if unfortunate...
...Advertising is form without content...
...Their goods and services may seem useless from the perspective of many in the audience, yet their goal, after all, is simply to make money...
...they are mysteriously transmitted...
...How else could we so seldom receive the trumpeting of a "new and improved" product as an indictment of the old, unimproved one...
...It doesn't argue, but pretends to seek to clarify "what everyone already knows," or "what need not be said...
...on the contrary, its effect is to close discussion...
...It does not invite us to the task of defining values, though...
...People who question what it means for clothes to be "whiter than white"—who wonder why merely white clothes are less desirable—become cultural aliens, strange in the way Gracie Allen was strange...
...He also marshals evidence to support his contention that since the end of the 1920s at least, far from playing a major role in shaping styles, tastes and mores, ads have acted as a mirror of society...
...Each commercial emerges on the social scene already whole...
...Whatever may have preceded it is instantly erased from our memory...
...Much like a good advertisement, the book captures your attention, then proceeds to tell you precious little...
...Fox's fundamental mistake was to gloss over the important distinction between the industry and its products, and advertising as a social phenomenon or institution...
...As he skillfully demonstrates, the products are tangible objects with traceable, often fascinating histories (and, according to the author, individual Americans are on average exposed to approximately 1,600 of them each day...
...When you work in an agency, as I have, you quickly realize that how something is said is far more important than what is said...
...Rather, it is a reasonably comprehensive overview of different ads and ad campaigns, combined with relatively short, sometimes insightful biographical sketches...
...Meanwhile, it exists all around us, indeed permeates our conversation, as an unseen, taken-for-granted element of everyday life...
...Like the myths of old, ads do not appear to us to be created by their makers...
...In this book historian Stephen Fox imparts a human character to the seemingly faceless industry...
Vol. 67 • September 1984 • No. 17
