{"id":294,"date":"2023-12-08T00:46:23","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T05:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/?p=294"},"modified":"2023-12-08T00:46:23","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T05:46:23","slug":"from-frozen-pizzas-to-family-portraits-how-advertising-redefined-the-american-dream-and-private-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/uncategorized\/from-frozen-pizzas-to-family-portraits-how-advertising-redefined-the-american-dream-and-private-space\/","title":{"rendered":"From Frozen Pizzas to Family Portraits: How Advertising Redefined the American Dream and Private Space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LIFE Magazine, March, 1965<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the 1950s and into the 1970s, an idealized domestic realm was projected into the homes of many middle-class Americans through television and print advertisements. These advertisements often sought to regulate the interior aesthetic of American households by portraying exaggerated imagery of joyful white families amidst generic symbols of the middle class. Advertisers leveraged these pictures to shape the public perception of how a typical family should behave. One image that encapsulates this glorified space was published in 1965 in LIFE magazine. The advertisement features a brightly colored pizza with the caption \u201cI\u2019ll pay you 50\u00a2 to discover how hot and fresh my frozen pizzas taste.\u201d The food is surrounded by a display of middle-class items and a smiling American family. The use of bright colors and middle-class symbolism captures attention and draws the consumer to the product. By placing this image in a setting which resembles a typical American household, this image exploits the notion of the ideal family in an attempt to convince the audience that by purchasing this frozen pizza, they too can share a similar experience with their own families. Through positioning the pizza in the center of the image, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, the pizza company, creates the illusion that the pizza is essential for realizing this idealized family life. As the concept of the ideal family manifested in the minds of middle-class Americans, advertisers began to capitalize by placing their products in the center of these spaces\u2014directly linking their product to familial prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Family Snapshot”, circa 1949\u201355.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Similar to the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee advertisement, television also perpetuated the idea of a normalized American lifestyle both physically and conceptually. Not only did television bring advertisements and other forms of mass consumption into the home, but it also helped create the notion of a generic American living space. Lynn Spigel in Companion Technologies <\/em>thinks that the invention of the television created a new archetype of an American home. She writes: \u201csnapshots rarely show people watching tv. Instead, when pictured in snapshots, tv is typically a prop or backdrop for the presentation of self, family, and gender\u201d (Spigel 4). Spigel states that during the 1950s and 1960s many American living rooms were composed around the physical television set, which was signified by the way families were captured posing in front of TVs. For instance, she references the photo, \u201cFamily Snapshot,\u201d which consists of a mother, father, grandmother, and two children posing in front of a TV set. Like the pizza ad, \u201cFamily Snapshot\u201d centralizes the product, attempting to draw the viewer’s attention to the TV instead of the family. The little girl in the image appears as though she has two antennas coming out of her head from the TV, further connecting the family to an item of household invasion. In both \u201cFamily Snapshot” and the pizza ad, the presence of the family supplements the product’s appeal. By showcasing different family members engaging in middle-class activities, like playing instruments or having leisure time to chat, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee convinces families from across the country that eating their frozen pizzas is synonymous with middle-class happiness. Likewise, the status of a family portrait in \u201cFamily Snapshot\u201d communicates the message that happy middle-class families own televisions.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As companies began embedding this idealized domestic sphere into their marketing, advertisements infiltrated the private sector of American households. No longer was family life free of the capitalist ideologies in their personal space; instead, with the introduction of new technology like the television and print magazines, Americans inadvertently welcomed companies to advertise their products directly in their homes. Jonathan Crary in 24\/7 Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep <\/em>argues just this idea. He writes that advertisements in television \u201calluded to the decay of a more palpable immediate world and to how the spectral dislocations of modernization had been normalized as a familiar presence in the most intimate aspects of our lives” (Crary 82). Crary believes that modernization has blurred the line between the private and public. By centering the product within a typical American living room\u2014as the frozen pizza ad or television sets do\u2014businesses are able to convince the consumer to purchase their product. Not only is Chef Boy-Ar-Dee confident enough in their product to make it fill up half the advert, but they also are willing to pay their customers \u201c50\u00a2 to discover how hot and fresh [their] frozen pizzas taste.\u201d The size of the pizza on the page is important because it shows that it can safely feed all seven of the inhabitants in the background. Additionally, The bottom of the ad states that this frozen pizza is \u201chotter, fresher, and tastier than any pizzeria pizza you bring home.\u201d The adjectives \u201chotter\u201d, \u201cfresher\u201d, and \u201ctastier\u201d all speak to the sensory elements of the consumer as well as the element of convenience the frozen pizza brings. In essence, through the strategic placement of products in familiar domestic settings, companies have reshaped the American household into an area of consumption.\u00a02<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee placed their products at the heart of the idealized American family in order to capitalize on the domestic sphere. Through this tactic they not only reshaped the American household into a realm of mass consumption but also subtly influenced the evolving narrative of the American dream: the idea that anyone from anywhere could travel to America and have the opportunity to be successful. At the time, middle class families sought to achieve this unattainable dream by any means possible; in this case they would purchase any symbol related to a higher class lifestyle. Through consuming capitalist promotions such as the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ad, Americans believed they could live the American Dream as depicted in LIFE magazine and on TV. These advertising strategies marked a significant shift in how consumer culture infiltrated private life, setting a precedent for future marketing tactics. Today with cell phones and social media, the concept of the private and public is much more obsolete. Rather than invading the living room of 1950s American homes like television and print magazines once did, cell phones have brought the external world directly into the palms of our hands. Now businesses looking to market their products to consumers can reach a curated audience at all times; there is no longer the need to break through into the household. The line between the public and private sphere has not just blurred\u2014it has fundamentally collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n

  1. Spigel, Lynn. \u201cCompanion Technologies.\u201d\u00a0Make Room for TV Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America<\/em>, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago u.a., 2010. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. Crary, Jonathan.\u00a0\u201c24\/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.\u201d (2014): 61-89. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Throughout the 1950s and into the 1970s, an idealized domestic realm was projected into the homes of many middle-class Americans through television and print advertisements. These advertisements often sought to regulate the interior aesthetic of American households by portraying exaggerated imagery of joyful white families amidst generic symbols of the middle class. Advertisers leveraged these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"ad0c7eed-b996-4796-811d-e64d014d6807\",\"content\":\"Spigel, Lynn. \\u201cCompanion Technologies.\\u201d\\u00a0Make Room for TV Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America<\\\/em>, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago u.a., 2010.\"},{\"id\":\"e3d00c78-6078-473b-9650-f72c69bfe4fe\",\"content\":\"Crary, Jonathan.\\u00a0\\u201c24\\\/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.\\u201d (2014): 61-89.\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}