Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen offer a telling examination of the rise of mass-produced imagery in the United States, tracing the pivotal role that such images played in the genesis and development of the American imagination. Beginning with the rise of the machine and the emergence of consumerism as a common way of life, the authors lay a strong foundation for an understanding of the twentieth-century American media culture.
Spanning a wide range of fascinating subjects-movies, fashion, tabloid journalism-Ewen and Ewen offer forceful insights into the mechanisms that link alluring images and popular imagination to the entrenched structures of power. Channels of Desire seeks to broaden our understanding of the social history behind the apparent immortality of a consumer society-its universe of commodities, its priorities and social forms, and the modern consumer ethic that stresses images over substance, desire over satisfaction, and the individual over society.
Part 1 The bribe of Frankenstein: Gears of progress; The capture of the eye. Part 2 Consumption as a way of life: "The system is the solution"; An American metamorphosis; "The magic of the marketplace"; Changing the subject. Part 3 City lights: immigrant women and the rise of the movies. Part 4 Fashion and democracy: "The ends justify the jeans"; In the beginning . . .; The cloak of morality; The three faces of Eve; Labor and cloth; Images of democracy; The backrooms of fashion; Avenues of display; New patterns; The sirens of style; The commerce of choice; History and clothes consciousness. Part 5 Mass culture and the moral economy of war: Through a glass darkly; Channels of fear; Individualism as conformity; Windows on the world; Billboards of the future. Conclusion: Shadows on the wall.
