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Captains Of Consciousness Advertising And The Social Roots Of The Consumer Culture

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This book is a penetrating analysis of the origins of our mass-culture, consumerist society. First, the author debunks the notion that consumerism was a natural technological development or clearly represents progress.

The author makes evident that the captions of industry sought to exert control over the entire social milieu beginning in the 1920s. Their foremost project was to define American life as consumerism. Consumption was marketed as far more than acquiring the essentials of life; it was a means to transform one's life: to achieve social esteem, to escape otherwise mediocre, humdrum lives. It was very much an individualistic approach to life in contrast to the traditional focus on small communities or extended families.

Industrialism was not easily swallowed by workers of the 19th and early 20th century. Traditional social bonds became irrelevant in factory production. Also under scientific management work was systematically deskilled and redefined by management. The strike wave of 1919 and the "Red Scare" of the early 20's convinced economic elites to set upon a course of pacification of discontented citizens in addition to measures of suppression.

The advertising in the 20's tried to convince that the mass production of consumable items was of tremendous benefit to society. The "freedom" of workers as consumers to transform their lives more than offset the actual loss of control over work processes. Every effort was made to see that mass-culture goods penetrated and hence defined all areas of life. Non-acceptance of that corporate-defined world was not viewed kindly. Virtually all non-market activity was cast as secondary, if not illegitimate. Buying superceded voting as the means to social remedy. Even families became purchasing units.

By the 1950s the transformation of the US to a consumerist culture was virtually complete. The penetration of corporate-owned television into all households ensured that alternatives to consumerism would not surface which was a continuation of the trend of centralization of all media outlets. The free-market and free trade ideologues of the 1990s are merely following in those same footsteps.

Though written 25 years ago, this book remains relevant today. More recent authors such as Kuttner, Schiller, Lindblom, or Frank can only add to what Ewen has already said.

Captains of Consciousness, written more than twenty years ago, remains a classic in the field. A fascinating look at the rise of American consumer culture, the book places advertising firmly within the context of pivotal social developments that have shaped the life and mind of twentieth century America. A must read for anyone interested in understanding where we come from, where we are going

When this book appeared twenty-five years ago, it blew my mind. Filled with amazing insights and information, it's still the best book on the topic. Provocative, thought-provoking, gutsy. Great that this new edition has appeared. It's still the book to read on the subject of advertising.

If you've ever spent a considerable amount of time living in a 3rd World nation like I have, this book can help you understand why the USA has such an intense consumer culture which is almost unheard of in other such countries. I'm a big fan of capitalism, and this book makes a lot of sense. It's not a critique of capitalism nearly as much as an explanation of how it can shape cultures.

Ewen's book "Captains of Consciousness" is an insightful analysis of the rise of consumerism through advertising. He starts by covering the technique and effects of mass production. Of course workers were not pleased with their dehumanizing roles in line production that made them easily replaceable. Where industrialization standardized the means of production, there was a need to modernize the consumption end of the deal; this is where advertising came into play. The book focuses on the 1920's during the advent of mass advertising. Advertising provided a desire in the public to comsume a variety of new productions as well as ameliorated a society who had become increasingly upset with the wage system. Much of the later part of the book deals with how advertising was primarily meant for women, who had become the managers of the household and responsible for most consumption. Overall, the book is well worth the read, even though it is over 25 years old. Many of the advertising tactics that Ewen speaks of, such as the youthful ideal, are still present today.

Stuart Ewen. Captains of Consciousness. Basic Books, 2001

Preface says that some reviewers labeled the book as "Marxist". They definitely missed the point. Feeling sympathetic towards Proletariat isn't Marxism exclusive trademark. Yet the book definitely lacks the depth of economic analysis and feeling of history (including actual class struggle) to fit the best standards of historical materialism. H. Zinn's "People's History of the USA" is much more monumental in collecting the social and economical realities of the US of the period.

As M. Schudson rightfully noted, the author of "Captains" too often takes the bluffing of second-rate admen at face value as the industry's real best practices. All this comes under obvious ideological inspiration of Marcuse.

Still the book seems to be the only study of advertising history that takes into consideration the working-class, including immigrants. Virtually all others suggest that there was no life outside of "Middle Class America".

Thus "Captains" are the must for any researcher or student in advertising sociology who wants to broaden his/her prospective.

This is one of the best non-fiction works I have ever read -- it explains advertising in such a simple way and shows that even in the early 20th Century things were not so different from today. It is a great piece of social commentary and living history.

This book has had a huge influence on me. With the information in this book and a little bit of your own thought and imagination you can see how our reality is manufactured. Admittedly, any societal structure is "manufactured", but this particular consumeristic one is having incredibly destructive consequences. We have become a true "throw away" society; from razors to family; from paper cups to morals.

To appreciate this book you need have at least a general understand of the work of Karl Marx because the book is written from a Marxist perspective. From this 'perspective' the author is able to draw certain conclusions about American society (or a capitalist society) in which a reader may mistakenly infer as to the intent of the actual participants of that society. Its one thing to describe a particular outcome as a result of advertising and it's another thing to say that this outcome is the actual intent of advertising companies and businesses. A casual reader (or biased reader) may have trouble distinguishing between the two. The book title is a little misleading, saying `Captains' of Consciousness when the author does not focus on any 'specific' advertising company or business. The book cover is also a little misleading, with a picture of the store front NikeTown with heavily armed police. The book was written in 1976, no where in the book does it mention the Nike company and book contents does not convey any sense of power struggle thingy going on. Overall, it's an okay book for those who are familiar with the work of Marx and sociology in general. If you are not, then you would have no understanding of where the author is coming from or really the conclusion he is making. To sum I would say that is book is really just social commentary from a Marxist.
Here are some notes I've taken from the book (word for word) that I feel are most meaningful to me:

Modern advertising was concentrating upon a type of copy aiming to make the reader emotionally uneasy, to bludgeon him with the fact that decent people don't live the way he does

Mass industry, requiring a corresponding mass individual, cryptically named him "Civilized American" and implicated his national heritage in the marketplace. By defining himself and his desires in terms of the good of capitalist production, the worker would implicitly accept the foundations of modern industrial live. By transforming the notion of "class" into "mass", business hoped to create an "individual" who could locate his needs and frustrations in terms of the consumption of goods rather than the quality and content of his life (work).

In an attempt to massify men's consumption in step with the requirements of the productive machinery, advertising increasingly offered mass-produced solutions to "instinctive" strivings as well as to the ills of mass society itself. If it was industrial capitalism around which crowded cities were being built and which had spawned much of the danger to health, the frustration, the loneliness and the insecurity of modern industrial life, the advertising of the period denied complicity. Rather, the logic of contemporaneous advertising read, one can free oneself from the ills of modern life by embroiling oneself in the maintenance of that life. A 1924 ad for Pompeian facial product argued that: unless you are one woman in a thousand, you must use powder and rouge. Modern living has robbed women of much of their natural color.. taken away the conditions that once gave natural roses in the cheeks

The advertising which attempted to create the dependable mass of consumers required by modern industry often did so by playing upon the fears and frustrations evoked by mass society - offering mass produced visions of individualism by which people could extricate themselves from the mass - mass pseudo-demassification

Appealing to dissatisfaction and insecurities around the job, certain advertisements not only offered their products as a kind of job insurance, but intimate that through the use of their products one might become a business success - the capitalist notion of individual "self-fulfillment".

Much of American industrial development punctuated by attempts to channel thought and behavior into patterns which fitted the prescribed dimensions of industrial life

If you are advertising any product never see the factory in which it was made. Don't watch the people at work. Because when you know the truth about anything, the real, inner truth - it is very hard to write the surface fluff which sells it.

Speaking of seeming purposelessness of American industrial life itself, this lack of purpose in life has an effect on consumption similar to that of having a narrow life interest, that is, in concentrating human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption. The mass-produced goods of the marketplace were conceived of as providing and ideology of "change" neutralized to the extent that it would be unable to effect significant alteration in the relationship between individuals and the corporate structure. "Fatigue" with the futility of modern life might, if all other avenues of change are eradicated, be channeled toward a "fatigue... with apparel and goods used in one's immediate surroundings".
The concept of consumption as an alternative to other modes of change proliferates within business literature of the twenties. Given the recent history of anticaptialist sentiments and actions among the working class, the unpleasant possibility of "deeper changes" gave flight to a more pacified notion of social welfare that emanated from comsumerization. Recognizing the irreversibility of frustration among those who felt trapped in their surroundings, change would be "the most beneficent medicine in the world to most people", mass consumption is offered as a means of acting out such impulses within a socially controllable context. "To those who cannot change their whole lives or occupations, even a new line in a dress is often a relief. The woman who is tired of her husband or her home or a job feels some lifting of the weight of life from seeing a straight line change into a bouffant, or a gray pass into beige". The basic issues of industrial capitalism were fractionalized, isolated and reduced to trivialities in her formula. "Most people do not have the courage or the understanding to make deeper changes".
The logic of using consumption and mass leisure as ameliorations for boredom and social entrapment was not merely an underlying trend in advertising

Fear in itself is paralyzing; it robs one of the power of action. No one buys anything through fear, but rather through the instinct of self preservation or some other reaction that is almost inseparable from fear

AGAIN, if you don't understand what the hell the author is taking about then I don't recommend this book to you.