Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, meanings, and the packaging of pleasure

181 Pages·1990·2.01 MB·English

by  Alan Tomlinson (editor)

CONSUMPTION, IDENTITY, AND
STYLE
COMEDIA
SERIES EDITOR: DAVID MORLEY

CONSUMPTION, IDENTITY, AND
STYLE
Marketing, meanings, and the packaging of pleasure
edited by
Alan Tomlinson

A COMEDIA book published by Routledge
London and New York
First published 1990 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE 29 West 35th Street,
New York, NY10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
The collection as a whole © 1990 Routledge
The individual contributions © 1990 the respective authors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Consumption, identity and style: marketing, meanings,
and the packaging of pleasure.
1. Consumer goods. Consumption. Social aspects
I. Tomlinson, Alan, 1950–
306′.3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Consumption, identity, and style: marketing, meanings, and the
packaging of pleasure/edited by Alan Tomlinson.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Consumers. 2. Marketing. I. Tomlinson, Alan.
HF5415.32.C66 1989
658.8–dc20 89–6317
ISBN 0-203-39341-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-39625-1 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-4154-1150-7 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-415-01151-5 (pbk)
Contents

List of illustrations vii
Notes on the contributors viii
Preface xi

1 Introduction: Consumer culture and the aura of the commodity 1

Alan Tomlinson

PART ONE Trends in consumption and leisure

2 Marketing dreams: The political elements of style 29

Stuart Ewen
3 Home fixtures: Doing-it-yourself in a privatized world 40

Alan Tomlinson

PART TWO The visual media and consumption

4 Television and citizenship: In defence of public broadcasting 54

Graham Murdock
5 Innocence and manipulation: Censorship, consumption, and freedom in 70
1980s Britain
Sean Cubitt

PART THREE Consumer culture(s) and the market—some case studies

6 What’s next?: Fashion, foodies, and the illusion of freedom 82

Diana Simmonds
7 Mills and Boon: The marketing of moonshine 94

Deborah Philips
8 Tainted love: The influence of male homosexuality and sexual divergence on 103
pop music and culture since the war
Jon Savage
9 Frankie said: But what did they mean? 116

Simon Frith
10 Making popular music: The consumer as producer 125

Dave Laing
11 ‘If you can’t stand the heat get off the beach’: The United Kingdom holiday 131
business
Grahame F.Thompson
12 Holidays for all: Popular movements, collective leisure, and the pleasure 150
industry
Alan Tomlinson and Helen Walker

Index 164
List of illustrations

1 Sears, Roebuck’s five Buildings, 1900 5
2 Front and back cover of Sears, Roebuck catalogue, Fall 1900 6
3 Front cover illustration, Expression: The Magazine for American 18

Express Cardmembers, Sept. 1987
4 From hierarchy to fragmentation 21
Notes on the contributors
Sean Cubitt is a lecturer in the History and Theory of Art, Design, and Media at
Middlesex Polytechnic and West Surrey College of Art and Design.
Stuart Ewen is Chair of the Department of Communications at Hunter College, and a
Professor of Sociology in the Ph.D Program in Sociology at the City University of
New York Graduate School. He is the author of Captains of Consciousness (1976),
and co-author of Channels of Desire (1982). His most recent book is All Consuming
Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (1988).
Simon Frith is Research Director of the John Logie Baird Centre at the Universities of
Glasgow and Strathclyde. He is the author of Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the
Politics of Rock (1983), Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop (1988),
and (with Howard Horne) Art Into Pop (1987).
Dave Laing has worked in the popular music industry as well as writing rock biographies,
critical analyses of popular cultural forms, and interpretations of radical theories of
culture. He is the author of The Marxist Theory of Art (1978) and One Chord
Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock (1985).
Graham Murdock works at the Centre for Mass Communications Research at the
University of Leicester. He has written extensively on the political economy of
popular culture, and on the economics of the moving-image industries. He jointly
edited (with Peter Golding and Philip Schlesinger) Communicating Politics: Mass
Communications and the Political Process (1986), and wrote (with Philip Schlesinger
and Phillip Elliott) Televising ‘Terrorism’: Political Violence in Popular Culture
(1983).
Deborah Philips is a contributor to City Limits, and was a co founder of Women’s

Review. She now teaches at West London Institute, specializing in courses on fiction
and women’s studies. She has taught courses on popular culture for the Open
University and a number of University Extra-Mural Departments. She is currently co-
editing a volume of essays on women’s experience of popular culture.
Jon Savage has written reviews and commentaries on the popular music industry for a
wide range of publications, including the Observer, and the Face. He has also acted in
a consultative capacity on television documentaries on style and popular culture.
Diana Simmonds worked as a writer for City Limits magazine when based in London.
She is now Letters Editor and an arts writer for the Sydney Morning Herald in
Australia. She is author of Princess Di: The National Dish (1984) and, with Robyn
Archer, A Star is Torn (1986).
Grahame F.Thompson is a lecturer in the Faculty of Social Science at the Open
University, where his strong interdisciplinary interests have contributed to innovative
and influential initiatives such as the U-area course on Popular Culture. He is author of
The Conservatives’ Economic Policy (1986), and Economic Calculation and Policy
Formation (1986). He also contributed to State and Society in Contemporary Britain
(1984).
Alan Tomlinson works in the Chelsea School, Brighton Polytechnic, where he
coordinates the Research Division and also acts as the Director of the Leisure
Research Unit. He has edited and contributed to many volumes on sport, leisure and
popular culture. He co-edited Five-Ring Circus (1984) and Off the Ball (1986) with
Garry Whannel, and Sport, Leisure and Social Relations (1987) with John Horne and
David Jary.
Helen Walker has taught social history and popular culture at the University of Sussex
and has undertaken research for the Greater London Council and the London Strategic
Policy Unit. She has published on the history of popular culture in the collection
Disorder and Discipline (1987) and on twentiethcentury mass leisure movements. She
currently works as a planner for Brighton Borough Council.