The Soul of Sliced Bread and Breakfast Cereal

An area where psychoanalysis still holds sway is eating disorder therapy. Moms can transfer neurosis to children through the way they manage the child’s diet. I have no particular knowledge of the intricacies of this problem--I’m fortunate to have not been touched myself or within my close family by this disease--but in reading Ernest Dichter’s marketing research, I have a new interest in how my mother managed her kitchen.

I think my mom was fairly tidy in her packaging of my school lunchbox, but there were times I could tell she was falling in a rut. After three straight months of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips, I was bored to death with lunch. I think we came to a mutual agreement that it would be better for us both if she just gave me a lunch allowance to eat from the school cafeteria.

According to Dichter in Handbook of Consumer Motivations (he’s writing about 1950s homemakers) moms take special care in packing their children’s school lunches. “Food wrappings are a demonstration of the concern and affection in which the members of the family are held. . . .Women respondents wrapped the package in a certain way to make sure that it was secure. Many women would run their hand over it. They would do it several times. It was as if they could seal the wrap by the magic of touch. Among other respondents it was noted that when they had finished wrapping an item, they tended to square the package. These homemakers felt that the better the shape of the package was, the more securely it was wrapped.”

Through my mother’s example, I have always had brand loyalty to Mrs. Baird’s white bread. It’s been banned from my home for twenty years or so as an empty carb food, but if I were to buy a loaf of white bread, I would buy Mrs. Baird’s.

Anyone who grew up in the Dallas area knows that Mrs. Baird was a grandmother who baked bread and delivered it in a buggy. Many of us children toured a Mrs. Baird’s baking plant as a field trip within scouts or some similar children’s activity. We remember the wonderful aroma of the plant and getting to eat a slice from a fresh baked loaf covered in melted butter.

The Baird boys, I’m sure, had a marketing department that helped establish the “image” (Dichter’s term) of the product. They were pleased with the nostalgic grandma image and also approved and maintain today the advertising line that Mrs. Baird’s “continues the tradition of hand twisting each loaf of bread, a special commitment to quality.” According to one Dichter study, consumers “preferred bakeries where workers did touch the dough and where the bakers acted as if they were baking bread for themselves at home.” Robotic man hygienically covered to prevent his germs from contaminating food product at Lubbock Mrs. Baird's plant

Mrs. Baird’s is now owned by Bimbo Bakeries. I can imagine the owners eating lunch at their country club and fretting over the regional baking business. My recommendation to them is that they buy machines to twist the bread, give the poor man above a decent job, and lay off several of their marketing dick executives to pay for it.

The sale to Bimbo was tied to misbehavior of Vernon and Carroll--Ninnie would have been ashamed of them. http://www.answers.com/topic/mrs-baird-s-bakeries?cat=biz-fin

Other fifties moms preferred breads like Wonder Bread and Sunbeam that promised energy from space-age nutrients. Breakfast foods, too, promised powerful ingredients to provide strength. Regarding breakfast, my mom fit Dichters’s observation that at breakfast not only do we need to “replenish the sources of our bodily energy physically,” but psychologically, breakfast is “ a rehearsal for coming battles, a stocktaking of our resources and a tuning of our senses to the world at large.” We want crunchy cereals because we “look upon breakfast as a sort of adversary that has to be conquered.” For those of a less pugilistic spirit (I’m one of these), we prefer crunchy cereals rather than mushy soft cereals because crunchy cereals “fulfill our tactile curiosity. You can play with cereals in an oral fashion. They have interesting shapes that can be cracked with a snap, crackle and pop.”

Kellogg's Frosted Flakes' endorsement by Superman matches Nike's use of Michael Jordan, but probably at a much smaller cost.

For more about the gender of cereals and sandwiches, including Rice Krispies, see this article.

According to Dichter, "the future trend will not be a supermodern pattern of “atom-powered” cereals. The truly modern cereal will combine all the warmth and affection of the substantial old-fashioned cereal with the fun, lightness, and convenience of modern dry cereal.” (He was right on target here.)

Many of the fifties families in my neighborhood could be classified as lower middle class restrictive or lower middle class expansive. (Click here to see previous blog on fifties suburban social classes.) Use of sugar at breakfast may be a litmus test of our families’ social class. According to Dichter, “sugar is a conflict product. We need it and want it and at the same time we are often afraid of it. . . . Every time the housewife reaches for a package of sugar, . . . she is subject to conflicting feelings of varying intensity.” Moms can basically be classified as sugar hedonists, sugar moderates, or sugar puritans.

I commend my mother (who has never had a weight problem) for being a sugar hedonist, but doing it in such a way that it was no big psychological deal. Despite her Twinkie- and cookie- and Coke-filled cupboards, I’ve always been able to stay away with no effort from all sugar-based, refined products.

We Thought We Were Providing Our Children With Paradise, and They Found It To Be Hell

Mine was not always a happy childhood, and I sometimes blamed my parents for selecting our family home in the bland, sterile neighborhoods of Casa View. If I were asked, “What would have been the right and best place to grow up?,” I would have stumbled in confusion. Perhaps an extended rather than a nuclear family, in neighborhoods reflecting the range of diversity in races, ethnicity, and income levels. Where everything was not new—such as in a dense city with a history of place and with a long development of commercial and social systems. Or perhaps on a farm, close to nature and exempt from consumer shopping and materialist concerns. Or in a place where there were not so many kids banging up against one another in overcrowded schools.

Herbert Gans, in The Levittowners,(1967) points out that nonsuburban types of homeplaces had their owns sorts of unpleasantness.

Yet even though Levittowners and other lower middle class Americans continue to be home-centered, they are much more “in the world” than their parents and grandparents were. Those coming out of ethnic working class backgrounds have rejected the “amoral familism” which pits every family against every other in the struggle to survive and the ethnocentrism which made other cultures and even neighborhoods bitter enemies. This generation trusts its neighbors, participates with them in social and civic activities, and no longer sees government as inevitably corrupt. Even working class Levittowners have begun to give up the suspicion that isolated their ancestors from all but family and childhood friends. Similarly, the descendants of rural Protestant America have given up the xenophobia that turned previous generations against the Catholic and Jewish immigrants, they have almost forgotten the intolerant Puritanism which triggered attacks against pleasure and enjoyment, and they no longer fully accept the doctrine of laissez faire that justifies the defense of individual rights and privileges against others’ needs. . . . These and other changes have come about not because people are not better or more tolerant human beings, but because they are affluent. For the Levittowners, life is not a fight for survival anymore.

When it came time to find a homeplace for my own brood of four children, my wife and I picked a small, college town. For many years, we lived within a block of the downtown courthouse square. Residents in our neighborhoods were of diverse backgrounds. The smalltown community, and the nearby large cities, provided abundant social and cultural capital. We later moved a bit out of town to a 1912 farmhouse, with farm animals, and thousands of acres of parkland. All proved boring to my brood.

So it goes that, according to my kids, I failed them just as my parents failed me. By the age of 18, my daughter was dead set that she was going to get out of her boring hometown and never come back. My son, attending his tenth year high school reunion recently, remarked on the general contempt many of the graduates (those who had moved to other parts of the country) felt toward their hometown.

Jesus, If Market Researchers Can Figure Out Motivation, Why Don’t Just Rule The World?

The infamous Virgina Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho was analyzed by the media and its experts from many points of view, including psychoanalysis. Psychologists and psychiatrists disagreed concerning whether the best diagnosis for Cho was autism, Aspergers, or paranoid schizophrenia. Some of a psychoanalytic bent explored Cho from the viewpoint that he might have been a repressed homosexual. In response to various speculations about Cho’s psychosexual problems, one writer commented that (in 2007) psychoanalysis is an unproven and discarded theory.

If I were forced to read today book after book of psychoanalytic theory, I would be bored to tears, in part because I would find speculation after speculation to be lacking in scientific proof but also unable to subjectively ring true to my understanding of myself and the people around me.

I do find today some benefit from reading books that contain psychoanalytic speculations on my motivations toward consumer products. Whatever their orientation, most psychoanalysts writing during the first half of the twentieth century were shooting from the hip with little accuracy, missing their mark as often as hitting it. The researchers on the individual’s relationship with inanimate objects, that is consumer goods such as autos, soaps, toothpaste, and cake mixes, used methodologies that would hardly pass muster in any graduate level university research program today.

The leading depth boy or the 1940s-1960s, Ernest Dichter, was trained under some of the best scholars of pre-war Vienna. Psychoanalysis was not taught and even banned as a subject of discussion in the university program he attended. But as a sort of sideline, he did go through analysis and practice for a short time as a therapist.

In the U.S. for his corporate clients, Dichter approached each project with a variety of study approaches, usually a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. He basically invented the use of focus groups as a technique of marketing research. He is credited with making first use of the term “image” to describe the important brand qualities that must be developed to distinguish commodities.

In earlier blogs, I’m mentioned many of his insights. Here’s a few more worthy of consideration.

--Why do cake mixes usually require that an egg be added?
The manufacturers could easily include the egg or a substitute as part of the dry mixture.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.cooking-chat/msg/e4ae9f3134d5b3c4
http://books.google.com/books?id=yzIm-oJyXNkC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=dichter+%22cake+mix%22+egg&source=web&ots=aJyER84A-O&sig=KSSzDEX71YDe7P0DZM5ujqPJlQo
Dichter found housewives have a need to put a cook’s touch to the cake. An egg is a symbol of fertility.

from Dichter's Handbook, 1964

Baking provides a feeling of love and security. Aroma and odors pervading the house when mother was baking are fondly remembered. The most fertile moment occurs when the woman pulls the finished cake, bread loaf, or other baked product out of the oven. In a sense it is like giving birth. How did it turn out? Did it fulfill expectations? Once the baked product is placed before the family a good part of the interest of the housewife has been lost.

--Who buys new automobiles and why?
Ernest Dichter’s research for the auto industry set the tone for much fifties and sixties advertising. In a previous blog, I have mentioned several of his findings—that people have fond memories of their first cars, that cars are an expression of freedom and independence for housewives. The commercial from the previous blog is scripted from Dichter’s playbook—that wives usually make the final purchase decision. Dichter also found that car owners associate a car whose doors close firmly and securely with a well made vehicle. Americans also have a mystical attachment to family road trips.

--Who drank my dad’s Chivas Regal?

According to Wilson Bryan Key, Subliminal Seduction, 1973

Market research on Scotch drinkers revealed that individuals who drink Chivas Regal rarely serve it to friends. At best, these scotch drinkers, even those at the very high income level of over $25,000 per year, will keep Chivas Regal for only their bery best friends, clients, or special guests whom they are trying to impress. Chivas drinkers usually keep less expensive brands of Scotch around the house for general guests or casual or lower station visitors.

Key, a notorious quack, paranoid, and pervert [who sees vaginas, penises and the word “Sex” in anything, but especially advertising], goes on to analyze that the ad above actually contains the subliminal picture of a dog (man’s best friend) which is intended to provide an unconscious stimulation to the purchase of alcohol.

--Jesus, If Focus Groups and Opinion Polls Can Figure Out Motives, Why Don’t Just Rule The World?

From The Assault on Reason, Al Gore, 2007

After a long and detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent’s campaign and the planned response to the response, my campaign made a recommendation and predication that surprises me with its specificity: “If you run this ad at this many “points” [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to this response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5 percent in your lead in the polls.”

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5 percent. Though pleased, or course, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.

When Baby Boomers Meet their Maker

I hope that entire industries must review their work products at the pearly gates.

I think the logistics boys—those whose careers have consisted of engineering smart distribution of products—will make it to heaven. They’ve done much to keep prices low during the last several decades.

And I think the bomb engineers may have a chance. When Ike or MacArthur pushed the button, they would indiscriminately kill tens of thousands. With smart bombs, Bill Clinton and George Bush can at least keep the target relatively small.

Everyone who has had anything to do with the U.S. chemical industry likely will go to hell, especially those chemists in white lab jackets who create the ingredients to packaged household goods such as insecticides, herbicides, detergents, beauty products, over-the-counter drugs, and packaged foodstuffs. I’m sure there are worse villains among the ranks of the Dow Chemicals and Procter and Gambles of the world, but the group in charge of consumer products have left whole continents of toxic waste behind them.

The hardware and software engineers likely will make it in. With Hollywood, the U.S. computer industry has been a key to the country’s maintenance of trade balances and prosperity.

Each Hollywood producer, director, and actor will have to state his case individually to St. Peter. The group working in this scene from Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing Charm School likely will make it in.

And also all dance instructors, including Mrs. Keeling, will find their places in heaven.

Hoover, FDR, Reagan, Bush and Reinhardt

The explosive growth of Dallas suburbs in the fifties has explanations in some larger currents of U.S. history.

When my parents were young adolescents growing up in Tulsa, OK, they likely read in newspapers about the 1932 Bonus Expeditionary Force, a force of 15,000 veterans who marched across the U.S. and encamped in Washington DC to cash in veterans’ bonuses approved by Congress in 1924. General Douglas MacArthur, then Army chief of staff, brought in troops, some led by lower level officers Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, to rout the Hooverville squatters.

Hoover’s hard line toward vets helped bring a new president into office, who took up the need for national support of veterans. In a 1943 fireside chat, FDR pledged that U.S. troops returning from WWII must never come home “into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line or a corner selling apples. . . We must this time, have plans ready.”

Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights in June 1944, providing returning vets with a goldmine of benefits, including tuition and living expenses for post-secondary education as well as government guarantee of mortgages for homes. In 1945, less than 5 percent of Americans held college degrees and less that two out of five had completed high school. It is estimated that U.S. education support for veterans provided nearly three years to the average vet’s education. Government support also helped finance nearly 90 percent of private homes constructed in the 1950s. The educated workforce was so widely productive that during the fifties the wage gap between social classes reached an all time low.

So my dad, coming out of an impoverished childhood during the depression and wartime military service, was fortunate to have a government which more or less slingshot him into middle class respectability, with a business school education and a new home and car. My family’s trajectory toward affluence was helped again by their use of expanding credit sources in the late fifties and sixties.

The GI bill was offered to all vets, regardless of station or race or creed [Rosie the Riveter got no such benefits], but the absence of government laws against discrimination led to patterns of suburban segregation difficult to overcome. By 1960, not a single black had been able to buy among the 82,000 new homes built in Levittown, New York (or Casa Linda/Casa View).

In 1967, Martin Luther King spoke of the 1932 Bonus Marchers when he called for hundreds of thousands of marchers to again make camp in Washington DC. He reminded Americans that, in emulating the Bonus Marchers, “The stirring lesson of this age is that nonviolent direct action is not a peculiar device for Negro agitation, Rather it is an historically validated method for defending freedom and democracy, and for enlarging these values for the benefit of the whole society.”

Since WWII, each succeeding decade has brought U.S. vets declining benefits. Bush’s National Guard forces in Iraq, as second class military, have taken over half the casualties in the war but are eligible to received only a third of the GI Bill benefits available to regular troops.

It is an irony that “The Greatest Generation” benefited so greatly from a political system that supported their economic growth, but under leadership of men like Reagan and the Bushes has undercut similar levels of support to their new generation of young warriors.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=20058

A Reinhardt Mystery

According to Ernest Dichter, in The Handbook of Consumer Motivation, all boys and girls love their bicycles. “Together with the first dog owned, the bicycle represents one of the first symbols of independence and pride of possession. The bicycle is oiled and shined. The first trips taken with a bike are often symbolic demonstrations of growing maturity, or getting away from family.”

It was my love of bicycles—of taking them apart and rebuilding them with parts from other bicycles—that caused me to strike up a friendship with Burley Gilliam. Burley lived in a small frame house on a deadend street—Stevens Street, which I walked down most days on my way to and from school. The builders of Eastwood Park had created a small easement and sidewalk so that people could walk from Sylvia Dr. in Eastwood Park to the industrial area around Cayuga. Many early residents likely used the sidewalk to walk over to the old country store, Sullivan’s.

My memories of Burley are extremely vague. My main interest was the metal shed behind his house, where he had many junk bikes. I think I bought off of him a 26” two-speed bendix back wheel and hub, which I spoked into my 20” DIY prototype sting ray bike.

My general memory was that he came from a very poor family and lived in a very wild and crazy home at the end of Stevens.

As I often do when I research my blogs, I googled Burley Gilliam and have found an extremely notorious man within the U.S. criminal justice system. Various clues indicate this is the same Burley Gilliam who lived at the end of Stevens—and who seemed to mysteriously disappear as one of our schoolmates by the fifth grade or so. One clue is that Burley Gilliam is an extremely unusual name.

Here’s the Florida prison systems info on Burley:

DC Number: 097234
Name: GILLIAM, BURLEY
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Hair Color: BLONDE OR STRAWBERRY
Eye Color: HAZEL
Height: 5'08''
Weight: 211 lbs.
Birth Date: 08/13/1948
Initial Receipt Date:
04/02/1985
Current Facility: UNION C.I.
Current Custody: MAXIMUM
Current Release Date: DEATH SENTENCE

Aliases: BURLEY GILLIAM

Scars, Marks, and Tattoos:
Type Location Description
TATTOO OTHER FLY ON PENIS
TATTOO RIGHT LEG COBRA LOWER LEG

Current Prison Sentence History:
Offense Date Offense Sentence Date County Case No. Prison Sentence Length
06/08/1982 1ST DG MUR/PREMED. OR ATT. 02/01/1985 MIAMI-DADE 8214766 DEATH SENTENCE
06/08/1982 SEX BAT/ WPN. OR FORCE 02/01/1985 MIAMI-DADE 8214766 SENTENCED TO LIFE

Note that he was born in 1948, just the right age to have been a schoolmate in the fifties.

Also, more google work and review of various legal transcripts indicates Burley had strong ties to Dallas, His first conviction for rape occurred in Dallas in 1969; in a transcript, he says his mother-in-law lived in Dallas.

Here’s a short summary of some of his early home life—all of which is in keeping with my minimal memories of his household on Stevens St.

Dr. Marquit testified to the following significant facts concerning Burley Gilliam's life: Burley was abused by his father who was an alcoholic (R. 2846); his mother was a "nervous-type" of person who could not control her children and was out of the house for long periods of time (R. 2846); as a result of his mother's inability to act as a parent, Burley, the oldest child, was forced to take care of the rest of the children, a responsibility for which he was not prepared to handle (R. 2847, 2855); when something went wrong involving the other children, Burley was punished (R. 2847, 2855); he had very little parental nurturing (R. 2847); he was a "very sickly child" who suffered a myriad of health problems (R. 2848); he had a learning disability (2848-9); his learning disability was neglected by his mother because she provided nothing in terms of parenting other than physical necessities (R. 2849); in addition to his father, his mother also was an alcoholic (R. 2849); he was beaten "considerably" by his step-father (R. 2850); he is not sadistic (R. 2860-1); and he does not hold a grudge against his mother or father for the fact that they were not good parents (R. 2860).

At the penalty phase, before the jury, Koch relied on guilt phase testimony from several of Gilliam’s family members: Koch: Your Honor, we have no additional testimony to present. We likewise would be relying on the testimony of Kay Salem, John Beagle, Fay Beagle, and Dean Wilkins [sic].[13] The only evidence the State presented was a certified copy of Gilliam’s 1969 rape conviction in support of the prior violent felony aggravator. As did the defense, the State relied on the testimony adduced during the guilt phase: [State]: At this stage of the proceedings, the State would be relying on the testimony of Dr. Rao, Souviron, Wilder, and the testimony of Mr. Walter Burt, with particularity to the issue raised in this trial.

Gilliam’s mother, Ludine Wilkins, and sisters, Cecil Faye Beagle and Kay Salem, testified during the guilt phase that Gilliam’s stepfather brutally beat him as a child.

Appellant's sister, Erleni Salem, testified that their mother was not home "much of the time" to supervise her brother Burley Gilliam and the other children. She testified that their mother worked during the day and evenings and "partied the times she wasn't home" (R. 2886). Ms. Salem described how Appellant was the saving grace for her son Lloyd after her husband's death (R. 2888-89).

For the gruesome details of Gilliam's 1982 crime, click here.

Is this Burley Gilliam the boy at Reinhardt whom I bought my bike parts from?

Creeps in the Suburbs

William H. Whyte, in the 1956 book The Organization Man, devotes more than 100 pages to examining the influence of corporate men in fifties suburban neighborhoods. According to him, those mid-level managers, technicians and salesmen set the tone in the neighborhoods and were looked up to as opinion leaders.

I'm not sure they all were so special in the opinion of my mother. As she looked across the neighborhoods and rated the male breadwinners, she used a more complex set of criteria. Mr. X. was a creep, even though a high earner, because he was a dictatorial overcompensator with his wife and children. He even insulted the other bridge ladies when he found them at his home, making everyone feel that they were below him and his doormat wife in social class. Mr. Y was an atheist, and did not even go to church each Sunday with his devout Baptist wife. Mr. Z. was a drunkard, yelled at his wife, and poisoned his next door neighbor's dog to shut up its barking.

For my mother, the dads that had status were good earners, but also caring husbands and fathers. They were hard workers, but also fun. I don't know if any of the men in our neighborhood passed her muster, including my dad. She let us know that the real love of her life was Dean Martin.

Even the organization men didn't necessarily have it easy in our neighborhoods. My dad was struck with a bleeding ulcer in the early 60s from all the stress his job and family gave him; the hospital had to give him 39 pints of blood to keep him alive. I wish he had watched this educational film:



If the player does not work, click here to go to the video.

American Men and Their Cars

Around 1960, my friend Kenny told me that his dad had bought an unusual car, a Volkswagen Karman Ghia. He explained that his dad had questioned the new car salesman extensively about the car’s reliability and that the salesman had convinced him that the car could make it from Oklahoma—apparently where Kenny’s dad’s parents lived--to Dallas without any mechanical problems.












At the time I thought it was an unusual purchase. In reading Ernest Dichter’s Handbook of Consumer Motivations (1964), I found an explanation that makes sense to me:

The foreign car as a social introduction. Interviews with the owners of small foreign cars show that they welcome the many opportunities their car present for them to relate with other people. They like attracting attention, having people stop them and talk to them. They like being singled out and in such a way that the establishing of a personal relation, however brief, seems worthwhile. . . .They like the feeling of being members in a fraternity of foreign-car owners and drivers.

Mr. Jones, a college-educated man, made his fortune as a paper salesman. I think he enjoyed the attention he got from making sales calls in his Ghia—a not too dissimilar motivation from what likely prompted Mr. Goldstein to drive a station wagon with a machine gun mounted on the roof.

Ernest Dichter explains in The Strategy of Desire (1960) that American men treasure, nearly above all else, their memories of the first cars, and also, if it ever happened, their first new cars.

Here’s a video clip shot 25 years ago of my father describing his first car and his first new car.


Oh, I loved my first car—a 1961 Austin Healy bug-eyed Sprite. Without a girlfriend to distract me, I tenderly disassembled every piece of the engine. I soaked the carburetor in carburetor cleaner and forcefully injected every hole and crevice with a cleaning spray, then used a screwdriver to fine tune the engine so that it made a deep blah, blah, blah through the glass pack muffler.















My friend Jim soon gained a Sunbeam Alpine, and Tom rounded up an Austin Healy 3000 before stepping up to a U.S. muscle car—a new GTO. Unfortunately all three of us boys had wrecked or had blown up our loves within months of latching onto them.










By the late 1960s, I had been sucked in to the idea promoted by Doyle Dane Bernbach's advertising campaign that the VW bug was an anti-car, the "people's car" (yeah, of Nazism), and I remained loyal to that brand for several years.

Sociologist Hits Nail on Head

Herbert J. Gans was a Univ. of PA sociologist who lived in and studied one of the largest suburban communities of the fifties and sixties—Levittown, PA.

When I child, I struggled to understand differences among the families in my neighborhoods. Gans’ descriptions of class subcultures seem a good fit to our East Dallas suburbs. He identifies five:

--Working class
--Lower middle class, restrictive
--Lower middle class, expansive
--Upper middle class, conservative-managerial
--Upper middle class, lib­eral-professional

My home was definitely lower middle class, expansive. Kenny’s was UMCCM, as were Steve Wil. and Dana. I knew several Roman Catholic families that were LMCR. Scotty, who lived down the street and had a policeman for a dad was definitely WC.

From The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, by Herbert J. Gans, 1967

MAJOR SUBCULTURES AMONG THE LEVITTOWNERS
Statistics do not provide a complete picture of the Levittowners and how they vary, and figures must be fleshed out by ethno­graphic description. Age and life-cycle position are important sources of diversity in American society, but most Levittowners are young couples. Given the declining influence on behavior of regional origin, religious preference, and ethnic background, the crucial source of variety in Levittown is class and class subculture.

Classes are strata-with-subcultures that grow out of the struc­ture of the national economy and society. By class subcultures I mean sets of responses that have developed out of people's efforts to cope with the opportunities, incentives, and rewards, as well as the deprivations, prohibitions, and pressures, which the natural environment and society offer to them.

From another perspective, subcultures are predispositions to behavior, ways of acting, to be followed when the social situation permits it. For example, the desire for community activity is a major source of differentiation between lower middle and upper middle class subcultures. People of the latter class are more pre­disposed to routine involvement in civic ventures; those of the former participate only when there is a political threat to their homes and families or when occupational roles require it, as in the case of a lawyer or insurance salesman who must advertise his services through community activities in order to earn a living. The social situations with which people must cope and the roles they normally play are, of course, the most important determi­nants of behavior, but cultural predispositions help to explain why people act differently in the same social situation or role.

Finally, subcultures are aggregates of predispositions, so that where one is found (for example, civic activity), another (buy­ing gourmet foods or reading a magazine like Harper's) is also likely to be present. Predispositions are related or aggregated, sometimes into a fairly stable system, because the situations which people face and the responses they make are often similar, and it is these similarities which are estimated when class is measured by income, occupation, or education. At one time, occupation was an easy clue to the rest of a person's culture, but among the Levittowners education is probably the best index, for years of schooling and the quality of the school attended influence strongly the job for which a person is eligible, the amount of money he has to spend, the kind of woman he marries, and the way he and his family will spend their leisure hours.

The people who came to Levittown may be distinguished as "belonging" to three major class subcultures, which can be labeled as working class, lower middle class, and upper middle class. They must be described in very general terms, ignoring for the sake of clarity the many nuances and diversities which each individual, by virtue of his upbringing and experience, expresses in acting upon his own predispositions. At best, then, the de­scriptions that follow are brief profiles; at worst, they are only stereotypes."

Working Class
The way of life I call "working class subculture" is to be found not only among blue collar workers, but also among lower­ echelon white collar workers and among people who did not graduate from high school. In the white population, many are Catholics, and of Irish, Italian, and Southern or Eastern Euro­pean peasant backgrounds. The vestiges of this origin are espe­cially strong in family life. The typical working class family is sexually segregated. Husbands and wives exchange love and affec­tion, but they have separate family roles and engage in little of the companionship found in the middle classes. The husband is the breadwinner and the enforcer of child discipline; the wife is the housekeeper and rears the children. Whenever possible, hus­bands spend their free time with other male companions, women with other women. Entertaining is rarer than in the middle class, and most social life takes place among relatives and childhood friends. When they are not available, there is occasional visiting with neighbors and also a tendency for husband and wife to draw closer to each other. Even so, it is significant that the first organ­ization to be founded in Levittown was the Veterans of Foreign Wars, its predominantly working class membership quickly mak­ing it a suburban substitute for the city's neighborhood tavern.

Parent-child relationships are adult-centered. Children are ex­pected to behave according to adult rules and are often disci­plined when they act as children. Therefore, the young child is supervised strictly and his life is bounded by a large number of rules, deviation from which is punished affectionately but, by middle class standards, harshly. The main purpose of child­rearing is to make sure that the child stays out of trouble-that is, does not get into difficulties with the school or the police. For this reason, working class parents expect the school to enforce disci­pline. Children react to these parental demands by seeking to get out of the house at an early age and to give up the family for the peer group as soon as possible. For some years there is familial conflict over this move, but, generally speaking, working class parents give their children freedom sooner than middle class parents do. They often expect the child to get into trouble by the time he reaches adolescence, and accept its occurrence fatalis­tically. By then the child, especially the boy, is expected to be a near-adult and responsible for himself.

Socially mobile working class families attempt to prolong adult control, especially over school behavior. Since parents know that mobility can only be achieved by educational success, they put pressure on their children to do well in school. Not being well equipped to help the child, however, they can only continually urge him to work harder at his studies. Often, this kind of pressure is ineffective, and mobile families find to their disap­pointment that the child does poorly in school. In nonmobile families, children are expected to finish whatever schooling is necessary to obtain good-that is, secure and stable-jobs. By now high school graduation is considered desirable, and if a boy is academically successful, the parents will make an effort to send him to college. However, there are usually so many opposing peer group influences and other pressures that by the time the child reaches college age he is neither able nor willing to go on.

Working class culture provides few of the skills and attitudes needed for organizational activities. People find it extremely difficult to accept the validity of values and interests which con­flict with theirs; they have trouble relating to strangers and making decisions in a group-or for the group. Also, they tend to view political and other organizations with the same moral measuring stick as the family, and expect similarly altruistic be­havior from such, organizations. This produces a highly personalistic view of government and associations, and when their ac­tions are undesirable, they are seen as tools of unscrupulous indi­viduals out for personal gain. More generally, working class peo­ple believe-with some justification-that these agencies are es­tablished to benefit the business community and the middle class, and to deprive "working people" of their rightful share of goods and privileges. As a result, they are highly suspicious of private and governmental organizations and reject them when their aims do not accord with working class priorities. In a middle class community then, people of working class culture stay close to home and make the house a haven against a hostile outside world.

Lower Middle Class
Probably three quarters of the Levittowners follow the predis­position of lower middle class culture. They are some of the blue collar workers, the white collar ones, and even many of the pro­fessionals; they are people who have completed high school and perhaps a vocationally or a nonintellectually-oriented liberal arts college.

The lower middle class family is sexually less segregated than the working class one. Husbands and wives are closer to being companions, for both sexes have learned to share a few common interests and to participate to some extent in each other's world. Since neither man nor woman is likely to have an intense outside avocation, the home and the family are the focal point for mutuality. Partly because the common interest is in the home, the lower middle class family is child-centered. This character­istic must not be exaggerated, however, for the image so popular in the mass media-of impotent parents dominated by their de­manding children-is inaccurate, except perhaps among families from extremely poor beginnings, who want their children to have everything they missed and then cannot cope with their ceaseless requests. Most lower middle class families are child­centered only to the extent that the home is run for both adults and children, and the children are allowed to be themselves and to act as children. At the same time, they are raised strictly, for parents are fearful of spoiling them. Lower middle class parents play with their children much more than working class parents do. Partly for this reason, they do not relinquish control over their children so quickly. They believe in the value of school and church, but do not want these institutions to transform the child or to make demands that would alienate it from the home. The working class sees these institutions as keeping the child in line; the lower middle class wants them to support the home and its values.

In education the lower middle class prefers a modern approach without undue pressure on the child, with every child treated as an individual-but not as a unique or different one, as upper middle class parents favor. Social adjustment is as important as academic success: it is hoped that the children will be accepted by peers of equal status. Educational achievement is important; lower middle class parents want their children to go to college, because higher education is a prerequisite to a respectable and well-paid job and a good marriage.

One reason for the child-centeredness of the lower middle class family is that such a family type is nuclear-that is, consisting only of parents and children. In America, the clanlike extended family is highly valued only in the working class, in some ethnic groups of all classes, and for other reasons, in the upper class. Lower middle class people still love and visit their relatives, but if they are too far away to visit, they are not especially missed, for lower middle class people are able to make friends. Their social life is informal and involves primarily neighbors and friends met through organizational activities.

Many lower middle class people are also active in church and in voluntary associations. The church reinforces their view of the world as run by morality, in which goodness, kindness, honesty, and altruism are important motive forces to action, and evil is the result of evil impulses. Of course, the church is important also as a source of fellowship; here people can find friends with simi­lar viewpoints, and of similar class level as well, and without hav­ing to admit this aim as a motivation. Parents support such organizations as the PTA and the Scouts, which uphold the cultural values of orderliness, self-reliance, constructive leisure, and above all, the primacy of the home and its moral strictures. People also belong to purely adult associations, many still sex-­segregated, which combine sociability with community service. As in the case of the working class, the lower middle class nor­mally has little interest in government. The working class distrusts politicians because they are seen as enriching them­selves; the lower middle class is wary of politicians as dishonest and opportunistic. If government is immoral, the best solution is to keep its functions and power minimal; the ideal is a business­man or a city manager who will do away with politics and will also keep taxes low.

Today, the lower middle class must be divided into restrictive and expansive subgroups. The former includes most Protestants and those Catholics (especially of Irish origin) who have adopted the Calvinist-Puritan tradition of pre-twentieth century America. This tradition arose in the small towns of America, and its ad­herents still harbor considerable suspicion of the city and its peo­ple, but especially of the "action-seeking," adventurous working class and the urbane and cosmopolitan upper middle class. They try to lead sober and controlled lives, with little drinking or partying other than the ubiquitous card parties. Ostentation and gaudiness are shunned, as are excitement and sensuality, which may be enjoyed only vicariously in the mass media. The expan­sive group includes other Catholics, Jews, and those Protestants who share their European, non-Puritan origins, particularly those who have moved into the middle class from urban working class and ethnic origins. Members of the expansive subgroup buy more impulsively, enjoy an aggressively active social life, and are willing to drink, gamble, and enjoy openly the offerings of modern show business.

Lower middle class culture is often accused of being overly concerned with respectability and keeping up appearances. This is probably truer of the restrictive than of the expansive group, for the former is essentially attempting to maintain a past tradi­tion. Even so, there is more of a conflict between the ideal and the real in the lower middle class than in the working class. The latter has few pretensions about the world and expresses its idealism as cynicism; working class people have suffered too much from reality to believe that things could be much different. Lower middle class people, however, still defend a preindustrial moral code which sometimes requires the hypocrisy that has been noted in contemporary lower middle class life.

Upper Middle Class

A small proportion of managers and professionals have found their way to Levittown, at least temporarily, and although many are not yet upper middle class in income or status, they will be in years to come. Theirs is already the culture of the college-­educated, cosmopolitan population, trained to be interested in and to participate in the larger world. Home and family are somewhat less important to this than to the other classes. The upper middle class family has shed almost all sexual segregation, for college attendance has trained women for organizational and occupational skills which they can and want to pursue even while being mothers and housewives. The wife still does the house­work-though she is likely to have domestic help to release her for other activities-but many of the child-rearing functions may be shared with the husband. Interests other than those of the home can also be shared by the spouses and, conversely, each can have interests that take them away from the home. One-but not the only one-of the shared interests is the children. The upper middle class is concerned with the development of the child as a unique individual, one who can perform autonomously in all spheres of life valued by the upper middle class, especially a re­warding professional career. In order to achieve these aims, parents provide direction for the lives of their children, so that while family life is child-centered, it is also adult-directed. The children are encouraged and even pressured to do well in school and parents are concerned that the school their children attend not only provide a good education but also demand a high level of performance.°

Since most upper middle class people (at least in Levittown) have achieved their present position by their own individual achievement, the relationship with the extended family is even more tenuous than in the lower middle class. Upper middle class people are good at making friends, and choose them on the basis of shared interests. There is a considerable amount of social life, although the parties and entertaining may be devoted as much to shop talk and civic affairs as to the gossip and small talk that con­stitute the staple of social conversation among other groups.

Upper middle class people participate not only in voluntary associations but in the entire community. As cosmopolitans, they want to shape the community by national values which may not respect local traditions."' For example, they are less interested in having the school system be superior to that of nearby commu­nities than in making sure that foreign languages are taught in the elementary grades. For this population, community participation is almost a cultural duty. Although upper middle class people are as distrustful of politicians as others, they have both the skills and the status to become involved in government and to fight for what they think is desirable. Needing the community's public institutions to provide cosmopolitan educational and cul­tural services that cannot be made available at home, they favor a high level of public expenditure, to be parceled out by well­educated, nonpartisan political leaders of their own class.

Upper middle class culture can also be divided into two groups which might be called conservative-managerial and lib­eral-professional. The former is often thought of as "the business community," and its people are likely to be politically and cul­turally conservative. The latter are frequently Jewish, and politi­cally and culturally liberal, and are employed in the community ­centered professions such as education and social work. In some ways, the distinction between the two groups is similar to the re­strictive and expansive distinction in the lower middle class. The conservative-managerial upper middle class has also come from Protestant origins, although its behavior is less restrictive. The liberal-professional upper middle class is unusually active in the community. Aside from its personal interest in good schools-a characteristic it shares with the managerial group-it also fights for well-known liberal causes such as better race relations, com­munity planning, mental health, and the United Nations. In­deed, it is much more cosmopolitan than the managerial group, more sensitive to "ideas" in the abstract and to national issues than the latter. The managerial group may often oppose the pro­fessional group here, for the former, being allied with business, favors low taxes and opposes the liberalism that is inherent in the cosmopolitan stance. Liberal-professionals are the main audience for high culture. They go to concerts, plays, and museums in the big cities; they organize lectures, art exhibitions, and visits from famous performers in the suburbs. The managerial group is more likely to put its energies into golf and the country club which the liberal-professionals shun.

Organization Men in the Suburbs

Growing up in the developing suburbs of Dallas in the fifties, I was immersed in an extremely homogenous population—mostly young nuclear families, WASP, in homes and yards uniform in design and contents. Our parents, intentionally or not, protected us from the stresses of growing up in dense urban areas with volatile mixes of ethnicity, poverty, etc.

But to a growing child, even in my neighborhoods, I found confusing the fact that families around me were different from my own, and that these differences had to do with work status and educational background of the father, family income, religious and political affiliations, and other subtle social variations. An obvious difference was that some parents were much stricter than mine, seemingly tied to some principles of family life not like those of my parents. Some families seemed to be more popular, and others seemed to be shunned as deviant in some way.

William H. Whyte, in the 1956 book The Organization Man, provides seven chapters on an in-depth sociological study of early fifties suburbs.

Whyte’s chapter titles are telling: Part Seven, The New Suburbia: Organization Man at Home; 21 The Transients; 22 The New Roots; 23 Classlessness in Suburbia; 24 Inconspicuous Consumption; 25 The Web of Friendship; 26 The Outgoing Life; 27 The Church in Suburbia; and 28 The Organization Children.

Although Whyte rarely uses the term bureaucracy, his definition of the organization man generally is mid-level workers who not only work at but “belong to” bureaucracies, whether corporate or government. “They are the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions"

The suburbs in the 1950s, according to Whyte, were the organization man’s dormitories, where the communal life was thought of as like the frontier, or the early colonial settlements, or “a womb with a view,” “a sorority house with kids,” a lay version of Army post life,” or a “Russia, only with money.” “The organization men make the suburbs in their own image. They tend to dominate the tone of the community by organizing the committees, running the schools, selecting the ministers, fighting the developments, making speeches and setting styles.”

Another aspect of the suburbs is the rootlessness of its members. Residents, though homogenous in backgrounds, come from everywhere (though in my neighborhoods, mostly from the South). The organization men in particular are rootless, as the organization requires them to be mobile and transient.

Just as the organization requires a certain classlessness of its workers, in the suburbs, there is a leveling of class. Young couples, away from family homes and family influences, can make their own new image of class affiliation. For example, a young couple, like my parents, might choose a church a step up from their parents—Presbyterian rather than Methodist. “So with personal tastes: wives are particularly quick to pick up the cues from the college-educated girls on the street, and their clothes, be they slacks or cardigans and pearls, begin to show it. Home furnishings are another symbol of emancipation.”

In my neighborhoods, on any street all houses were 90 percent the same, but with small differences, selected by the new home buyer, such as porch style, kitchen colors, den paneling, just like the choices you would have to select your new car or your 401k plan—to express your unique personality. Some neighborhoods (mostly those built in the forties), were all frame with wood siding. My home, built in about 1952 and with 975 sq. ft. was combination brick veneer and wood siding with one bath and a one-car garage. Steve, up on San Lorenzo, lived in a house entirely brick veneer, with larger sq. footage and likely with two baths, while Kenny’s family moved up to a two-story brick. Home designs had names such as ranch house, colonial, and cape cod.

When all the houses on a street looked alike, small discrepancies were easily noted: a garage conversion was frowned on, as was too dense vegetation. Men kept the yards mowed, but it was best to take the middle way with lawn care—not too lazy and sloppy but also not in a big show-off way. On occasion, we had real social deviants in our neighborhood, like the beatniks on Sylvia Dr. who painted their house bright orange and painted a dragon with flaming mouth on the front siding.

Inside, we were quick to note new additions outside the norm—a portable dishwasher, a first and second window air conditioner, at Kenny’s house, a console stereo player. According to Whyte:

"It is the group that determines when a luxury becomes a necessity. This takes place when there comes together a sort of critical mass. In the early stages, when only a few of the housewives in a block have, say, an automatic dryer, the word-of-mouth of its indispensability is restricted. But, then, as time goes on and the adjacent housewives follow suit, in a mounting ratio others are exposed to more and more talk about its benefits. Soon the nonpossession of the item becomes an almost antisocial act—an unspoken aspersion of the others’ judgment or taste. At this point only the most resolute individualists can hold out, for just as the group punishes its members for buying prematurely, so it punishes those for not buying."

Whyte’s most interesting observations have to do with his analysis of social patterns of friendship in the neighborhoods. For a year or so, his research team studied social interactions in a particular neighborhood, recording group events.




In our neighborhoods, for instance, what houses were sites for backyard parties, bridge games, scout meetings, baby showers, etc? What houses did we want to go to on Halloween and which did we stay away from?

More from Whyte in a future blog.

Memorization

Janie Wilson's auditorium class included dramatic and choir presentations, which required memorization. One of the earliest experiences I can remember on the stage was a nighttime performance with parents, in which I and several other boys, dressed like beatnks, sang a popular song of the mid fifties--"Standing on the Corner." It was not a big memorization job, but an accomplishment for a child likely only in the third grade or so.

Memorization of square dance routines also was required, by Mrs. Keating, and included nightime performances with parents invited.

I was reminded of another memorization task in a recent e-mail:

From: Shari Stern Sent: Mon 9/3/2007 6:22 PM
To: Don HancockCc: Stephen Webb
Subject: Oh. My. G-d.
I can't believe this just flew out of my brain. How is it possible? I was somewhere online and a photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon popped up. This is what I thought: In a 3rd or 4th grade, I think, assembly, we did some sort of musical or play. You sang, "I am the man in the moon, I mind my p's and q's,I don't like to be disturbedby anyone from the earth, I'll always call this home, I'll never from here roam, Cause I'm happy, just living on the moon!" You sang it in a monotone!!!!!!!!! It was hilarious. Do you remember?

Shari obviously is one of those who has an elephant memory. I can confirm this happened and she has the words right but have no other memories as to the time or place--other than it was on the Reinhardt stage.

In the 8th grade, my wonderful English teacher taskmaster Miss Suggs, who was single and lived in an apartment on swinging Gaston Avenue, required all students to memorize and recite to her this poem.

And in the 10th grade my English teacher taskmaster Mrs. Wilbanks required all students to memorize and recite to her this poem.


It was probably good for us children to be required to memorize things like these. And as I responded to Shari, it's probably good for us old folks to keep the brain cells firing with seredipitous stuff like this blog.

Hippie Boys Confuse Motivational Researchers

In the late 60s, the U.S. economy had need for the “Peacock Generation” to become good consumers like their moms and dads. Hippie boys and girls were a problem for the motivational researchers. They did not buy clothes, deodorant, soap, hair cream, razors or new cars. Not only did my friend Vick not buy underwear, he didn’t even wear them under his Levis. Their general rejection of consumerism might be construed as a big “Fuck You” to advertising, the media, and the captains of industry.



From Twentieth-Century Fashion, by Linda Welters & Patricia Anne Cunningham
http://books.google.com/books?id=ydEB1Yd6JkgC&pg=RA1-PA795&lpg=RA1-PA795&dq=%22peacock+generation%22&source=web&ots=Cv598-ypg6&sig=X0Oy0lCRl2IN4vwgSDSbJvN5FuU#PRA1-PA745,M1


They expressed their discontent through their dress. These young people were at the forefront of the hippie movement, whose adoption of anti-fashion, non-traditional clothing was one phenomenon of many that led to the decline in the traditional menswear market.
. . .
In their discontent, hippies sought self-knowledge through drugs, sex and spiritual advice. Their new manner of dressing distinguished them from the mainstream culture. Hippie clothing is often described as anti-fashion, created from patched clothing mixed together with cast-offs, second-hand clothing, and flamboyant accessories. It might include a mixture of rumpled past styles and ethnic clothing. The movement generated many merchants selling clothing from Africa, India, Afghanistan and the like. Hippies disdained new clothing and anything made of synthetic fibers, such as polyester and nylon, or with wrinkle-free finishes. In fact, they liked wrinkles. And they especially liked worn denim that by the end of the decade became the uniform of all disillusioned youth. One aspect that was particularly appealing about the hippie clothing was that it offered a great deal of comfort.

Sex Sells Soap

The psychoanalyst determined the soul of the thing and then the Madison Avenue men (on occasion) made art, after budget approval from the organization men.

Hidden Persuaders 1957
Procter and Gamble ‘s image builders have charted a living personification for each of their cakes of soap and cans of shortening. Ivory soap is personalized as mother and daughter on a sort of pedestal of purity. They exude simple wholesomeness. In contrast the image charted for Camay soap is of a glamorous, sophisticated woman.

From How Advertising Works: The Role of Research By John Philip Jones, 1998
http://books.google.com/books?id=VLh-LSg6GyAC&pg=PA136&dq=Perceptual+Map+of+Toilet+Soaps&sig=7DXNGXqW8HsUmhonXwx_y4uzqRk#PPA136,M1

My mother, nearly always a brand shopper, tended to prefer Zest and Dial for our family. Today, I incline toward the house brands, such as Equate, but recognize the importance of brands in a few selected areas--Levi's 501s , O'Reilly's over AutoZone for front end parts such as ball joints and electronics such as distributor caps and plug wires, high-priced Lipitor to prevent death from heart attack but unavailable in generic, and "true taste" products such as pizza, cigarettes and whiskey. In Texas, we can get bargain prices for some unpopular premium beers such as the Coors 24 oz., but in quantity, the second-tier brands are a better value. Regarding soaps and other packaged chemical products, I have accumulated over 30 years hundreds of cans, bottles, tubes, boxes which are partly used. I regret that they were bought, and I wish I knew how to get rid of them--most being toxic to my septic tank and to the environment.

Handbook of Consumer Motivations, by Ernest Dichter, 1964

Bubble baths and the glamour attached to them reflects the deep gratification provided by lather. The lightness and "unreal” character of lather “born out of foam” has much significance. Lather has a caressing effect on the skin, which explains why people soap themselves more than would be necessary if they merely wanted to get clean. The urge to caress ourselves is a deep-seated, complicated psychological tendency which we usually try to suppress. Soap and lather supply an accepted pretext to fulfill this natural desire to pat and smooth our skin.

From "Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious," David Bennett

http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/1/1.pdf

[In 1939], Dichter proceeded to make $200 by discovering the autoerotic associations of soap lather for the Compton Advertising Agency and its client, Ivory Soap. Observing that “one of the few occasions when the puritanical American was allowed to caress himself or herself was while applying soap,” he conducted “a hundred non-directive interviews where people were permitted to talk at great length about their most recent experiences” with soap—a technique that he would later dub “the depth interview,” modeled on the psychoanalytic session. The depth interview’s free-association technique could be supplemented with another technique from the psychoanalytic armory, called the “psychodrama,” which he described as “penetrat[ing] just a few pegs deeper than the depth interview” and “where we ask people to act out a roduct”: “You are a soap, let’s say. . . . How old are you? Are you feminine? Are you masculine?”

Was Ernest Dichter A Materialist?

Ernest Dichter (b. 14 August 1907 in Vienna; d. 21 November 1991 in Peekskill, New York) was a psychologist and marketing expert who is widely considered to be the "father of motivational research." He received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1934 and emigrated with his wife Hedy (née Langfelder) to the United States in 1937. http://www.wikipedia.com/

Born an Austrian Jew, he was one of few with the foresight and wherewithal to emigrate in the late 30s, first to Paris and then to the U.S. Nearly all his family was killed during WWII, many in concentration camps.

From The Handbook of Consumer Motivations, “The Soul of Things” 1964 By Ernest Dichter

The bedraggled column of refugees struggle down a muddy road, their backs bent under their few possessions. A few pieces of clothing, sometimes a mattress, or even a sewing machine stick out weirdly. They mean life to people. Some of the things are important for survival; most of them, however, such as the child’s doll or the long since faded and useless wedding dress of the woman, are a tangible anchorage, as accent on life’s continuity. They are needed for the glow they give, however weak, in the bottomless darkness of human despair. Hollow hands clasp ludicrous possessions because they are truly lost.

During World War II literally tens of thousands of people refused to leave their homeland because they felt they could not leave their possessions behind. They were eventually caught and immediately killed or dragged off into concentration camps and punished because of their infantile attachment to tangible, hard, security-giving but deadly things and objects.

Cleaning Up the Debris Left Behind by 20th Century Crazes

Current ebay listing
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-Fire-King-Esso-Exxon-Tiger-Cereal-Bowls-LOOK_W0QQitemZ180154644558QQihZ008QQcategoryZ1019QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
From my grandparent's estate...

You are bidding on a set of vintage Fire-King cereal bowls from an Esso or Exxon gas station. The bowls feature a tiger face on the inside bottom, from the "Put a Tiger in your Tank" ad campaigns. These bowls were made with Fire-King's mold number 20, which is marked on the bottom. The diameter at the top is approximately 4-7/8 inches; the bottom diameter is approximately 2-5/8 inches. They are about 2 inches deep.Bowl #1 (right): Clean white glass color; tiger colors deep and distinct; 'popped bubble' flaw in top rim that feels like a chip.Bowl #2 (left): Creamier colored glass with some discolored pits on interior surfaces (factory second?); tiger colors not as deep as other bowl; no chips or bubble.













When I was 15 years old, for two of my speeches required in Mrs. Braden’s speech class, I presented short satires on advertising. One of the speeches poked fun at the ethical problem of setting up an experiment in which some children developed more cavities than others [see earlier blog on Dental Hygiene] and one speech was a narrative of juvenile delinquent boys and their nighttime car burglary of an Esso tiger’s tail; the tiger tail promotion must have reached a height of interest in Dallas in summer, 1964.

From Hidden Persuaders, 1957
The McCann-Erickson advertising agency made a study for Esso gasoline to discover what motivates consumers, in order more effectively to win new friends for Esso. The agency found there is considerable magic in the word power. After many depth interviews with gasoline buyers the agency perfected an ad strategy that hammered at two words, with all letters capitalized: TOTAL POWER.

Ernest Dichter is usually given credit for the 1959-64 Esso/Exxon “tiger in your tank “ ad campaign. Esso had used the tiger in ads in the 1930s, but the slogan and expensive advertising assault in the 1960s were apparently masterminded by Dichter. According to one source, Dichter liked the tiger because it is such a universal symbol of power, and Esso needed a global advertising plan to aid in its expansion. And Dichter, whether selling tooth paste or gasoline, was master of the branding needed to differentiate commodities.

In 1959, as tiger ads waned in Europe, the tiger came to life in Chicago, Illinois, where an advertising copywriter sat at his typewriter thinking up symbols of power for a local Esso campaign. In two minutes, a famous advertising slogan was born: Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Unlike his fierce forebears, this tiger emerged as a cartoon character - friendly, whimsical but still powerful. From his original Chicago habitat, the fun-loving cat eventually roamed Esso ads and promotions throughout the world. The tiger tail emerged from thousands of gasoline tanks. Tiger faces and stripes appeared on T-shirts, towels and other trinkets. Within five years, the tiger was so well known, Time magazine dubbed 1964 "The Year of the Tiger Along Madison Avenue." An astonishing 2,500,000 tails were [sic] sold [i.e., distributed. ][www.esso/Exxon.com]

Dichter . . . claimed to have “laid the groundwork for the symbolism” of Esso’s “Tiger in the Tank” ad campaign by decoding a patient’s dreams of fighting with a powerful animal, which he recognized as “a symbolic way of fighting and loving his father”—an insight that could be translated into a gasoline ad’s appeal to the subliminal desire to incorporate the father, or the father’s power, cannibalistically. As Dichter explained: “The “Tiger in the Tank” [w]as another worldwide, successful translation of sex into sales. A gas tank is mysterious and dark like a womb. It can be fertile or sterile. The hose of the gas pump resembles you-know-what. Rational? Who cares? The symbol of power, of virility, of strength, goes through the oddly shaped nozzle into the receptive womb and gives it power and strength. It worked practically around the world. I want you to realize that I am as amazed as the infidels are. How can such a contrived mixture between sexual allegories, mysticism, and caveman symbolism result in millions of dollars of very unmysterious cash through increased sales?”

Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious, David Bennett
http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/1/1.pdf


The “Tiger in Your Tank” was a fad in which the primary product was gasoline and the sideline swag was for amusement. In the early fifties, Disney had a fad marketing bonanza with the Davy Crockett coonskin hat and related paraphernalia. {See previous blog “One Man’s Dream Was Our Reality.”]






And many of us Reinhardt kids also experienced the hula hoop craze, with other Wham-O follow-up products such as the Frisbee, Slip 'N Slide, Chubby Checker Limbo dance game, Water Wiggle and others.



Fads could be marketing bonanzas for a company like Wham-O, but could not be started by advertising alone. The Wham-O entrepreneurs picked their products with care (in tests with kids, they saw that the hula hoop had a remarkable average “playtime’ per child), used much word-of- mouth, and somehow were simply in the right place at the right time. Between 1957 and 1959, Wham-O sold more than 20 million hula hoops, most at $1.98. According to one source, if extended as one piece, the hula hoops would stretch around the earth. And where did all that Marlex plastic end up? Likely in U.S. landfills.















[Did I attend a Limbo party at her home in about 1961?]

In the mid-fifties, marketing researchers such as Dichter, observing the Davy Crockett craze, theorized that crazes could be scientifically produced, but a successful craze’s causes likely were complex and unpredictable.

From Hidden Persuaders, 1957
An evidence of how big the business can be is that the Davy Crockett craze of 1955, which gave birth to 300 Davy Crockett products, lured $300,000,000 from American pockets. Big persuasion indeed.
American merchandisers felt a need for a deeper understanding of these craze phenomena so that they could not only share in the profits, but know when to unload. Research was needed to help the manufacturers avoid overestimating the length of the craze. Many were caught with warehouses full of “raccoon” tails and buckskin fringe when. Almost without warning, the Crockett craze lost its lure. One manufacturer said: “When they die, they die a horrible death.”
The problem of comprehending the craze drew the attention of such motivation experts as Dr. Dichter and Alfred Politz. And Tide magazine, journal of merchandisers devoted a major analysis to the craze.
The experts studied the Crockett extravaganza as a case in point and concluded that its success was due to the fact that it had in good measure all of the three essential ingredients of a profitable fad: symbols, carry device, and fulfillment of a subconscious need. The carrying device, and the experts agreed it was a superb one, was the song “Ballad of Davy Crockett,” which was repeated in some form in every Disney show. Also, it was richer in symbols than many of the fads: coonskin cap, fringed buckskin, flintlock rifle. Tide explained: “All popular movements from Christianity’s cross to the Nazis’ swastika have had their distinctive symbols.”
As for filling a subconscious need, Dr. Dichter had this to say of Crockett: “Children are reaching for an opportunity to explain themselves in terms of the traditions of the country. Crockett gave them that opportunity. On a very imaginative level the kids really felt they were Davy Crockett. . . “
What causes the quick downfall of crazes: The experts said overexploitation was one cause. Another cause was sociological. Mr. Politz pointed out that crazes take a course from upper to lower. In the case of adult fads this means upper-income education groups to lower. In the case of children, Politz explained: “Those children who are leaders because of age adopt the fad first and then see it picked up by the younger children, an age class they no longer wish to be identified with. This causes the older children deliberately to drop the fad.”
Both Politz and Dichter felt not only that with careful planning the course of fads could be charted to ensure more profits for everybody, but also that profitable fads could actually be created. Tide called this possibility “fascinating.” Dr. Dichter felt that with appropriate motivational research techniques a fad even of the Crockett magnitude could be started, once the promoters had found, and geared the fad to, an unsatisfied need of youngsters.