Shopping for Pleasure, John Fiske

¶ … Shopping for Pleasure, John Fiske noted that "Shopping malls are cathedrals of consumption...commodities become the icons of worship and the rituals of exchanging money for goods become a secular equivalent of holy communion..." Instead of the glass-stained windows with Madonna and the Child are the signs and advertisements, and now the videos and moving signs, as well. However, these blatant symbols of capitalism are nothing new to the American scene. Advertisements have been part of this country -- brought over from the first arrivals -- since the earliest times.

Advertisements are truly representative of the times. Earlier generations would probably have great difficulty if they saw the advertisements and commercials today promoting Victoria Secrets lingerie, Viagra for men, and pregnancy tests. When walking in an Ambercrombie and Fitch there is a life-sized male with pants low on his hips, no shirt and very sexy smile. Such advertisements give insights into the culture of the times.

Some of the first advertisements that ran in the United States were, not surprisingly, for lost http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/costa/logo1.jpg

During the 18th century thousands of slaves escaped from their masters in the Southern colonies as seen by the huge number of advertisements in the newspapers. The amount of runaways was not large enough to harm the foundation of slavery. Slave owners took safety measures to prevent the problem from growing too large. In the Southern colonies, for example, an elaborate network of laws was established for the prevention, apprehension and punishment of these slaves. These laws developed concerned a number of different areas concerning fugitives. They were not completely effective, however, as proven by the number of slaves advertised as fugitives.

Says Windley (viii), "If these advertisements tell us much about the physical characteristics of the fugitives, they also tell us something about the mind of the masters." Slave advertisements show that some masters promised their runaway slaves a promise of no punishment and a warm welcome if they would come back "home." While other masters, were the complete opposite and promised that if the slaves were caught they would be "killed and destroyed" if refusing to surrender and return. However, whether they were mollifying or violent, all masters of runaways would not have agreed in the myth that their blacks were innately submissive -- or what was called Sambo types. Certainly, too, a master whose slave had run away would have some second thoughts as to the security of this kind of property. These advertisements ran in all the colony newspapers.

Another type of advertisement at this same time, of course, was for the sale of slaves. During the 1750s and 60s, you could find advertisements in Liverpool newspapers offering slaves, for example, "to be sold to the highest bidder at George's coffee house... A very fine negro girl, about eight years of age" or "Wanted immediately, a Negro boy... not above 15 or under 12 years of age" and "To be sold one stout negro, young fellow, about 20 years of age" (Katyal; 1993).

These advertisements show a great deal about history. For example, not are these slaves only for sale in the Southern colonies. They were also in newspapers in the North.

For example, the woman who is described in this advertisement could only speak English. Therefore, she could not communicate easily with those New Yorkers, both white and black, whose primary language was Dutch. These advertisements also provided information about the clothing. They also shed light on the survival of Africanisms in dress and body adornment and proficiencies in occupations and language(s).

Consumption and the products that people want is highly dependent on the times. They are based on need. The shortage of workers in a rapidly growing new world as America encouraged the acceptance and proliferation of race-based slavery. During the colonial period, most of the enslaved people in New York came from West Africa or the West Indies. In colonial America overall, nearly half of the Africans taken to the Western Hemisphere came from the coasts of present-day Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

By the 1930s, according to Stewart Ewen, advertisements were becoming a deliberate and decisive component of consumer merchandising and a more general obsession of the consumer culture. It was no longer the product, but the advertisement of the product that was selling the item. This turn of events was not unnoticed by Egon Friedell, writing in Vienna in 1931. "There are no realities anymore," he lamented. "There is only apparatus.... Neither are there goods any more, but only advertisement. The most valuable article is the one most effectively lauded, the one that the most capital has gone to advertise. We call all this," he added, "Americanism."