Jack Kerouac and the Ambivalent Resistance to Post-War Consumerism and Mass Conformity (by jens kuestner)

November 21, 2010 at 8:24 pm · Filed under reviews

In May 2010 I finished my final thesis (M.A.) on Jack Kerouac. The thesis is on Jack Kerouac’s response to the US system of mass consumption that was ever-present in the 1950s. Mass consumption and conformity to 1950s politics substantially shaped American society and culture and created what historian Liz Cohen calls “A Consumers’ Republic” (Cohen 2003).

If you’re interested in 1950s history and culture I recommend you to read the following extracts. If you want to know more about Jack Kerouac’s work I would suggest reading “On the Road” (1957) and “The Dharma Bums” (1958), Kerouac’s most well-known novels. These books lie at the heart of my analysis. If you would like to buy a copy of my thesis (incl. footnotes and works cited), let me know via email.

 

‘Scared of all this American wealth’:

Jack Kerouac and the Ambivalent Resistance to Post-War Consumerism and Mass Conformity

by Jens Kuestner (M.A.)

 

Extract 1

1. Introduction

Cultural rebels shared intellectuals’ obsession with mass consumption, even as they defined themselves as countercultural by denouncing its values and practices […].

– Lizabeth Cohen

The pursuit of prosperity after World War II substantially transformed 1950s American society and established a culture of affluence and mass consumption. The Cold War era in America was shaped by a shift in economy and politics, “with major consequences for how Americans made a living […], what and how they consumed” (Cohen 2003: 8). A culture of prosperity became synonymous with patriotism, anti-communism and conformist conservatism. However, despite the dominant rise of a capitalist consumer culture, Avant-Garde movements partly resisted those tendencies and tried to develop alternative attitudes towards the “Consumer’s Republic” of which they were part (8). Often disappointed by American conservatism in terms of sexual orientation and a focus on materialism, counter movements, such as the Beat Generation, renounced the concept of political conformity and wrote in order to express their alternative views.

Jack Kerouac, the major voice of the Beats, particularly emphasised the dark side of the consumer culture and formulated an alternative lifestyle to materialistic values. His most famous travel narratives On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958) both comment on the 1950s American consumer culture in that they depict an escape from mainstream consumerism. The two narratives have been regarded as “quest novels” whose characters try to seek alternative truths on a road that deliberately abandons a consumer’s world (Charters 2000: xiv, xxix, Douglas 2007: xix – xxi). However, it is worth noting that Kerouac is rather ambivalent in his depiction of consumerist culture. Torn between the fear of having to accept the American dream of prosperity and the resistance to US consumerism, his characters present hybrid forms of consumers, often unable to advance a clear-cut opinion on the society of which they are part and to which they even want to belong.

Extract 2

2. The American Fifties: America in an Age of Consumerism and Mass Conformity

[An] American working man can own his own comfortable home and car and send his children to well-equipped elementary and high schools and to colleges as well. They [the Soviets] fail to realize that he is not the downtrodden, impoverished vassal of whom Marx wrote. He is a self-sustaining, thriving individual, living in dignity and in freedom.

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the 1950s America saw an unprecedented economic boom that not only transformed its post-war economy but also changed the way the American people perceived themselves as members of US society. A consequence of “the expanded production called for by World War II” (Ewen 1977: 205), mass consumption became synonymous with the familiar American Dream, a dream of equal prosperity and social equality (Cohen 2003: back cover). Soon consumers became part of a society that promoted consumption on a large scale but also demanded consenting to an ideology that was considered the basis for a successful consumer society. With the growing threat of the external powers of communism, America promoted its capitalist system as the solution to overthrow social inequality and to secure political tranquillity. Until today America’s Fifties are associated with a culture of wide-spread political conformity, where one had to choose between “Soviet-style communism or American capitalist democracy and all that went with it” (Douglas 2007: xix).

A closer look at 1950s politics soon reveals that the American Fifties were not “generally tranquil, secure days”, an image that was nurtured by America’s politics of conformity, but days of intense political and social unrest (Ellwood 1997: vii). Whereas the wider population prospered from post-war affluence, there was a dark side to the Consumer’s Republic: amid the nation’s material comfort, social inequality (particularly in the African- American communities) and the ongoing discrimination against racial minorities were serious issues on the agenda of post-war politics. Moreover, the enthusiasm of a newborn consumer society was not able to hide the greatest post-war struggle, namely, the politics of containment against the “worldwide spread of communism” and the fight on the home front against alleged Soviet sympathisers (Jacobs 2005: 244, Cohen 2003: 124).

In the following, the nature of American consumerism in the 1950s will be looked at in detail, with a focus on how people consumed, what they believed in and how they perceived themselves as individuals. The question arises as to why, in a time of deep political unrest, America still succeeded in establishing a culture of mass consumption. Furthermore, the afore-mentioned political conformity, so typical for this era, will be taken into consideration to juxtapose mainstream political attitudes with resistant tendencies to such politics by minority groups and non-conformists, such as the members of the Beat Generation.

2.1 Consumerism and Suburbia: The Middle Class Goes Home

The dream of an abundant life was never more present in the history of American consumerism than during the economic boom of the 1950s. The techniques of mass consumption, such as “advertising, and the growing utilization of mass communications on the national levels” had already been established in the 1920s (Ewen 1977: 197, 206). The “promise of material well-being” was a familiar ideal, particularly crucial in America’s Golden Twenties when the establishment of a consuming culture came into being (198):

The corporate message of the twenties was loud and clear. Modern times had arrived, defined largely by the burgeoning expanses of mass production, and addressing the “new freedoms” posed by the modern marketplace. (197,198).

However, due to severe problems after WW I, such as inflation and the middle class’s fight against the high cost of living, mass consumption on a middle-class level did not take place “on a mass scale” until the 1950s (Jacobs 2005: 53, 54). An ideology of economic abundance for the average family could only be introduced to American society with the strengthening of the middle class (Jacobs 2005: 246). In fact, as one of his policies President Eisenhower emphasized the importance of the middle class as a purchasing power to a prosperous economy (Cohen 2003: 152, 153). With a political focus on the average worker, a powerful tool in the establishment of mass consumption, American post-war politics deliberately developed a “social service state for the benefit of the mass middle class” (Hays quoted in Cohen 2003: 153). As a matter of fact, America’s middle class was given substantial governmental support by the so-called GI Bill of Rights, introduced in 1944, and financial support for housing construction (Cohen 2003: 118).

Most significant is the development of the middle class as part of a society of mass consumption. The white-collar job sector was expanded, and “by 1957 for the first time it outnumbered the blue-collar sector of 25 million by half a million employees” (Cohen 2003: 164). As a result of well-paid positions and governmental support with regard to house construction and higher education, more and more Americans were able to consume on a larger scale:

Many families of the 1950s had more disposable income than ever before and were busy buying dishwashers, television sets with big antennae to while away their evenings, and new cars every year. Some well-off people would take long trips over the expanding freeways each summer or even travel to Europe, which was still cheap (Ellwood 1997: 2).

An unprecedented development described here by historian Robert S. Ellwood, it gave middle-class families the opportunity to establish a whole lifestyle based on mass consumption for the first time. Commodities, such as cars, television sets and other household appliances that had been regarded as luxuries, were now taken for granted (Cohen 2003: 123). The majority of American families, “not a few individuals, nor a thin upper class” (Kantona 1964: 3), were now part of an abundant society characterized by what has become known as “conspicuous consumption” (Veblen 1924: 68). According to Fortune, in 1956 there were 16.6 US families “with more than five thousand dollars in annual earnings after taxes”. According to the US magazine, in 1959 “there would be 20 million such families – virtually half the families in America” (Halberstam 1993: 587). A significant element in a mass consumption society, “the group with middle-range incomes” suddenly outnumbered “the groups at top and bottom” (Westley and Westley 1971: 7).

The era of the middle class, pointed out by John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, had arrived, an era characterised by a “great and quite unprecedented affluence” (Galbraith 1969: 1). In his classic study Galbraith considers the nature of the affluent economy of the 1950s and attributes it to the rise of the middle class. He demonstrates how the strengthening of the working and middle classes, benefiting from raising incomes, helped to maintain an overall affluent society. Galbraith, a New Deal sympathiser, considered the support of weaker classes in particular to be the key to a flourishing market and the establishment of general welfare (Galbraith 1958: 155-163, Ellwood 1997: 158, Cohen 2003: 301). As more and more blue-collar workers were integrated into the middle class, as for instance, the numerous steelworkers in Pittsburgh, the working class enjoyed middle-class status (Cohen 2003: 155). Millions of new middle-class families, with higher incomes than ever before, shaped the marketplace to a large extent in that they became the most important purchasing power in the nation. The average family was now able to afford a high standard of living, expressed by the development of a new way of life, namely, the emerging suburban lifestyle (164).

As a result of an immense growth in population, “from 150 million in 1950 to 180 million in 1960, the largest increase in a single decade in history”, numerous middle-class white families left the city and settled into newly built suburbs. Thus, a consumer culture was established which was unprecedented in US history as it was based around a suburban lifestyle (Ellwood 1997: 9). The phenomenon of suburbia arose as a result of the so-called “postwar baby boom”, coupled with the escape of the middle class into the new residences separated from the city. Homeownership became the crucial status symbol of the consumer (Oakley 1990: 125, Ellwood 1997: 2, 23).

The increasing consumption of cars, TVs and various other household appliances particularly helped to sustain the economic boom. “Billions of dollars were transacted in the sale of household appliances  and furnishings, as refrigerators, washing machines […] and the like became standard features in postwar American homes” (Cohen 2003: 123). However, this shift in consumer behaviour would not have been possible without the development of a society that cherished the home as the basis of the consumer lifestyle. In the early 1950s, homes were built “at a rate of over a hundred thousand a months” (Ellwood 1997: 23). Cohen provides detailed facts and figures on house construction in the 1950s:

One out of every four homes standing in the United States in 1960 went up in the 1950s. As a result of this explosion in house construction, by the same year, 62 percent of Americans could claim that they owned their own homes, in contrast to only 44 percent as recently as 1940, the largest jump in homeownership rates ever recorded. And in another turning point, suburban residents of single-family homes came to outnumber both urban and rural dwellers (Cohen 2003: 123).

With the rise of the middle-class suburbs, American citizens soon identified with the home as the way to individual or, as Cohen puts it, “privatized mass consumption”, combined with a “civic responsibility” to consume on a mass scale to support America’s economic growth (195, 113). In the average middle-class home, the consumer was finally able to indulge in a lifestyle predominantly shaped by purchase. The home, “the one secure, private setting where a person can express in material form what they deeply value”, became the embodiment of a mainstream consumer culture that saw itself mainly as a society of purchasing citizens, that is, citizens who fulfilled both their duty and their desires as purchasers (Cooper-Marcus 1985: 1, Cohen 2003: 8, 113,119, also cf. Creswell 1993: 258, 259).

The new suburban home seemed best to embody the new American way of life, a life based around the consumer. Soon a life of leisure and luxuries was predominantly focused on the home. In the living room, “where husband , wife, and growing children could gather in the evening, or, among the sophisticated, for the cocktail hour, to watch television […]”, the family came together and cherished a lifestyle dominated by purchase (Ellwood 1997: 3). The new suburbs, separated from the sprawling, noisy city centres, offered everything the average middle-class family needed: a home with all its appliances, and the large shopping centres that supplied them with all the household items they needed (Wood 1959: 63, Cohen 2003: 257).

Life in an environment separated from the big cities was in part motivated by purchase of one or even several cars. The significance of the automobile in the 1950s is important to stress. “Automobile sales boomed as well, with new-car sales quadrupling between 1946 and 1955, until three-quarters of American households owned at least one car by the end of the 1950s” (Cohen 2003: 123). With one or even several cars the average middle-class family became mobile and could afford to move into a suburb at a distance from the husband’s workplace. Men became commuters. The housewife, on the other hand, could use the car to drive to the nearest shopping mall, often miles away from the home. “Their enormous automotive mobility and the decentralisation of their shops and playgrounds have tended to make conventional city life obsolete” admitted the US magazine Life (Life quoted in Marling 1994: 129, 130) analysing the new suburban families and their “fantastic and insolent chariots” (Mumford quoted in Keats 1958: 212, also see Marling 1994: 302), such as the Ford, the Buick, the Chrysler and the Cadillac (Marling 1994: 132-134).

In addition, the new medium of the decade, television, substantially transformed American culture. Soon millions of American families became passive observers at home as they “spent many of their leisure hours lazily slumped in front of the television set”, something which critics had already predicted earlier (Oakley 1990: 250). Television had a major impact on Americans in that it introduced a completely new kind of popular culture: for the first time it enabled the average family to enjoy sports, fashion, movies, etc. at home (Marling 1994: 6, Oakley 1990: 250.

However, the main reason for America’s suburban phenomenon was a focus on family values after the war. Having experienced the loss of numerous lives during World War II, Americans cherished a family and a home where new life came into being more and more. After the war and in the middle of the anxious atmosphere caused by the Cold War a peaceful home that suggested a feeling of togetherness seemed to be the only security left for many American citizens. Nevertheless, an interest in getting married and having babies as an expression of a life-affirming attitude was not the only reason for the post-war focus on the family and the home. Interestingly, the nuclear family, a concept so typical of the 1950s, was closely linked with a lifestyle of consumerism, as will be revealed in the following. (Ellwood: 1997: 24, 25).

…

Footnotes and works cited were omitted on purpose. If you’re interested in reading the thesis as a whole, let me know via email.

copyright startwritingcreatively press, jens kuestner November 2010.

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