Title Information
Title
Advertising Love: Personal Ads, Product Advertisements, and the Consumption of Romance
Name: Personal
Name Part
Burbank-Gilb, Elizabeth
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2014
Physical Description
Extent
vii, 303 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2014)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Smulyan, Susan
Role
Role Term: Text
Director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Buhle, Mari Jo
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Joyrich, Lynne
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. American Studies
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
Abstract
Advertising Love: Personal Ads, Product Advertisements, and the Consumption of Romance considers how love has been used in attempts to sell consumer goods; how cultural ideals of romance, love, and marriage are related to the values of consumption; and to what degree individuals’ beliefs about love and marriage adhered to the value system of consumer culture. A comparison of personal ads to commercial advertisements that relied on representations of love suggests some of the ways that people rejected, accepted, or refashioned the values of consumption as they looked for love within consumer culture. The content surrounding ads in advertising-supported media (here, magazines, television, and the internet) is also a valuable source at which to look for the expression of the values of consumer culture and is considered here just as it originally appeared: alongside the advertisements, adding to the chorus of messages that, in one way or another, virtually all existed in support of consumer capitalism. The five chapters in this dissertation cover the 1890s, 1920s, 1950s, 1980s, and 2010s, and chart an uneven but visible progression from individual models of romantic love and marriage that were strictly utilitarian, and not apparently shaped by the values of consumer culture, toward an increasing acceptance of those values by the 1980s and, in the present day, a new framework within which to search for love – internet dating – that prioritizes the needs of consumer capitalism.
Subject
Topic
cultural history
Subject
Topic
consumer culture
Subject
Topic
romantic love
Subject
Topic
20th century
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/797511")
Topic
Advertising
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20141006
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Language Term: Text
English
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0PZ575Z
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations