Time Magazine in the 1950s

I read a 1955 Time Magazine from the week before Thanksgiving.

I found the shift between the 30s edition of Time and this magazine most interesting. This magazine was a clear intermediary step between 30s culture and today’s culture. An increased presence of a global community and interest in entertainment existed in this edition, as did an emphasis on movement away from tradition. These elements illustrated a culture more similar to today’s than I first expected.

The advertisements first caught my eye as an indicator of a growing global community.  Compared to the 1931 edition, this edition printed many more advertisements for various forms of transportation such as airplanes and trains. Time still printed car advertisements, but usually in conjunction with another form of transportation. For example, an advertisement for an airline consisted of a car company saying how proud they were to be affiliated with such a hard working airline. This advertisement publicized not only the airline, but also the car company’s progress towards the future of transportation— airplanes. An emphasis on these new methods of transportation shows that the ability to have a connected global society was becoming more accessible.

Many advertisements for travel destinations and travel agents illustrated this growing accessibility. These ads marketed towards families and encouraged travel to exotic destinations and interaction with new cultures. Travel was no longer limited to the elite, but was also available to the middle class. Availability to the middle class is the first indicator of normalcy for any institution, so clearly global awareness was becoming more common.

I also saw ads for long distance phone calls and public service announcements about the postal service. An increased need for these services indicates that not only were people traveling far away from home, but also moving further away from their place of birth. People and ideas disseminated across larger distances than before.

The foreign news section of Time was another indicator of a larger global community. Time dedicated the first foreign news section to Geneva and the discussions of inter-country relations held there. The foreign news section also included many stories about Eisenhower’s visits to various countries. In general, foreign news seemed focused on the relationships amongst countries rather than their individuality. An interest in these relations indicated a heightened global awareness and connectedness that did not appear in the 30s edition. 

Something else I noticed about this magazine was an increase in advertisements for entertainment and entertainment goods.  Time printed many advertisements for TVs, radios, remote controls, and luxury items such as pianos in addition to the travel advertisements I discussed earlier. Many of these ads included pictures of people relaxing and enjoying themselves. This idea of relaxation contrasted greatly with the 1930s advertisements, which tended to focus on increased functionality and efficiency. An increase in luxury goods shows evidence of more disposable family income and increased economic welfare. This also seems to be the beginning of the entertainment industry that dominates today.

Traditional values also seem to come into question in this edition of Time.  The topic of Princess Margaret and her romance with Captain Townsend appeared many times. The magazine printed a debate about her decision to cancel her engagement with this divorcee within its first few pages. The responses were highly varied. Some said her marriage to a divorcee would bring the values of the church into question, some said it didn’t matter. The fact that a debate even existed about the morality of divorce shows a movement away from the traditional value of marriage. This signals a shift away from traditional norms and towards today’s worldview where divorce is a socially acceptable institution.

An article about the farmers market in France also brought traditional customs under direct scrutiny. The magazine criticized the farmers market, which had had been established centuries before, for it’s inefficiency and wastefulness.  The article says that this important French tradition is inefficient due to the cost of transporting the food to the market’s customary location, and the amount of food turned around and shipped elsewhere because of the location’s inaccessibility. The argument of tradition vs. efficiency comes into direct question in this article, and clearly efficiency wins in the American view. This again shows a shift away from the traditional in favor of a future that values progress and productivity.

The overall lack of emphasis on Thanksgiving in this magazine greatly surprised me. I specifically chose Thanksgiving as my holiday because I thought that the shift in familial values would be interesting to observe. I expected to see a bunch of Norman Rockwell paintings and an emphasis on family and spending time together. But there was practically no mention of Thanksgiving and what it represented. I saw one life insurance ad that briefly referenced Thanksgiving saying that in this time of being thankful for the past, we should plan for the future, but after that ad, nothing. This indicates less of an emphasis on traditional family values than I expected.

In general, the similarity between 50s culture and today’s culture surprised me. After years of watching “Leave it to Beaver”, I expected a more homely and traditional society, but that wasn’t what I encountered at all.  While not as strongly as today, 50s culture clearly valued a global community, entertainment, and efficiency and progress in place of tradition.

Holiday Customs: Fourth Meeting With My Conversation Partner

With fall break just around the corner, holiday breaks were fresh on my mind. During todays’ meeting, this led to a discussion about Venezuelan versus American holiday customs. Jose said that the New Year’s Eve he spent in the US “was the most boring” New Year’s Eve he experienced. When the clock struck midnight he went outside expecting the whole town to rush into the streets and celebrate together until the early morning like is done in Venezuela, but of course that isn’t what happened. While you can find community-wide celebrations like this in the large cities like New York, I think celebrations in America tend to be more exclusive and amongst family and close friends. My first thought when Jose told his story was that these differences in celebration customs reflected a difference in cultural mentality. Exclusive celebrations in the US seemed to indicate an individualistic society. The basic unit for an individualistic society is, obviously, the individual. Having celebrations that solely include ourselves and those that directly influence us individually, like friends and family, reflects this individualistic mentality perfectly. The Venezuelan form a celebrating seemed to reflect a more collectivist society concerned with the betterment and inclusion of all people. They see the town as one large family and want to celebrate with everyone.

When I asked Jose if he agreed with this assessment, his responded, “I think people in all countries think about themselves, but people in my country help one another.” Jose’s thought that it is human nature to think about one’s self reflects a more individualistic cultural view then I originally thought, but on the spectrum of individualism vs. collectivism, I still think Venezuela is closer to the collectivist view than the U.S.

When discussing our plans for the holidays I also asked Jose if he planned to return to Venezuela for the winter break. He told me that his father is not allowed to return because of some problem with the insecure government. I wonder what it would be like not to be able to return home. Being unwelcome in the one place I felt most comfortable would be so disconcerting. If you can’t find comfort at home, where can you find it? I now have a better appreciation for how difficult it must be for Jose to adjust to life in the US.

Cultural Conditioning: Third Meeting With My Conversation Partner

            In our last meeting, I helped Jose edit an essay he is writing for his EIP class. Upon my first reading, I noticed a lot of run-on sentences that I could cut into 3 or 4 separate ones. When I pointed this out, Jose told me that he often heard the same feedback from his teachers, but that it was a difficult habit to break because run-on sentences were perfectly acceptable in Venezuela. This was the first time I even considered that sentence structure would be different cross-culturally.  I guess I should have expected this difference because grammar varies from language to language, but for some reason I assumed punctuation usage and sentence structure was uniform.

            The essay topic was also interesting.  Jose’s class is currently reading a book about World War II, so their assignment is to pick a topic from World War II and write a five-paragraph essay. The moment he told me that his EIP class, which is comprised of people from all over the world, was covering World War II I instantly became interested. I wondered what it would be like to sit in a classroom full of people with drastically different national backgrounds and learn about World War II. History can be interpreted so subjectively that I was interested to see what sort of opinions about the War existed in Jose’s class.  Jose said his teachers were very careful to be neutral when covering the topic in class, so not much controversy existed there, but this led to an interesting conversation about Jose’s opinion of World War II.

            Jose said that World War II was never a prominent subject in his schooling. His teachers covered it briefly in World History, and mainly focused on the nuclear weapon facet. This makes sense because Venezuela was never a direct participant in World War II. The only direct effect the war had on Venezuela was the threat of nuclear weapons. This point of view had never occurred to me. I understood that the motivations and effects of the war were probably viewed contrastingly in different countries, but I never considered the war as merely a segue into learning about nuclear weapons.

This shows how strongly we are conditioned in school to agree with national opinions. In the U.S., the war is taught as a catastrophic life-changing event, because that’s exactly what it was here. I was so conditioned into this point of view in school that I didn’t even realize it was a point of view. I assumed it was truth. As always, Jose cast an interesting outsider’s outlook on my views.

Time Magazine in the 1930s

I decided to look at Time Magazine from May of 1931.

The magazine opened up much like magazines today, with a multitude of advertisements. The magazine advertisements were similar to today’s ads in that a majority of them were either for cars, clothes, or beauty products. The ads also pushed owning the latest, and therefor “best”, model of each product. One car ad in particular incorporates a picture of a man buying flowers for the woman sitting in his new car.  This picture uses the glittering generalities technique, and subliminally sends the message that if you buy this latest car model it will change many different aspects of your life, such as romance, for the better. This indicates that 1930s America was a consumer society that valued physical beauty, and progress and innovation. It seems that little has change since then in that regard.

One difference I noticed between the advertisements of 1931 and today was the amount of information they gave about each product. Today, our advertisements contain few words, and instead use some sort of alluring picture at which we can quickly glance. However, in 1931 they printed full pages giving information about the product. At first it was difficult for me to decide which pages featured advertisements and which featured news stories.

I think this is tangible evidence of the idea we have been discussing in class that people are losing the capacity to focus for long periods of time and read deeply. The people of the ‘30s were clearly willing to sit down and read lengthy advertisements. But today’s society wants so much information so quickly that the best advertising strategy is publishing a picture that only needs a few seconds to spark a consumer’s interest. This gives evidence of a more simplistic yet more thorough consumer society in the 1930s. There simply weren’t as many products to evaluate as on the market today, so people more readily took the time to think through their purchases.

I then moved into the news section of the magazine. One of the most interesting differences I observed was how the international news was formatted. The news from each country was isolated into its own section, as opposed to the cross-cultural articles that are printed today. I think this indicates that the way of thinking about the global community was much more compartmentalized in the 1930s. They looked at countries individually, not as a component of the global society. This is reflective of the technology available at the time. The transfer of information globally was much slower, and countries were isolated, so individual cultural identity was more defined. For me, this contrast from today’s articles really highlights how globally blended culture has become today.

Another thing that surprised me about the magazine was the level of religious bias that appeared in the articles. The magazine showed its clear favor of Christianity by publishing articles like “Good Catholics.” This article glorifies Christianity by depicting it as the force battling Fascism, an ideal despised by American’s at the time. Another example appeared in an article about the death of a “great woman”. They listed being a churchwoman as one of her admirable qualities. This bias towards Christianity reflects the elite status of Christians at the time. Little attention was dedicated to understanding the religions and beliefs of the minority. This shows a more rigid mindset. They held the ideal that “my truth is the ultimate truth.” The America of the 1930s was much less egalitarian.

It is interesting to see how some values in our society have remained the same, and how others have completely changed. Americans remain individualists and have a capitalist mentality that leads them to pursue happiness through the latest and most innovative products.  They have become less selective of these products, though, simply due to volume. They have also adjusted to the global community by drawing connections cross-culturally and working to understand all different types of belief systems. 

Results vs Enjoyment: Second Meeting With My Conversation Partner

            Today, on the first floor of the BLUU, theCrew was having an event where could pot your own plant. So naturally, when Jose walked up I was busy planting a flower in a jar. When we sat down we immediately started talking about gardening. Apparently his mom is an avid gardener, but all of the beautiful plants she tries to grow here quickly die. Jose thought this might be because in the US plant’s are pumped so full of fertilizer that they can’t survive, and in Venezuela they just let the plants grow naturally at their own pace. When he said this I thought it was the perfect metaphor for the differences between American and Venezuelan culture. In America, we constantly work to get the fastest and most efficient results that we can. We set goals and run through life furiously trying to attain them, and don’t always stop to observe the beauty of life and enjoy it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, attaining goals can be rewarding. It’s just a different mindset. On the other hand, Venezuelan’s seem to take everything at a natural pace. They enjoy each other’s company and take things as they come. I think that Jose summed up it when he said, “American’s live to work and Venezuelan’s work to live.”

            Jose and I later talked about the differences in the American and Venezuelan school systems, and this was the perfect manifestation of this principle. In Jose’s school he was required to try all of the disciplines. He studied two instruments, singing, art history, architecture, tried all different kinds of sports, and did the other cores subjects all as requirements for graduation. I thought that was interesting because in American high schools we choose our specific interests and tend to stick with them through out high school. The Venezuelan approach is more holistic, whereas the American approach is already beginning to gear you towards certain career.  The Venezuelans take their time and enjoy trying different disciplines, whereas we assign ourselves interests so that we can pursue them more quickly.

            Both approaches have their merits. Neither is better or worse, they’re just different. I think it’s interesting to see how the different mentalities so completely permeate societies.

Outsider's Perspective: First Meeting With My Conversation Partner

Jose and I started off our meeting with basic small talk—our interests, what we studied in school, how we liked TCU, etc. While these are just basic civilities, it is interesting to me that these can be so standard cross-culturally. Everyone enjoys having fun, has friends or family that they are close to and want to talk about, and have interests that they want to pursue and excel in. I really like the idea that all people can connect on this basic level no matter how different they are. All humans can connect by simply being human.

When Jose and I started discussing how we liked TCU we quickly transitioned into discussing how he liked the United States in general. I asked him what the biggest difference between here and Venezuela, his home country, and he didn’t even need five seconds to formulate a response. He said that the people here were much less friendly. He told me one of the toughest habits to break was kissing girls on the cheek in greeting. He accidently did it a couple of times and the girls were alarmed. He also said that it is much easier to make friends quickly in Venezuela. You can meet a person one day, and go to a party with them later that night. This was interesting to me because I think one of the greatest things about TCU is the friendliness of the campus.  But I guess I can see how there is a lot of pomp and circumstance in meeting friends in the US. You have to talk with them a couple of times, get their phone number, then do the awkward are-we-close enough-to-hang-out dance. Then when you finally do hang out, what’s appropriate to do? I can see how this would be frustrating for someone who is not used to these customs. It’s frankly frustrating for me too, I just never realized it could be any other way. That just goes to show you that you can’t assume what is the truth to you is the truth for everyone. The “truth” of how life works is all about perspective.  It is also difficult to see details of your life when you’re living it. Sometimes you have to step outside your life and look at it as an objective observer. What you see may be completely different.

I next asked him why his family moved to the US. He told me that they moved to the US for security from the social and economic unrest in Venezuela.  The current president has caused a lot of problems in this regard. Apparently the president is a very compelling speaker, but when it comes to implementing programs helpful to the country, he has not done a good job. He then compared his president to Obama. This surprised me.  I had never thought of comparing the leader of our country to the leader of a country with so much unrest.

Jose then outlined the programs that Chavez has implemented that have been problematic. Chavez is possessing private companies and giving them to the poor, and then not equipping the poor with the education to run the company. They, therefore, end up running them into the ground. Jose was appalled by this program and was using it as an example of what a misguided person the president was. As he was telling me this I wondered if the program originally had good intentions, but then went awry in its implementation. When I asked Jose if this was the case he looked surprised and quickly answered no. This is again brought home the idea that perspectives from the outside are different from those inside.  We both got a glance of an outsider’s view of our own culture and what we saw surprised us.

I think that it is good to have these outside snapshots. It rocks your world just enough for you to give it a second glance. Reevaluating your surroundings is important. It can either completely alter your ideas, or can confirm what you’ve believed along. But either way, it is important to have a firm stance and know why you believe what you do. Hearing other people’s perspectives can help you do that.

Self-Imposed Limitations, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I think the most intriguing part of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is the strange sense of rationality in the experience the woman has. I could tell the situation was not normal and that she was progressively going insane, but I felt the experience along side the character.  Because the story consists completely of the speaker’s thoughts I was able to get inside of her head and feel her emotions. I was personally invested and desperately wanted to understand her and the underlying meaning to the story.

As the story progressed, it was clear to me that this was a feminist piece of writing. The woman felt anxiety from being trapped, but the source of her entrapment was different from any feminist literature I had read previously.

Originally, the woman feels trapped by her husband and brother. The male influences in her life think that they know what is best and her opinion is not taken into consideration.  So the story starts off with man’s oppression of women—not that original. But the story gets interesting when the antagonist starts comparing the effects of the sun and moon on the wallpaper. Sun, the universal sign for man, causes confusion in the wallpaper, but despite that confusion the woman in the paper is still able to escape into the garden. The moon, the universal sign for womanhood, allows the woman to be seen, but she is trapped behind bars and gets caught when she tries to escape. Under the influence of womanhood, the bars and limitations are more clearly seen, but are also more complete. This poses the interesting thought that maybe it is truly women that halt the progress of their own equality. This is further reinforced when the main character starts casting judgment on the woman who escapes during the day. She says it “must be humiliating to be caught creeping out in the daylight” or in other words it is embarrassing to be in the same realm as men. The main character, when contemplating jumping out of the bars of the window, which mirror the bars in the wallpaper, says she never would because it would be improper. So again, she as a woman is restricting herself from venturing out into equality with men. This idea is finally driven home when at the end of the story the antagonist says that she has escaped despite her husband and “Jane.” Jane is not a character that we have been introduced to, so we can only assume that is the main character’s name. She is accusing herself of being her captor.

I had never thought about this perspective on feminism. Men had the power to constrict women’s rights, but only because the women allowed them to have that power. The women were limiting themselves.

With this story, Gilman reinforced the idea that putting limitations on yourself is the worst thing you can do. It is near impossible to escape self-imposed limitations. This is an idea that I have always held dear, and I think that this is why this story resounded so strongly with me. I really enjoyed this selection because it teaches such a timeless lesson. Readers can still gain much from reading "The Yellow Wall-Paper," making it a true classic.