Design commentary as propaganda

[imomus]

It may well be because I came to it immediately after listening to a podcast on socialism by Tony Benn and reading an article by the author of Why Do People Hate America?, but the fascinating 1958 design film "The American Look" struck me as outrageous peacetime propaganda -- a highly selective arrangement of the tools of a culture in order to show that culture in the best possible light. (Click the picture to watch the whole 28 minute film.)



"The American Look (A Tribute to the Men and Women who Design)" was financed by Chevrolet, and a chunk of it showcases the design of their 1959 Impala model at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. But it could just as well have been financed by the government, so relentlessly does it harp on the themes of freedom and individualism. "By the way things look as well as the way they perform," crows the narrator over a relentlessly triumphalist orchestral score, "our homes acquire new grace, new glamour, new accomodations expressing not only the American love of beauty but also the basic freedom of the American people which is the freedom of individual choice."

Oddly enough, though, the film calls to mind nothing so much as the North Korean propaganda movies that were showing at Christian Kracht's booklaunch. And, just as insecurity lay behind the confident, Utopian tone of those films, so it underpins this American film too. Certainly the late 1950s was a time of optimism, affluence and consumerist expansion in the US, a time still bathed in the glow of the military victories of World War II. But there's something uneasy in the film's harping on the essential Americanness of Modernist design, when so much of the architecture and furniture design on display here looks more Scandinavian or German. Only the grotesque, elongated, decorative and gothic Impala looks like a truly American design, and it strikes a very different note to the restrained, sparse and spare Modernist designs. (Better suited, in fact, to Postmodernism -- which raises the question of whether pomo came along simply because Modernism wasn't essentially American enough.)

The Impala's Space Age streamlining points to another insecurity, one I outlined in my AIGA Voice article Creativity and the Sputnik Shock. The central thesis of this film -- the idea that good design goes hand-in-hand with American "freedom of individual choice" -- was at that very moment being disproved by the success of the Soviet space program. On October 4, 1957 the communists had successfully launched the first satellite into Earth orbit. America reeled, throughout the late 50s, with a keen sense of its own educational, technical and creative inadequacy. As a result, money was poured into creativity research -- and into design and lifestyle propaganda like this film.

All propaganda, no matter how Utopian, optimistic, and triumphalist, raises fears; all that's left unsaid seems to gather just outside the frame, a threatening black cloud. In my case, when I watch "The American Look", I don't just worry about the people excluded from the ideal scenarios depicted. I also wonder whether all design writing -- and I've done my share -- isn't just a more subtle version of this kind of propaganda. Just like the film, we design writers like to point to the "ever-improving good taste" of the public. We like to select only the most advanced and beautiful designs and suggest that, soon, they'll predominate. And we like to evoke futuristic scenarios like the ones in the final shots of this film, in which rocket cars and dome houses dominate the landscape. Yet fifty years after this film was made, mock-Colonial and faux-rustic farmhouse styles are more likely to define the American design landscape than bubble jets and space craft. Put it down to "the freedom of individual choice", perhaps.

Comments

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed watching that, thank you. As much as anything, what really struck me (and maybe I've been reading too much William Morris and Eric Gill) was that the designs come from above - from the corporate organisation. The ability to make beautiful things is portrayed as the property of a benign controlling agency; beauty is something only they can bestow. As you say, the people outside this fairyland are a concern, but so perhaps are the neutered ones in it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's very much a tone of "And now here's something that'll interest you housewives" -- but the emphasis is always on participation by consumption, not production.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely; that’s what I mean, and it’s what troubles me about it. The people using these given things and environments are neutered in the sense that they are thus denied a (depending on your politics) primary human need; creative expression. Sure, there’s some good design here, but it’s not theirs. When you consider the kind of jobs the consumers of such goods will have been doing – the 1950’s equivalent of tending Microsoft Excel or whatever – then these things and environments are nothing more than sops to sooth the crushing sterility of day-to-day living. But this living is something they have no part in constructing. Beyond taking the lion’s share of their time in no doubt tedious and unfulfilling jobs, this film shows the further encroachment the powers above make upon the individual’s freedom by making little sets in which to play out their leisure time.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Jesus, reading that back I wonder if I haven't been spending too much time drinking coffee at SOAS.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

How is anyone actually being "denied (the opportunity of) creative expression"? Unless all humans are suited to be living in some sort of gesamtkunstwerk, don't you think that many people are satisfied with the transaction of exchanging their labor in doing the thing that they do well for the product of others doing what they do well?

>>Sure, there’s some good design here, but it’s not theirs.<<

Do you think that most people are capable of producing "good design"?

I don't mean to be contrary, but I just don't understand this line of reasoning.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Fundamentally - and though it's just a film - the people in it are denied creative expression because everything is given to them; speedboats, houses, clothes, appliances, decor, everything. Their environment and possessions are thus not self-created (and neither, therefore, are they themselves to some important extent) but are externals imposed upon them, in this case by a corporate organisation. It's something like what happens with music - because most kids are only exposed to certain kinds (by the corporations), if they come to make their own music it's extremely limited in its range. The likes of the Animal Collective are unfortunately rare.

And yes, I do think that most people are capable of producing good design. If you travel through Morrocco or Rumania you see it everywhere, and it hasn't been bought.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

On whether people are 'satisfied' with exchanging their labour for products, I obviously can't speak for them, but I wouldn't have thought that such a thing was the most satisfying of pursuits, no.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Your response begs three questions:

1. If people are "denied creative expression because everything is 'given to them'", how can one justify the existence of any creative output for any audience other than ones self? Doesn't that mean that Momus shouldn't make music to sell, artists shouldn't make artworks to show or sell, writers shouldn't write to publish, etc.?

2. How many people are capable of creating the things that such design films promote? Could your mother build her own chair, much less her own automobile? Mine certainly couldn't. How many people could build their own home? (And speaking as a man who was trained as an architect, I know that many people who DO build their own homes soon realize the limitations of their efforts.)

3. How many of the things that you own did you create yourself?

>>And yes, I do think that most people are capable of producing good design.<<

I think we're arguing two different standards for "design". If you mean "handicrafts", then I won't disagree. But not the more sophisticated objects such as automobiles. While a layman might be able to sketch the shape of a car, that doesn't make him Sergio Pininfarina (http://www.pininfarina.com/index/storiaModelli/timeline/1960.html).

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous cars.

Two things Italians excel in: sportscars and shoes. Interesting they sometimes look alike. I wonder if one inspires the other.

And no, I don't understand how this like of thinking is relevant to the complexities of our modern world.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

1st question: one justifies creative output with it's quality, not its market. Going back to my musical analogy, which is a good one one for examining the inhibitive effects of the market place, white kids watching their MTV channels will make guitar and drum music, black kids watching theirs will want to be rappers. I know it's a broad generalisation, but it seems to reflect what's happening to a great extent. So their potential and creativity is severely stymied in this regard. Really it's the homegenity and ubiquity of modern 'creative' products that bothers me here.

2nd question: you're quite right to pull me up on this, I was being rather woolly. Of course people can't make everything they own, but wider economic and human questions are what I was getting at. I suppose I'd rather see workers making beautiful things for their immediate(ish) communities, sharing, buying and selling amongst themselves. I've spent far too many hours in factories not to see the truth in William Morris' suggestion that modern methods of production are dehumanising and killingly tedious for the worker, and that they should rather be making stuff that engages them and gives pleasure in the bringing into being. This, as we know, is far from the case, and watching this film gave me a sense of our distance from such an ideal. About the car thing - I'll be glad when there are none and the seas are clean and we're back in sailing ships.

3rd question: I don't own very much at all, I don't think anyone should, and the things that I create myself bring an ecstacy in the making of them that buying products can't even begin to touch. I'd like everyone to know that ecstacy.

The very fact that you see so many handicrafts about in Morrocco and Romania but not America or Western Europe kind of supports what I'm saying, I think.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I'll always have a soft spot for the Arts & Crafts movement. The Eames were the last of an independent American strain that ran all the way back to the Shakers, who were engaged in elegant, spare aesthetics while Europeans were besotted with a hideous Victorian Roccoco revivalism. It may have been inspired by their religious leanings, but then so was Japanese art and design.

Of course, what Nick proffers here is propaganda, too. After all: what could possibly go wrong in a utopian nanny-state, right? Human nature has changed sooooo much over the past century!

As a species we're simply not wired for such a circumscribed existence--we've literally spent the past two hundred thousand years living in groups of less than thirty, with plenty of room between us and the group that lives over that hill. We ignore such inconvenient facts at our own peril; reality is organic and improvised, not subject to mechanistic abstractions.

I'd rather deal with the sight of ugly split levels than the toxic effects of a repressive social order. Talk about horizontal relationships all we want, but a monolith lying on its side is still a monolith.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

With you all the way there, W.

I think that there is a thread that continues onward from the Eames, although it's sometimes difficult to follow. Are you familiar with Wharton Esherick (http://www.levins.com/esherick.html)? Actually, knowing you, you've probably been to his museum in Pennsylvania. Although Esherick was a contemporary of the Eames, he stayed truer to the Arts & Crafts ethos, and produced wonderful hand-crafted stuff right up to his death in 1970.

And he wasn't alone. George Nakashima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nakashima), Sam Maloof (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Maloof), Tage Frid (http://risd.edu/about_profiles.cfm?type=faculty&profile=faculty_profile_63.cfm), Bart Prince (http://www.bartprince.com/) and other Americans have soldiered on, producing work consistent with A&C ideals.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I love his spiral staircase of red oak. It doesn't surprise me that Esherick made his home in Bucks County, PA, as it's home to a ton of people engaged in making furniture, architectural furnishings and crafts. I'm aware of Nakashima, who is a New Hope luminary. In fact, my antique dealer friends (http://www.ragoarts.com/) sell a good deal of his work--his famous benches were part of a modern auction that would have interested you greatly. They're also an authority on Fulper ceramics, which was based in nearby Trenton. I'm attending an auction tomorrow before my New Hope reading--they have some beautiful stuff in right now, particularly Chinese snuff bottles and Japanese cloissonnné vases.

I know of Maloof's rockers, but I'm still partial to old classic comb-backed windsor chairs. There's always one detail too many in Maloof's stuff, I think (this from someone who likes Emile Gallé etageres):



Guess I like my spare stuff very spare, and my busy stuff very busy.

I don't know much about Tage Frid, but I like his stools. I looked up Bart Prince, who seems to enjoy to break down the divide between inside and outside, and favors a dramatic maple leaf-ish radial/circular theme in his work, which I would like to see more of in contemporary residential architecture. The closest approximation I know here in the East is James Rose's house (http://www.jamesrosecenter.org/) in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

Many people who now work in wood, glass, metal and ceramics tend to drift away from pure form and instead resort to goofy, literal animal tropes and the like. It becomes depictive rather than evocative. There's a danger in becoming too facile, I think.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Tell that to the people who rule us Lord Whimsy!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Hah hah. You ole romantic, you!

Actually, I don't have to tell "the people who rule us" (as you so grandly put it) a blessed thing, since they're already keenly aware of these facts. That's why for better or worse they're running things, and those peddling lofty ideas which often bear little actual relation to human nature are not.

In many cases this is probably for the best, since when idealistic dreamers with ambitious designs do on occasion come to power, they seem to get the common man--of which they profess love, but in reality usually harbor a withering contempt--into a great deal of trouble (war, civil strife, unemployment, poverty, economic stagnation, starvation, political purges, etc). Best case scenario is that these do-gooder apparatchiks merely infantilize John Q. Public, making him a ward of the state. Citizen? Yes. Drone? No thanks--I'd rather be a fully-fledged human being who is at liberty to exercise his faculties.

Fact is, there will always be some sort of power structure, and an elected official is easier to remove than an entire ideology. It's easy to loll about on one's high horse if one never finds oneself in a position to make tough real-world decisions; even the most noble of us wishes to remake the world in our own image, but tinkering with the economic/political machinations based on wishful thinking or ideology rather than what actually works just hurts average people.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Well, I was joking. But firstly let me say that I'm not some 'do-gooder apparatchnik' professing love for 'the common man'; I am 'a common man', if you insist on using such terms. I grew up on a council estate and I've spent more time on building sites and in factories than I have in the universities. I don't know what's going down on your side of the pond, but over here schools and universities are being bought up by businesses, and children are being taught how to use spreadsheets in primary school. No, I'm not content with the people who run things. The factory where I worked for instance - because employment agencies supply most of the staff for such places, they are able to get them to sign away their 'legal' rights and sign up for 60 hours + a week. That's 12 hours a day of foul and boring work in an ugly environment with half an hour for lunch and two quarter hour breaks either side. That's common practice, so it accounts for millions who aren't able to excercise their faculties because they're too tired and depressed. And factory work isn't the only dehumanising employment on offer; staring at Excel all day is no more a fitting activity for those with a 'human nature'.

You imply that 'human nature' is closer to the way of life that the modern western state imposes on us than to the dreams of utopians such as William Morris or even Jesus (millions of 'common' Latin Americans and Africans would cite Jesus' vision of life as a more attractive and true to them than that hoyed on them by their governments and the G8-controlled markets). Just because the state sours and breaks many adults, don't ever doubt for a minute that they are children who want to love, play, and be loved.

In the face of goverments who are prepared to kill wholesale to protect their banks' and business' profits, surely we can only say that they are making the wrong 'tough real-world decisions'. When the World Bank etc. starts sharing out equally what the world has to offer among all the nations instead of hoarding the wealth in such countries as yours and mine, then we'll know that someone has made the right 'tough real-world decision'. Until then, we can take it as read that the people ruling us are still greedy, evil, tastless bastards.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Here here ol Whimsy my boy. A lot of the spareness of modernist architecture and design ... yes, some of it came from the United States! If European modernism never existed, the United States would still have its own distinctive style because, as you said, of the Shakers, etc. The same goes with the plastic/metal mid-century futurism that people associate with the USSR these days.

It's amazing how so much rabid anti-Americanism can taint peoples' perception of the past. I have to ask, what has Paris and Berlin produced lately, except for being temporary destinations for the comfortably bored and mobile?