Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy
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HollywoodGundle Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy ✣ fter 1945 the United States helped the war-torn societies of WesternA Europe progress from recovery to modernization,enabling them to achieve prosperity and political stability. It is not surprising,therefore,that analyses of Italy’s transition to consumerism in the postwar period have as- cribed much importance to the impact of the American example and American techniques. Although the history of this relationship has been extensively as- sessed in terms of diplomacy,politics,and economics,very little has been said about the way mentalities were altered,new desires were created,and material dreams were generated and managed. Sectoral studies of advertising,Marshall Plan propaganda,the impact of Hollywood,fashion,the popular press,and the star system all refer to the formation and diffusion of images of desirabil- ity,but they do not convey the systematic nature or purpose of the develop- ment of a repertoire of images of wealth,beauty,elegance,style,and sex appeal. This article will show that the transformation of the Italian imagination can be explained by the concept of glamour. If properly employed,this undertheorized term can account for the particular seductive appeal that capi- talism was able to take on in the early stages of mass consumption,helping it to bypass arguments about exploitation,imperialism,inequality,and alien - ation. Although glamour was part and parcel of the impact of the American model,Italy did not merely absorb an externally generated allure. Italian capi - talism also gave rise to forms of enchantment of its own. These were crucial in privatizing and materializing Italians’ dreams and in providing Italy with im- agery that could boost exports and services such as tourism. Glamour and Modernity Despite the vagueness of common usage,the etymology of glamour is reason- ably clear. According to The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1996) the Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 95–118 © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 95 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201085 by guest on 30 September 2021 Gundle word was originally Scottish. It was an alteration of the word grammar, which retained the sense of the old word gramarye (“occult learning,magic,necro - mancy”). The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) also highlights the word’s Scottish origins and derivation from grammar,although this is indicated to mean magic,enchantment,and spells rather than necromancy and the occult. According to Fowler’s, glamour passed into standard English usage around the 1830s with the meaning of “a delusive or alluring charm.” For Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961), glamour is “an elusive,mysteriously ex - citing and often illusory attractiveness that stirs the imagination and appeals to a taste for the unconventional,the unexpected,the colorful,or the exotic.” In its secondary meanings glamour is said by Webster’s to be “a strangely allur- ing atmosphere of romantic enchantment; bewitching,intangible,irresistibly magnetic charm;...personal charm and poise combined with unusual physi- cal and sexual attractiveness.” Some observers have suggested that glamour is a timeless quality. Camille Paglia,for example,has asserted that Nefertiti was the ªrst public ªgure to turn herself into “a manufactured being” possessed of “radiant glamour,” and that glamour’s origins date back to ancient Egypt.1 Undoubtedly,modern glamour has a long and complex history that is beyond the scope of this arti- cle.2 The concern here is with the meanings and associations that the term ac- quired in the 1930s,when it ªrst entered everyday currency. From that time the world of illusion,mystery,seduction,and enchantment has been found largely in media representations. Glamour is also associated with commercial strategies of persuasion. Through consumer products people are promised in- stant transformation and entry into a realm of desire. This effect is achieved by adding colorful,desirable,and satisfying ideas and images to mundane products,enabling them to speak not merely to needs but to longings and dreams. Glamour in the sense it is understood today—as a structure of enchant- ment deployed by cultural industries—was ªrst developed by Hollywood. In the 1930s,the major studios,having consolidated their domination of the in - dustry,created a star system in which dozens of young men and women were groomed and molded into glittering,ideal types whose fortune,beauty, 1. Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (London: Pen- guin, 1992), pp. 67–68. 2. Some pertinent issues are considered in Reka C. V. Buckley and Stephen Gundle,“Fashion and Glamour,” in Nicola White and Ian Grifªths, eds., The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image (Ox- ford: Berg,2000); and Stephen Gundle,“Mapping the Origins of Glamour: Giovanni Boldini,Paris and the Belle Epoque,” Journal of European Studies, Vol. 29 (1999),269–295. A fuller elaboration of these ideas will be presented in Clino Castelli and Stephen Gundle, The Glamour System (forthcom- ing). 96 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201085 by guest on 30 September 2021 Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy spending power,and exciting lives dazzled the ªlm-going public. Writing in 1939 about American ªlm stars,Margaret Thorp deªned glamour as “sex ap - peal plus luxury plus elegance plus romance.” She asserted that “the place to study glamour today is the fan magazines,” adding that: Fan magazines are distilled as stimulants of the most exhilarating kind. Every- thing is superlative,surprising,exciting. ...Nothing ever stands still,nothing ever rests,least of all the sentences. Clothes of course are endlessly pictured and described usually with marble fountains,private swimming pools or limou - sines in the background. ...Everyaspect of life,trivial and important,should be bathed in the purple glow of publicity.3 Although glamour was forged in the rareªed climate of Southern Califor- nia,it took shape at the intersection of political,social,and economic trends. During the Depression years it enabled privilege and inequality to continue and even ºourish in countries suffering economic hardship. It did this by cre- ating the simultaneous impression of distinction and accessibility,an effect achieved through spectacle,through an emphasis on new rather than inher- ited wealth,through the display of the pleasures of consumption over produc- tion,and through the use of femininity (with its particular associations with beauty,show business,and consumption) in place of the more obviously power-related quality of masculinity. Instead of envy and class hatred on the one hand and apathetic deference on the other,glamour fostered feelings of desire,aspiration,wonderment,emulation,and vicarious identiªcation. In short,it fed individual dreams not collective resentments,ostensibly un- dermining class barriers while in fact reinforcing a hierarchy of status and money. Glamour,it may be said,is the language of allure and desirability in capi - talist society. Its forms change but it is always available to be consumed vicari- ously by the masses who see in it an image of life writ large according to the criteria of a market society. As a language it is a hybrid that mixes luxury,class, exclusivity,and privilege with the sexuality and seduction of prostitution,en - tertainment,and the commercial world. Aristocratic forms and styles persist within modern glamour; but without the beauty,color,and sexual entice - ments of the popular theater and high-class prostitution,the drama,dyna - mism,scandal,and feminine display that are central to glamour would be ab - sent. Because glamour is dedicated to femininity and fashion as well as sex, show business supplies people,stories,modes,and avenues of mobility that 3. Margaret Farrand Thorp, America at the Movies (New Haven: Yale University Press,1939); quoted in Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930–1939 (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 157–158. 97 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201085 by guest on 30 September 2021 Gundle are unique.4 Historically,glamour also conveyed the air of scandal and sensu - ality that was so important in titillating middle-brow morality. The highly polished,hyperbolic,and manufactured image that character - ized the speciªcity of Hollywood glamour was not an original or even the ªrst modern form of glamour,but it was the most readily recognizable and potent. Film was the only medium that gave rise to extended discussions of the phe- nomenon,and ªlm studies is still the only ªeld in which glamour has been evaluated seriously. Specialists including Richard Dyer,Laura Mulvey,and Annette Kuhn have concentrated on the images produced in movies and stills and have highlighted the importance of abstraction and standardization.5 In an advanced industrial society in which movies and stars were produced for consumption like automobiles and refrigerators,glamour was a code of allure that required a person (usually a woman) to be fetishized as a ªctionalized and surveyed object. It also entailed “deception,the interplay between appearance and reality, display and concealment, and ambiguity and role-playing.”6 In the 1930s,as Neal Gabler has shown,Hollywood ªction entered the mainstream. What had been a vision of America shaped by newcomers and outsiders became the mythology of urban America.7 As Americanism became inseparable from consumerism,glamour deªned mentalities,behavior,aspira- tions,and patterns of consumption,as well as ideals of beauty. 8 Farfrombe- ing the lingua franca of a melting pot,it became in the 1940s a powerful tool of American war morale and self-perception,as well as a weapon in America’s arsenal against its enemies.