"Promise--large promise--is the soul of advertising," wrote Dr. Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. His dictum has remained remarkably accurate during the last two hundred and fifty years. Advertisements tell the viewer much more than the merits of a particular product. From the glossy and colorful pages of magazines, catalogues, and newspaper supplements the reader can extract images of how to live the perfect American life. This exhibit shows how the depiction of ethnic groups has changed radically in the advertisements of nationally distributed magazines over the last century. The pictures tell a complex tale of economic power and mobility; of conflicting attitudes towards one's ethnic heritage and towards Anglo-American culture.

The development of modern advertising, with its sophisticated use of imagery and catchy phrases, grew hand in hand with the advent of the affordable monthly and weekly magazines. By the 1880's factories were churning out a plethora of ready-made goods, and the expanded system of railways and roads linked producer and consumer into a national network. During this period magazine production rose apace. Due to a variety of factors, ranging from improved typesetting techniques and low postal rates to the utilization of increasingly sophisticated photoengraving processes, publishers began to produce low-priced, profusely illustrated magazines fashioned to appeal to a national audience. The contents of the magazines, such as Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies Home Journal, covered a wide variety of topics: from homemaking to current events, new inventions to briskly paced fiction. By 1905 twenty general monthlies, each with a circulation of over 100,000, were in existence. Ranging in price from 10 to 15 cents, easily within the budget of tens of thousands of Americans, they were an ideal vehicle for carrying the manufacturer's messages to a national audience.

What were the implications of advertising for the masses? As advertisers targeted their products towards a mass audience, the need arose to create an "average person," a type who embodied the qualities and attitudes of many others. Advertisers devised images that tapped into deeply-held beliefs and myths of an "all-American" lifestyle--one that didn't just sell a product, but a way of life that people could buy.

The very nature of the advertising medium itself necessitates the use of symbols and character types that could be understood at a glance. If the advertisement was to be effective, its message had to be quickly absorbed and understood. Thus, in their depiction of ethnic groups, advertisers often used commonly held stereotypes. Within these stock images, however, one can observe various levels of complexity.

When the N.H.M. Hotels ad in figure 1 appeared in 1936, the nation was still in the midst of the Great Depression. The black railroad porter, with his knowledge of the rails and reputation for prompt and courteous service, was an effective spokesman for a hotel chain dependent for its livelihood upon Americans getting back on the move. The portrayal of the porter is interesting in this ad, for, beyond the obvious fact that the only blacks present are in service roles, the spokesman's subservience is visually reinforced by his deferential smile, slight stoop, and bent knees. As porters, blacks could assist in the resurgence of the American economy, but not fully participate in its benefits.

An advertisement for the Milwaukee Railroad from a 1945 National Geographic (figure 2) reveals another way in which ethnic groups are shown as outsiders--at the service of American culture while not actively participating in it. Here is the Noble Savage, not as the representative of any particular group of Native Americans, but as the symbol for the railroad itself, barely visible in the advertisement. In both the visuals and the copy the sale is made through stock images and associations. He is as familiar as a dime store Indian; a reassuring and time-honored part of the American landscape. However, while the Indian shown here still brandishes his bow and arrow, he has been tamed. He gazes mutely over the changed landscape, another symbol of technological domination.

In a 1949 ad in American Home, Chiquita Banana entices us to buy her goods. Wearing a traditional ruffled skirt and fruit-laden hat, she embodies the stereotypical, fun-loving, gay Hispanic woman. While she occasionally doffs the more demure chef's hat, her smile and pert manner never waver. Her basic message is one of festivity, tempered with the American housewife's concern for nutrition: while bananas are good for you, they can be fun, too! They make mealtimes a party. In the later television ads of the 1960's, Chiquita Banana was transformed into a more overtly sexual figure doing the rumba. Singing her famous "I'm Chiquita Banana..." song in a Spanish accent, the advertisement's emphasis was more on festivity than wholesomeness.

The use of simple external attributes to symbolize ethnic identification has long been a favorite technique of advertisers. In a Royal Crown Cola advertisement of 1938 (figure 3), the reader was urged be like the thrifty "Scotchman" and buy the economical refreshment. Presenting its Scotsman with a broad grin and conspiratorial, chummy wink, the ad pokes gentle fun at the Scottish reputation for miserliness. Whether the character in Scottish garb is Scottish or not is incidental, for the white American can easily put on this ethnic persona without compromising or jeopardizing his identity. The Scottish stereotype can be invoked by using a few external character traits; the image does not extend beyond that initial statement. The black stereotype represented in the N.H.M. Hotel ad, however, reflects more deeply-held attitudes toward cultural differences. Compare the closeness of the two men in the RC Cola ad with the black porter and the white traveler in figure 1. Even the spacing between the characters in both ads is significant: while the men in the RC Cola ad display an easy intimacy, the black porter stands deferentially apart from the white traveler.

Advertisements were not the only medium that reflected the subservient role certain ethnic groups occupied within mainstream American culture. Magazine fiction too depicted a world in which white, Anglo-Americans were getting most of the world's material goods and occupying the more powerful roles in most human relationships. In story after story the heroes and heroines were of northern European stock, and in many cases when the protagonists were nominally foreign, their visual portrayal and characterization would belie the differences. This tendency is illustrated in a 1913 cover of the Sunday Magazine of the Philadelphia Press, which shows a pretty young Serbian dancer smiling languidly out at the viewer (figure 4). in her colorful native costume and dance pose, she plays her role of "old country" ethnic. But while her dress presents an image of quaint and wholesome rusticity, her features bear a reassuringly western European stamp. She satisfied an American need for foreign experience and armchair travel without really challenging any assumptions about significant cultural variation.

Until the advent of the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, American businessmen and advertisers assumed, on the whole, that the best way to sell their products was to address their advertisements to the white Anglo-American. Hence magazine stories and ads were geared towards appealing to this constituency through the use of images and symbols that were familiar and appealing to them. In recent years, however, though advertisers have become increasingly concerned with the purchasing power of the different ethnic groups, the images they use continue to reassure the consumer that the group's "foreignness" is carefully controlled. Their cultural identity is often reduced to a few superficial symbols.

A recent Sprite ad reveals a group of smiling Americans of all different lineages brandishing their favorite brand of soda. Yet while different ethnic groups are shown, they are all of the wholesome "all American" type. The advertisement's point is that the "You"--the American youth, who chose Sprite, now includes Asians, Hispanics and blacks.

Advertisements that have appeared in nationally distributed magazines targeted at specific ethnic groups also need mentioning. Until the Civil Rights movement gave many groups the impetus to speak out in their own voices, many of the advertisements in such magazines showed them displaying all the accouterments and mannerisms of white, middle-class Americans. Thus the Ballantine Beer ad in a 1955 issue of Ebony portrays a group of thoroughly Anglicized and fair-complexioned black people. In black society light skin often gave a person enhanced prestige and eased acceptance into white American culture.

Today agencies have been formed to deal exclusively with advertisements targeted towards specific minority groups. Many of these more recent ads reveal the complex negotiations involved in attempting to reconcile indigenous cultural needs with societal acceptance: a crucial issue facing many ethnic Americans today.

Amy Rashap is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. She has lectured in the field of comic books and in other areas of popular culture.

Bibliography

Berleson, Bernard and Patricia J. Salter, "Majority and Minority Americans: An Analysis of Magazine Fiction." In Mass Culture, The Popular Arts in America, edited by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White. NY: The Free Press, 1957. Pp. 235-250.

Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.

Peterson, Theodore, Magazines in the The Twentieth Century Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1956.