Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen offer a telling examination of the rise of mass-produced imagery in the United States, tracing the pivotal role that such images played in the genesis and development of the American imagination. Beginning with the rise of the machine and the emergence of consumerism as a common way of life, the authors lay a strong foundation for an understanding of the twentieth-century American media culture.

Spanning a wide range of fascinating subjects-movies, fashion, tabloid journalism-Ewen and Ewen offer forceful insights into the mechanisms that link alluring images and popular imagination to the entrenched structures of power. Channels of Desire seeks to broaden our understanding of the social history behind the apparent immortality of a consumer society-its universe of commodities, its priorities and social forms, and the modern consumer ethic that stresses images over substance, desire over satisfaction, and the individual over society.

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Kirkus Book Review

Yet another reproving history-cum-critique of American ""commodity culture."" I.e., ""The mass media and the industries of fashion and design, through the production and distribution of imagery, have reconciled widespread vernacular demands for a better life with the general priorities of corporate capitalism."" In the early chapters, the Ewens (Hunter, CUNY, and Stony Brook, SUNY, respectively) pursue the theoretical argument. A separate section is then devoted to ""Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies"": ""the imagery in the films--supported by the rapid growth of the ready-made clothing industry, the cosmetics industry, and new forms of advertising and display--made possible the liquidation of traditional culture."" Next comes ""Fashion and Democracy,"" the book's major section. The chapter on dungarees, ""The Ends Justify the Jeans"" (from an ad for the Gloria Vanderbilt product), exemplifies the approach. As the ""unemotional garb of miners"" in the 1850s, jeans were the ""signature of deprivation and sweat""; via movie cowboys, they became symbols of rugged individualism; in the 1950s, they ""became part of a statement, a rejection of postwar suburban society""; in the '60s, they were equated with social struggle (""denim provided an anti-fashion"" as well as a ""feminist weapon against restrictive fashion""); in the '80s, they became a mainstay of mainstream fashion. The final, brief section, ""Mass Culture and the Moral Economy of War,"" asks--somewhat murkily--for an end to ""the structural confusions of the mass culture"" (per ""the recent vodka war"") and ""an alternative form and vision."" Some apt examples in a stale, jargon-strewn, doctrinaire stow. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.