Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Episode 104: Rave Review: The Hucksters
Play Now!It turns out there are entertainments out there—books and movies mostly, but other entertainments as well—that cast a critical eye on advertising. It also turns out that these entertainments are seldom if ever seen or heard of today anywhere that relies on advertising dollars to keep the lights on. For that reason, you Dear Listeners have probably never heard of The Hucksters, either the 1946 novel or the 1947 movie adaptation of that novel. The movie version is the subject of this Episode 104: Rave Review: The Hucksters.In this episode, I play copious excerpts from that movie, and quote once more Victor Pickard's 2013 book America's Battle for Media Democracy (NB: Link to a PDF preview of the book), the book that clued me in on the existence of this movie.I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.
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Catching up on a few weeks of podcasts I missed. Your last couple episodes have been great!
ReplyDeleteI have a bit of classic advertising trivia to contribute here! I haven't watched "The Hucksters", but from your episode I surmise that a significant role is played by a fictional product called "WHAM, King of the Breakfast Foods". This immediately stirred a memory for me...
Years ago I stumbled into a 1948 movie starring Cary Grant called "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House". In it, Mr. Blandings (Grant) is a high-level ad executive charged with creating a campaign for WHAM, an unpopular canned ham product. Not having seen your movie "The Hucksters", I don't know if the Huckster's version of WHAM is a pastry or whatnot, rather than breakfast ham. But I'd _like_ to think it was a shout-out, or an attempt at canon continuity!
The movie, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", if you're not familiar with it, may merit some discussion here... as the entire movie is basically a comical 1948 ad for the American housing industry. As you note about "The Hucksters," I'm about to deliver some SPOILERS, but these spoilers are 70 years old by now, so I won't lose any sleep over that.
A comedian once joked that the modern sitcom "Friends" was set in a "surrealistically large New York apartment." Blandings and his wife and two daughters rent a _realistically_ tiny New York apartment, and they decide to move to the country and build their own house. Despite not being able to afford a big enough apartment, somehow the Blandings can afford a live-in Negro maid. (I suppose it was cheaper to buy a Negress in New York back then, before the PC Police existed to get their panties all in a bunch about minor trivia such as slavery.)
In this comedy of errors, every possible thing goes wrong with their plan, starting with Blandings getting overcharged for the land itself. Most of the movie is jokes about things going wrong with the new house construction, which I found funny given my experience as a Civil Engineer. For example, the drilling contractor is charging Blandings an arm and a leg because the spot Blandings picked out for the house's well is showing no water after drilling 2000 feet down. Meanwhile the excavation contractor is charging him because his proposed basement keeps flooding with groundwater. As we say in the 'biz, it's funny 'cuz it's true.
These charges are going to bankrupt Blandings and the stress is preventing him from coming up with the ad campaign for WHAM. Of course, this being a comedy, the Negro maid Joan makes an offhand remark which becomes the WHAM slogan, saving Blanding's job, finances, house, and marriage. For which Joan receives a _very_ hearty 'thank-you'.
At the end of the movie, a contractor comes to Blandings to revise his bill for the umpteenth time, at which Blandings explodes -- only to hear that the contractor is issuing him a small refund. This tiny bit of good news utterly changes Blandings' mood and the movie ends with him contentedly smoking his pipe and watching his beautiful daughters playing in HIS yard, the one that HE owns himself. Implying that all the struggle and expense was worth it.
So to me the entire movie seems like an advertisement for the American Dream of house, car, and 2.5 kids. Looking back on it today, the parallels are interesting. Housing in New York has always been expensive, ad campaigns have always been boring and irritating. But the lesson I drew from the movie is that the American Dream is unaffordable (at least in New York), unless you happen to be a high-level ad executive and you own a "magic Negro" capable of saving your bacon at the last moment... ;-)
Hey, Kevin,
DeleteThanks a bunch!
I don't know if the Huckster's version of WHAM is a pastry or whatnot, rather than breakfast ham. But I'd _like_ to think it was a shout-out, or an attempt at canon continuity!
It was a kid's cereal in The Hucksters, judging from the box, but yeah, a shout-out the later ham definitely could have been!
And Blandings sounds like a great show for me to dip a toe!
—Jim
Oh, and muchas gracias for the F&c@Book shout-out!
Delete