The Echoes of 1950s Celebrity Melodrama Carry on Today Stephanie Williams-Turkowski (bio) Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s: Reading Photoplay. Sumiko Higashi. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 298 pp. $115.16 hardback. Before social media influencers and search-history-targeted ads told us what to buy, magazines were at the forefront of using celebrity content to motivate consumer habits. That was especially the case for Photoplay magazine, a powerhouse in the 1950s, according to historian Sumiko Higashi’s book Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s. Using a close reading of Photoplay, the leading fan magazine of the time, she outlines how its portrayals of glamourous lifestyles funneled stereotypes of femininity to lowbrow consumers. Focusing on female stars of the postwar era, such as Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and many more, Higashi details not only their personal and social histories but also the creative ways in which magazines promoted notions of romance and leisure to working-and lower-middle-class readers. Using fashion, recipes, advice, beauty tips, and interior design suggestions, Photoplay, Motion Picture, and other star-gilded glossies aspired to mold the gendered identities, conventions, and consumer behaviors of the time. Higashi’s critical examination centers on fan magazines’ implicit promise to teach readers how to accrue social and cultural capital. In that process, she reminds us of the complicated lives of 1950s women. Even those who worked to help support their families juggled multiple aspirational femininities: the girl next door, the good suburban homemaker, the sex symbol within a shattered urban landscape, and so on. The use of such systematized stereotypes encouraged readers to identify with the stars while simultaneously obscuring the view of the stars’ actual identities. [End Page 153] Successful even through economic downtimes, the 1950s fan magazines were among the first to capitalize on celebrity content to secure advertising deals and continued readership. In that sense, they foretold the business models of current celebrity media, which captivate the attention of ever-growing audiences. The book’s relevance to the contemporary mediascape is thus obvious; today’s audiences still depend on celebrity content to guide their consumption and identity pursuits. As Higashi puts it, “The construction of Photoplay stars and fans provides insight not only into mass consumption as it emerged in the postwar years, but also as it thrives today” (245). Although not the first of its kind, Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s is a fun, celebrity-gossip-inspired read. It is also a useful source for magazine and feminist scholars seeking a historical account of the roots of today’s celebrity obsession. Higashi herself sees the book’s main contribution in its spotlight on a previously understudied phenomenon— specifically, fan magazines’ encouragement of economically less privileged women to transform themselves, through consumption, into self-made Cinderellas. Many students would likely enjoy reading scholarship that uses sex scandals and juicy quotes to exemplify sociological concepts. Although members of Generation Z are undoubtedly less interested in 1950s stars than in, say, the Kardashians, Higashi’s research would inevitably draw comparisons and inspire many discussions. For these reasons, the book is suitable as a supplementary reading in undergraduate and graduate courses that tackle a variety of subjects— including but not limited to media history, the social construction of gendered identities, and media framing of femininity. [End Page 154] Stephanie Williams-Turkowski Stephen F. Austin State University Stephanie Williams-Turkowski Stephanie Williams-Turkowski is an assistant professor of mass communication at Stephen F. Austin University. Stephanie studies fandom communities and popular culture texts. Contact: stephanie .williams @ttu .edu Copyright © 2020 Magazine Media Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
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Sep 6, 2019
Peter Howley + 4
Open Access
