As seen on TV : the visual culture of everyday life in the 1950s

America in the 1950s: the world was not so much a stage as a setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when how things looked--and how we looked--mattered, a decade of design that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. From the painting-by-numbers fad to the public fascination with the First Lady's apparel to the television sensation of Elvis Presley to the sculptural refinement of the automobile, Marling explores what Americans saw and what they looked for with a gaze newly trained by TV. A study in style, in material culture, in art history at eye level, this book shows us as never before those artful everyday objects that stood for American life in the 1950s, as seen on TV.

Prologue 1.Namie Eisenhower's New Look 2.Hyphenated Culture: Painting by Numbers in the New Age of Leisure 3.Disneyland, 1955: The Place That Was Also a TV Show 4.Autoeroticism: America's Love Affair with the Car in the Television Age 5.When Elvis Cut His Hair: The Meaning of Mobility 6.Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book: The Aesthetics of food in the 1950s 7.Nixon in Moscow: Appliances, Affluence, and Americanism Afterword Notes Illustration Credits Acknowledgments Index