Joy E. Feagan

Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Goff, Brendan

Keywords

Consumption, Postwar, United States, Hodgins, Eric, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Area of Concentration

History

Abstract

This thesis examines the various reproductions of Eric Hodgins’ story, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, released in text, film, and radio between 1946 and 1951. Exploring the differences in the narrative across time and media, I argue, provides a better understanding of the various media that reproduced the story, as well as the mediadriven consumerism of the early cold war period. What was the relationship between media (print, film, and radio) and mass consumption in the post-World War II United States? And what were the consequences of this evolving relationship? I credit the origins of this relationship to postwar fears of returning to the culture of scarcity that predominated during the Great Depression and the war years (1929-45). Out of those fears arose instead a culture of abundance that came to define the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that the differences found among the various reproductions of Mr. Blandings reflect how the versions uniquely adapted to who controlled and who received the media in order to reinforce, or challenge, consumption. I connect the control of media to the early Cold War, especially the perceived threat of a communist infiltration of film. This thesis is informed by a multitude of secondary sources related the studied media and the postwar era. Additionally, findings are supported by primary sources, most notably the different iterations of Mr. Blandings.

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