The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of Advertising

There’s a cool review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review about a new biography of L. Frank Baum — the guy who wrote all the Wizard of Oz books.

Interestingly, though, it doesn’t mention the fact that Baum was known not just for the Oz books — but for being a major force in creating advertising as we know it. In the utterly superb 1994 book Land of Desire, William Leach explores how Baum became obsessed with the art of window displays.

Baum wrote the book on advertising — literally. In 1897, he began publishing The Show Window, a trade magazine devoted to the art of window dressing, a big deal back in nascent days of huge department stores. Those old department stores were quite a flash-point in the birth of American consumerism. Leach argues they essentially invented the modern culture of consumption. Before Baum and his colleagues invented advertising, department stores were just dull warehouses filled with drab piles of goods. In barely a decade, they were transformed into dramatic dioramas of lifestyle. When you walk into Ikea and see how they’ve set up the goods to look like typical households … yep, Baum pretty much invented that. It was so successful that soon the department stores had to invent and issue the first-ever credit cards, to hand out to their crazed customers.

At the center this transformation was the art of window dressing — the first experience that most Americans had with the advertising of opulence. You read excerpts from Baum’s advertising texts, and suddenly those Oz stories take on a whole new meaning. The Emerald City, encrusted with jewels and possessed of horses that shifted colors, is Baum’s most beautiful and florid fantasy of capitalism in full consumerist bloat.

It was a genuinely weird, dizzying moment for the nation. They used to have debates about whether the use of huge panes of glass in shop-windows was ethical — i.e. whether it was morally okay to tempt people with so many lovely goods while they tried to walk about the city doing their business. It rather eerily prefigures our modern debates about advertising colonizing every waking moment of our lives. Of course, these days, it seems kinda quaint to wonder about the ethics of whipping up desire. We pay extra for the clothes with corporate logos.


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I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are al­ready dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a mis­ery, then, be­cause an evil?
A. Cer­tain­ly.
M. Then those who have al­ready died, and those who have still got to die, are both mis­er­able?
A. So it ap­pears to me.
M. Then all are mis­er­able?
A. Ev­ery one.

January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM

One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009

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January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM

BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.

January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM

“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)

January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM

I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.

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