{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":245,"pdf_page":253,"physical_index":253,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"198cbe229d034c1bb6f16697c99cbcc509aca479115242d792a1f8c478bf3635"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Couched in a more straightforward and forthright rhetoric, a 1964 advertisement for Rover leads with the declaration: “No planned obsolescence, No calculated failure of material.” In a 1967 ad campaign, Rover turned the logic of annual model changes on its head, pushing as a selling point for its cars their unchanging, even backward-looking, design: “Rover is proud to turn back the clock on another model year. The Rover 2000 Sports Sedans for 1968 are dead ringers for those we unveiled last year,” one ad declares, adding, with pride, that “the Rover 2000 may become the longest running model car in history.” The Rover campaign narrated the onward march of product change not as inexorable progress but rather as a decline and fall away from timeless “classic” design. In sticking with its “classic” models, and stubbornly resisting pressure for change, Rover presented itself as engaged in a heroic struggle to resist modern obsolescence.\n\nThe marketing strategy of promoting products by emphasizing that they are not produced according to principles of planned obsolescence was followed in industries beyond car making. Whirlpool, for example, a maker of appliances, in the late 1960s launched a television ad campaign that invoked the specter of a marketplace pervaded by planned product obsolescence representing its products as, by contrast, durable and dependable, ofering consumers a safe haven from the creeping shoddiness of the age. A newspaper ad for KLH stereo equipment from 1967 begins by noting the ubiquity of “perishability” and “planned obsolescence,” interpreted as “planned dissatisfaction,” and then pitches its equipment as both durable and endowed with the aesthetic characteristics of a “classic” product—like a typewriter that “feels like a real typewriter.”69 Revco, maker of refrigerators, in a campaign from the early 1960s, made a point of emphasizing that its products are “not subjected to superficial changes resulting from ‘planned obsolescence’ as illustrated by conventional refrigeration.”70 Amana, a freezer manufacturer, poses a disturbing question to the reader of its ads: “Will it fall apart before the payments are made?” The ad notes that “with mass production has come the evil of inferior merchandise—of ‘planned obsolescence,’” an evil steadfastly resisted by the “craftsmen” at Amana.71 And in a 1971 advertisement for tiling, we are informed that “in this era of ‘planned obsolescence’, and ‘plastic imitations,’ ceramic tile is still a trademark of quality and honesty.”72 Even swimming pool installers felt the need to reassure their customers that their equipment was free of planned obsolescence: “Sunset’s progressive research and development program goes on continuously, to bring you the finest equipment possible. There is no ‘planned obsolescence.’”73 Like the auto makers, the advertising angle taken by these companies was not to make the clear and positive arguments about durability and value that Ford made in the 1920s but rather to mark their products by negation, as not made according to the principle of planned obsolescence.\n\nMoral Panic about Utility\n\n245","previous_page":244,"next_page":246}