BUNKER - Consumers of Good Taste
BUNKER - Consumers of Good Taste
BUNKER - Consumers of Good Taste
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StevenB. Bunker
University of British Columbia
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13(2), Summer 1997. ? 1997 Regents of the University of California.
227
ing as the stage settings."1 The store fronts acted as the focus of the
crowd's attention, as onlookers discussed the merits of each estab-
lishment to decide upon a winner. Department stores such as La
Reinera, Treviiio, and M. Cirno y Compafiia joined other enterprises
in receiving lavish praise for their flashing colored lights, national
flags, emblems and bunting, and other eye-catching decorations
placed in and around their show windows. The local businessmen
who had organized this display could only be pleased that the fol-
lowing day's front-page headlines called it "One of the Most Bril-
liant Events in the History of Monterrey."2
The central importance of storefronts and business faSades in
this celebration testifies to the new culture of consumption that
emerged in the Porfiriato. While historians have dealt with the cul-
tural, social, and economic impact of the productive forces of capi-
talism, they have yet to broach the effects of consumerism upon
Mexican society.3 Both production and consumption characterized
the rapidly growing and transforming urban milieu in which in-
creasing numbers of Mexicans lived. This consumerism, as well as
being essential to economic growth, came increasingly to define
the culture and self-image of Mexicans. For many, participation in
this market exchange signified being part of Mexico's moderniza-
tion efforts. Consumerism can be placed within a larger Porfirian
modernization belief system that Alan Knight has called a develop-
mentalist ideology, whose adherents embraced the values of moral
reform, civic pride, hygiene, nationalism, and economic progress
patterned after Western European and other North American eco-
nomic and cultural models. The believers of this ideology consti-
tuted a class of urban Mexicans who titled themselves the gente
decente, or respectable people. As lowly municipal clerks as well as
powerful businessmen, teachers, shopkeepers, government offi-
cials, store managers, journalists, white collar workers, and mem-
1. Monterrey News, 17 September 1910, 1
2. Ibid.
3. See, for example, Stephen H. Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment: The
Industrialization of Mexico, 1890-1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1989); and Mario Cerutti, Burguesfa, capitales e industria en el norte de Mextco:
Monterrey y su dmbito regional (1850-1910) (Monterrey: Alianza Editorial,
1992). Two recent efforts to analyze a consumer culture In Mexico include Nora
Perez-Ray6n, "La publicidad en Mexico a fines del siglo XIX: Expresi6n del pro-
greso econ6mico y la modernidad porfirista, transmisora de nuevos valores y mode-
los culturales," Soctol6gica 9, 26 (September 1994): 195-222; William H. Beezley,
"The Porfirian Smart Set Anticipates Thorstein Veblen In Guadalajara,"in Rituals of
Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico,
ed. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington,
Delaware: SR Books, 1994), 173-90.
figures in the organization of festivals new and old, secular and reli-
gious. They figured in the workings of nationalist holidays such as
Independence Day, the new and expressly commercial Carnival in
Monterrey, the old Trades Procession, and the Santa Rita festival.
By the late nineteenth century, the residents of Monterrey and
Chihuahua lived in an environment characterized by the glorifica-
tion of personal and family consumption, where definitions of so-
cial norms and the ideal image of a modern Mexican centered
around the act of consumption. Consumers, however, had to en-
sure that whatever they purchased enhanced their personal mod-
ern image, that the item they bought or the event they attended
embodied the larger values of modernization upheld by the gente
decente and Porfirian society. Fortunately, consumers had a new
guide to help them in this task: the new mass-circulation newspa-
per and the advertising it contained.
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La mdquinaengargoladora de cigarros,
_a mis ingeniofi que se conoce, sistema DecouflI, de Parls.
NOTA.-- Vnlse cnn seguindn plana el informe emitido por cl Con,sejo Silperior (le Snlubridnd
sobro la mejora introdulcidaen esta mtiquinn por mcdio de un npnrnto (ic lielosl ]:iterntndle, cl celll
V abBorvo todo el polvillo del talbnco, hacicndo ldo nucstros ciggrrros los Iis s.perfcuths .( iligit'lieos . dlhlt'
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mor as advertisers worked cultural mores and social angst into their
efforts to sell cigarettes. Each cartoon ad advanced "Canela Pura"or
"Superiores" cigarettes as a savior for the protagonist who usually
sought love, economic success, and social prestige. The ads cov-
ered a wide variety of subjects and portrayed a world of fantasy and
the fantastic. Judging from their longevity, they must have commu-
nicated successfully with the intended audience.31
As in the lottery campaign, these ads presented El Buen Tono
cigarettes as a dream maker, a sure thing in a constantly changing
world of fads and phony panaceas. One ad focused on a man's
quest to put on weight. Tired of enduring taunts from friends who
nicknamed him "dragonfly" for his slender physique, our hero
Popote (drinking straw) sought a solution. First he tried dozens of
the health elixirs and patent medicines that crowded Mexican ad
space and store shelves at this time.32 Upon their failure he turned
to an unsuccessful hydrotherapy that only gave him a cold. To no
avail he worked out at the gym, rode a bicycle, and played sports.
Not even eating heaps of food helped him to put on weight. At
wit's end he considered writing a will, but a friend intervened and
convinced him to smoke a "CanelaPura."A miracle occurs, and sud-
denly we see our portly protagonist puffing contentedly as he
toasts his friend over a mug of "Moctezuma."One might speculate
that the final message of this ad characterizes how El Buen Tono
wanted Mexican smokers to relate to its products: Popote hoists a
beer in honor of "Canela Pura" cigarettes, "to which he owes the
realization of his constant desires."33
Along with sharing the satisfaction of desires, the ads com-
bined scenes of traditional Mexico and modern technology, and de-
picted El Buen Tono as a driving force of technology. The dirigible
that El Buen Tono brought to Mexico in 1907 found its way into
two ads, both of which claimed that only the smoke of Canela Pura
cigarettes kept it aloft while the fumes of other brands would cause
the downfall of the airship. In the first ad a European-dressed man
implored a mixed-class crowd to have faith in the new technology,
proving his claim by landing the smoke-filled balloon in the middle
of a bullfight to the cheers of the crowd.34 In the second, a famous
31. Juan Manuel Aurrecocchea and Armando Batra, Puros Cuentos: la histo-
ria de la historieta en M6xico, vol. 1 (Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo, 1988), 122.
32. For background on many of the patent medicines sold in the United States
and Mexico at this time, see Sarah Stage, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and
the Business of Women's Medicine (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1979).
33. El Correo, 8 February 1908, 3. "... en honor de los cigarros CANELA
PURA, a los que debe la realizaci6n de su constante anhelo."
34. Ibid., 28 March 1908, 3.
CAPIrTAL
ocIAi.:, ELBUEN.TONO,S . GEt.i
A. _,i-tco '
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.6 'MEXICO. E.PG-l
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,, R. b tiano Popot( tenfu,un,i delga- Eau burlt Ifidtueron A Popnte- Aigulen le aconsie6 el tratamlen;to '
. dox tal. que sus umigom luJtmuitizuron hu.icnr la manera dc crenr mlccutlo, y hidroterOpico, pero o dinico quo con.- :
QC conelpodticonotnbrcdc '-J.a iib.iula. al cfeto ingrir6 algunan doccm13 do siguid fu6pscar una pulmonlf mo .,
?0 Mfrancosdc reconatituyentT. Trocotuda, -
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obeontrnua-los *port l -
l:bl_ro.l
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a b e e i: kwcan
Popote. deccpclonado. penil en ha IPrsodilo inuporidot A termlnarH Poe Sotqns q alo tasnereco llf'mr .p
c5rou tmttamento, y locomunlcfl Irn
cln cIrctnro, un y Cttbu.siano.t felIzynoplercde^;
malgo, que para quitarle tan negro hbltndos pcsdo opado Vrcorar oportunldad de ebebr cervea oMoorw ;,
pemlento, loobfteqtiidu clgarrbdo tamafi arpriia _ - en honord loscigarro ^a
?CANILA PmUR. ' .
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A
..loe que deb, Is re,llx6ad?:deaopsuiur
uconctant nheloh -:,.
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"ELBUEN
TONO". a I' ty'la propie,lad
8. A. tieneregiBtrada,oUffoirme de estoaanouno1o,8
Grandes- Premios, Parfs 1900 y :St..Louis
MiSsourl.i;9:i
-. i.amejorCorvezade la Repblicai beslade'Moctezum riz
.
CA;ITAL'SOCIAL: BUEN S
TONO,
$ 6.500,000 \ MEXICO.
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i
Ondo *I pdbUoosupo I* eu 4d,mc.
del Y M(r.'Hmailton,parn reconfortfe opuanr lo
p
U&ruetl6 sradw contrael. diblo. qe-mn- aotumbrsdo vaaode oervoe Moerxz%wA jumndo.
tidia foH d El BuenTono. hablAtr el que no volver i usaren iutawoenaonaotruhuam(o
y esntpaa da me.xlcanose
r psablcoo T&oritto y ex qulci1de lowineuosparablea GC,xu Pua
dgiarroma
These ads suggested that Mexicans could now negotiate the posi-
tives and negatives of modernity with the help of "Canela Pura."
Other consumer-good technologies such as the automobile oc-
cupied a central position in these cartoons. In one case, two young
lovers drive a motorcar as a get-away vehicle36 while in another, a
36. Ibid., 28 June 1906, 3.
CAPI,AL
SOCL: EL BUENTONO,
S. A. D.-ORG ,.R iL
$ 6.500,000 MEXICO. E. PUGIBET
;
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CA. KU Niu.
* to del Fnundo.
Ts O".S. A. tieneregistrada,
ELBUtNe iala y, la propiedad
oonforme dfoeta antniom.
OGrandes Premios, Paris 1900 y St. Louis Missouri 1904.
La maejor Celza doe a Republica es la do Moctezuma-Orlzaba.
40. William French, "'TeAmo Muncho': Loveletters from Porfirian and Revolu-
tionary Chihuahua" (paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Meet-
ing, Calgary,June 1994).
41. El Correo, 28June 1906, 3.
CAPITAL
SOCIA.: EL'BUEN
TONO, S. OA. IRrOaR
G :
$-6.500;000 MEXICO, 9 EPUGIBioT.
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&Den Scrnpio qilnn, a de la m porqno el fnri- v clided, pero cl motor rC t. ?
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GrandesPremios,Paris 1900 y S' Louis Missouri
1904',
rocking chair and the couple kissed in the background. Again, the
ad tells the reader to thank "Canela Pura" for its pacifying effects
and for finding a cure for mothers-in-law.42
The final story involves the tale of Camaron and the beautiful
Elena, a parody of the ideal Porfirian fairytale of love. The reader is
told that Camaron's intense passion for love must remain unre-
42. El Correo, 27 October 1906, 4.
quited, for Elena has decided she will die celibate. One day she
changed her mind and, from her balcony over a street swarming
with jubilant men, she declared she will give herself to the man
who will send his love to her via a dove. Camaron searched tire-
lessly, until finally a buzzard is attracted by his cigarette and
promises to deliver the letter in return for a smoke. The deal is
made and the buzzard delivers the note to a startled Elena. She de-
cided a buzzard has the same value as a dove and, in a picture of a
well-to-do marriage ceremony, the young couple was married. The
ad leaves the reader with "Superiores" cigarettes integrated into an
ideal image of Porfirian domestic bliss with a twist. Camaron sits on
his rocking chair with a fez on his head, a cigarette in his mouth,
and a newspaper in his hands. To complement this image of do-
mesticity his wife dutifully dotes on him, while the "Superiores"-
smoking buzzard cares for their newborn.43
Such dominant Porfirian images of an ideal family life extended
beyond the advertising of cigarettes and factored into the market-
ing strategies of widely diverse companies. In a more serious vein
than El Buen Tono, these advertisers sought to present their prod-
ucts as essential accessories to the contented states of matrimony
and domesticity. Furniture stores, phonograph dealers, and East-
man-Kodak cameras literally illustrated ways for consumers to use
their products. Their images often projected a vision of domesticity
manufactured and sold in the United States, images that found en-
thusiastic acceptance among many northern Mexican consumers
who easily related them to Porfirian values of domesticity and so-
cial status. An ad created by the Monterrey furniture dealer, J. M.
Carr & Company, portrayed a wealthy and elegant middle-class
couple in the foyer of their sumptuously decorated home complete
with a grandfather clock, easy chairs, plush drapes and other fine
furniture. Titling the ad "Home Sweet Home," Carr asked the Amer-
ican colony and Mexican readers of the Monterrey News "Wouldn't
You Like to Be Here? This is Homelike. Let Us Furnish Your Home
and You Will Be Satisfied."44 Eastman-Kodak also advertised its
products as essential to any family, energetically entering the north-
ern Mexican consumer market in the years preceding the Revolu-
tion. Its ads frequently sported a domestic theme, such as a father
taking a picture of his wife as she leaned over their toddler tightly
stuffed in a baby stroller, or a mother immortalizing her two young
toddlers with a Kodak "Brownie" camera.45
46. Ibid., 18 March 1906, 15; 23 May 1909, 4; 24 February 1910, 8; and 15 Au-
gust 1909, 5.
47. El Correo, 30 August 1908, 4. For information on Chinese merchants, see
Tinker Salas, Shadow of the Eagles, chapter 2.
48. Monterrey News, 6 October 1907, 8.
49. For information on French-owned department stores, see Maurice Proal
and Pierre Martin Charpenel, L'Emptre des Barcelonnettes au Mextque (Marseille,
France: Editions J. Laffitte, 1986); and Jose Cecefia Cervantes, Mcxico en la orbita
imperial (Mexico: Ediciones "ElCaballito,' 1970), 72-75.
63. Bowlby, Just Looking, 32; and William R. Leach, "Transformation in a Cul-
ture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925" Journal of
American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 336.
64. For Day of the Dead advertisements placed by El Nuevo Mundo, see, for
example, El Correo, 27 October 1909, 4.
65. Monterrey News, 12 December 1907, 8; 15 December 1907, 12.66.
Bowlby,Just Looking, 2.
66. Bowlby, Just Looking, 2.
on the streets, the casual onlooker often could not notice any glar-
ing difference. Such a development caused a great deal of conster-
nation among Mexico's moral reformers who viewed the blurring
of class distinctions through fashion and luxury as dangerous. What
constituted daily attire when worn by members of the gente de-
cente became wasteful luxury and a sign of social decadence when
slipped onto a social inferior. One nineteenth-century contributor
to the Diario de MWxicoeven declared that women should be put
in uniform according to their social class.74
Merchandisers, by providing fashion for the many, public dis-
plays, and free access to all, gave an illusion of social equality. The
Porfirian social reality proved this different. Strolling through urban
cores looking at the window displays did provide middle-class fam-
ilies and those aspiring to such status a new form of leisure. Inside,
theoretically all social classes could rub shoulders, united by a cul-
tural vision of consumer plenty and progress even if some could af-
ford it and others could not. In addition to the opportunity of buy-
ing at sales, many stores did carry goods for both big and small
budgets. After announcing its tailoring department carried "the
finest imported Woolens," La Ciudad de Londres added that it
"carr[ied] a large assortment of popular priced goods, for the
Miner, the Farmer and the Mechanic."75Its competitor, the Sorpresa
y Primavera store, also exhibited this cross-class inventory: "THE
PRIDE OF DRESS is praise worthy in every one whether rich or
poor. In our great stock can be found both the expensive and
the cheap to suit the needs of all. Your money will go furthest
here... "76
For all its appearance of social equality, the department store
itself actually reproduced more general class and gender conflicts.
Work on Mexican department stores has yet to be done, but one
may tentatively conclude that they would share many of the charac-
teristics of stores in the United States.77 This possibility is sup-
74. Jean Franco, "Women, Fashion and the Moralists in Early Nineteenth-Cen-
tury Mexico," in Homenaje a Ana Maria Barrenechea, ed. Lia Schwartz Lerner and
Isaias Lerner (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1984). For further debate on fashion across
the industrializing world in the late nineteenth-century, see MarianaValverde, "The
Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Dis-
course"; Victorian Studies 32, 2 (winter 1989): 169-188; in Mexico, see French
"Prostitutes and Guardian Angels," 548.
75. Monterrey News, 19 December 1909, 8.
76. Ibid., 8 April 1906, Saturday supplement.
77. A study of Mexican department store organization will form the corner-
stone of this author's dissertation, based on the archives of Mexico City's first
department store, El Palacto de Hterro.
79. Beezley,Judas at the Jockey Club, 20. For more on the Chihuahua Blues,
see the Chihuahua Enterprise, 16 September 1899, 8; 24 March 1900, 1; 5 May
1900, 8; and for its Mexican and American team roster, see 10 May 1902, 2.
80. Monterrey News, 6 July 1909, 1. For information on the Mexican cinema,
see de los Reyes, Los origenes del cine; and Aurelio de los Reyes, Cine y sociedad
en M6xico, 1896-1930, vol. 1, Vivir de Sueflos (1896-1920) (Mexico: Universidad
Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, 1981).
81. Ibid., 10 December 1908, 4.
82. El Correo, 13 January 1908, 4.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
eas. The trendy Topo Chico bottled water company and the Toluca
brewery set a high standard for the displays of other companies;
their guests milled about a grotto-style setting, attended to by beau-
tiful young women and bathed by soft light emanating from electric
lights concealed within the imported moss that draped the site.97
No one, however, could compete with the awe-inspiring stand
of the Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc. Situated near the bandstand and en-
circling the central fountain, the organizers made their territory a
testament to the Mexican nation, its progress, its high culture and,
of course, its fine beer. Decorators strung hundreds of electrified
Japanese lanterns with streamers of Mexican and French colors
along the thirty-foot flag pole rising from the fountain. To ob-
servers, its effect at night was "something bewildering and a mur-
mur of surprise went up from those gathered in the enclosure at
the time."98The stage artists attested to Mexico's fine transportation
network by lavishly, yet artistically, displaying fresh flowers brought
from all over the Republic to make the scene "a fairyland."The en-
trances to the enclosure consisted of arcades made of blossoms
and vines entwined with ribbons. Honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and
other flowers completed the scene.99
Within this dreamscape the bon ton of Monterrey society ate
and drank. The sexual division of the seating arrangement pre-
sented a display of gender roles among Mexico's modern
well-to-do. In the center of the stand, male employees attended to
the wants of the men "unaccompanied by ladies," while hundreds
of women were seated around the core of men at small tables,
"served by some of the most beautiful young ladies Monterrey can
boast of" who "flitted about" in large, white aprons with the pic-
ture of Cuauhtemoc embroidered thereon.100 Blending opulence
and conspicuous consumption with the gendered social setting of
this public display, the gente decente revealed how its members
premised their vision of modernity upon the strict division of gen-
der roles.
The Cerveceria appeared to have a knack for defining its prod-
ucts as the choice of the modern drinker. It pulled off another en-
viable publicity coup at another aid benefit by absorbing all of the
expenses and turning the event into one huge advertisement for its
97. Ibid., 14 July 1905, 1; 15 July 1905, 1.
98. Ibid., 15July 1905, 18.
99. Ibid., 15July 1905, 18.
100. For a similar display of gendered dining arrangements see William H.
Beezley, "Dining with the Dictator and Crowning the Virgin: Forging Images of
Mexico's New Society" (paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association
Meeting, Learned Society's, Calgary,June 1994).
but specially decorated floats that vied to outdo each other and
earn "the murmurs of admiration from the spectators." To create
consumers and cultivate their image as job-providing, beneficent
patrones of society, companies distributed samples to the specta-
tors. La Fabrica de "ElLeon" had a miniature soda plant on its float
and attracted considerable attention when the bottles of fine soda
were distributed in the crowd. Dozens of "urchins" followed the
float of the La Estrella cracker factory, all anxious to get samples of
its splendid products.112The transformed Santa Rita festival and the
Trades Procession reveal how changes in public rituals involved not
only the guiding force of middle-class values of morality and
progress but also the infusion of consumer culture into the events.
The newly revamped Carnival in Monterrey followed the gen-
eral format adopted by the Santa Rita organizers. Although still pre-
ceding Lent, the new and expressly commercial Carnival lost any
religious vestige as organizers rivaled their Chihuahuan counter-
parts in glitter, secular emphasis, and corporate involvement. Here,
too, a committee of prominent local businessmen took control of
the organization. Reacting to the number of wealthy U.S. business
people who visited Monterrey each year after the Washington birth-
day celebration in Laredo, they decided to hold an event to reflect
the growing status of the city and to attract capital and tourist
dollars.
Monterrey revealed its best face to visitors and its citizens in
the new Carnival in 1906. Held in the downtown commercial and
business centers of Comercio and Zaragoza streets and Zaragoza
plaza, the festival confirmed the organizers' claim to the urban
space and their perception of progress. The venue was as "light as
noontime on a midsummer day" as arc lights strung above the
street shone in competition with colored lights illuminating busi-
ness fronts and shop windows. Tens of thousands of people
strolled along the urban core tossing confetti, admiring and gawk-
ing at the brightly decorated business establishments that provided
a stage for the festival's entertainment. The National Bank building
was crowned "with a halo of pure white incandescent lights" as
were the Banco Mercantil, the Puerto de Veracruz, the Fabricas de
Francia, and even the high profile Wagner and Levien Music Com-
pany which had decorated its store in lights of the Mexican colors.
The trendy pharmacy and novelty shop, the Botica de Leon, re-
moved the Kodak cameras and the abdominal trusses from its win-
dows to decorate its two-story building with lights, Mexican flags,
Conclusion
By the time of the 1910 centennial, a culture of consumption
had become synonymous with the public culture of northern Mexi-
can cities. It became a means by which 'enlightened' Mexicans con-
veyed their vision of a modern Mexico, integrating and disseminat-
ing the messages of consumption with the principles of economic
progress, nationalism, moral reform, personal and public hygiene,
and civic pride. As members of the gente decente, manufacturers,
store owners, and advertising agencies portrayed an ideal lifestyle
of personal fulfillment and social respectability largely based on the
values held by themselves and their potential clientele. They as-
serted that this lifestyle could only be obtained through the con-
sumption of goods and services, particularly their own, offered in
the consumer market. Mexicans concerned with "civilizing" and
"modernizing" their society accepted the messages of the con-
sumer culture. They had the disposable income to pursue, if not re-
alize, the dream world that consumer goods seemed to promise.
While mass consumption and participation in the urban mar-
ket may have encompassed most urban Mexicans, the consumer
culture expounded by mass-circulation newspapers and depart-
ment stores was a decidedly class- and gender-based one. These
institutions and their forms of advertisement established the frame-
work, rules, and images of consumption; they defined good taste,
propriety, and refinement. Furthermore, building upon the gente
decente's concept of clearly divided gender roles, they established
consumption as a feminine trait. They gained customers' attention
with eye-catching appeals, whether through comics, photography,
and interesting texts for newspaper ads, or the use of glass, color,
light, and a new emphasis on commercial art within the stores. On
the one hand, the consumer desire created through these tech-
niques crossed class boundaries, instilling a new phenomenon of
mental consumption among city dwellers. Window shopping and
browsing through store displays became new leisure activities for
the affluent and the poor. On the other hand, while all could partic-
ipate in craving the objects of their desire, the consumer whose
pocketbook enabled her to affirm her own and her family's class
position was the ideal target for the department store and for much
of the advertising world.
The purveyors of a consumer ethic reached beyond the depart-
ment store to target public entertainments and celebrations as pub-
lic spaces for the messages of consumption. Show and festival orga-
nizers transformed or adapted older forms of entertainment and