Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness

By Elizabeth Ewen and Stuart Ewen

Book Overview

Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen offer a telling examination of the rise of mass-produced imagery in the United States, tracing the pivotal role that such images played in the genesis and development of the American imagination. Beginning with the rise of the machine and the emergence of consumerism as a common way of life, the authors lay a strong foundation for an understanding of the twentieth-century American media culture.

Spanning a wide range of fascinating subjects-movies, fashion, tabloid journalism-Ewen and Ewen offer forceful insights into the mechanisms that link alluring images and popular imagination to the entrenched structures of power. Channels of Desire seeks to broaden our understanding of the social history behind the apparent immortality of a consumer society-its universe of commodities, its priorities and social forms, and the modern consumer ethic that stresses images over substance, desire over satisfaction, and the individual over society.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816618909
• ISBN13: 9780816618903
• Release Date: September 1992
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

An Eye Opening Experience

I studied this book with the author. It is a masterful work written with intense passion and desire to unearth the real drives behind modern consumer culture. Anyone who picks it up will, no doubt, look at the little things in his/her life much differently afterwords. Don't get me wrong, the book is to the extreem left, but the ideals of the left are often true and we are so taken in by the consumer culture that we do not wish to admit them. If anyone feels as though they are living in a daze, giving in to the false demands the culutre puts upon them,, this book will give hope that these things were created and forged by men. Read this with an open mind and a critical eye upon your own life!

A brilliant overview of the power of images in our lives

I read this book when it originally came out and then, recently, came across the revised edition. Reading it in 2001, the book remains fresh offering a brilliant look at the power of images within our lives. The sections on fashion and on early movies, in particular, present a wonderful look at the interface between mass culture and personal lives. A must read.