States of Perfection: Refrigerated Food & the Archaeology of Meat, 1954

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 965--extended

Like Greek statues, orders of architecture, the golden ratio and Vitruvian man, these ads from LIFE Magazine in 1954 measure a sort of highest-attainable-state, though directed at middle class America.  The ads are for refrigerators, but the interest really is in what is displayed inside of them: they offer an insight into what was seen to be the greatest level of sophistication, the highest stage of want for the most important/essential daily need, and then turned into luxurious accommodation.  Far beyond rice and beans and eggs and ham, far beyond the tiny, perpetually empty icebox of the Kramdens ("The Honeymooners", ca. 1952).

[This continues another post, States of Perfection:Images of TV within TV Ads, 1950.]

You will come to notice (if you look closely enough) that there are a lot of gelatin-thing plates, often located next to a meat plate, or plates.  Funny thing, that.  

The top shelf is of great interest, a virtual archaeology of meat:

 

 

And then:

 

 

And so

 

 

 

Fabulous.

And then there's the food consumption of an "average" American family, so:

 

There's a lot of meat and eggs and butter and milk and lard in there, the arrangement artistic but gratuitously "average", and not a good way to try and sell a refrigerator.

 

 

Comments

[Giovanni Tiso]

I feel compelled to report that my grandmother had the Victor with the pedal. I remember it well.