The Adman's Dilemma by Paul Rutherford

The Adman's Dilemma by Paul Rutherford

The Adman’s Dilemma is a cultural biography that explores the rise and fall of the advertising man as a figure who became effectively a licensed deceiver in the process of governing the lives of American consumers. Apparently this personage was caught up in a contradiction, both compelled to deceive yet supposed to tell the truth. It was this moral condition and its consequences that made the adman so interesting to critics, novelists, and eventually filmmakers. The biography tracks his saga from its origins in the exaggerated doings of P.T. Barnum, the emergence of a new profession in the 1920s, the heyday of the adman’s influence during the post-WW2 era, the later rebranding of the adman as artist, until the apparent demise of the figure, symbolized by the triumph of that consummate huckster, Donald Trump. In The Adman’s Dilemma, author Paul Rutherford explores how people inside and outside the advertising industry have understood the conflict between artifice and authenticity. The book employs a range of fictional and nonfictional sources, including memoirs, novels, movies, TV shows, websites, and museum exhibits to suggest how the adman embodied some of the strange realities of modernity.

"Through a selective, chronological succession of literary and film/television analysis…Rutherford traces the evolution of the American adman (later accompanied by the adwoman, though not quite as late as one might assume) from an opportunistic, showboating rascal to today’s somewhat more sinister and thoroughly institutionalized figure"

-- Eric J. Ianelli * Times Literary Supplement, Jan 25 2019 *

"Rutherford’s discussions of a final burst of creative energy in the 1960s and the subsequent waning of the ad maker in a world of pure images and brand imperialism are fascinating prequels to a cultural turn through which we are still wandering."

-- Mitch Johnston, University of Toronto * University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 *

Paul Rutherford is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of several books published by UTP, including When Television Was Young (1990), The New Icons? (1994), Endless Propaganda (2000), Weapons of Mass Persuasion (2004), and World Made Sexy (2007).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781487522988
ISBN 10	1487522983
Title	The Adman's Dilemma
Author	Paul Rutherford
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Toronto Press
Year published	2018-08-23
Number of pages	480
Prizes	Winner of CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles of 2019 awarded by the American Library Association 2019 (United States)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.