TOW #25 GE Advertisement

General Electric appeals to the American Dream in this advertisement.

My goals are to write in a cohesive format without obviously listing the required information. I would also like to focus on and go in depth about one or two strategies, instead of listing many.
   
     The ad above is for houses produced by the Levitt & Sons company just after World War 2. At this point in time, several millions of soldiers were returning home to their wives and girlfriends, and all at once needed places to live and start a family. This combined with greater American wealth at the time, led Americans to sprawling suburban communities with thousands of well-organized and similar houses. William Levitt created four standard models of a house that could be ordered in a catalogue, and, in assembly line fashion, constructed four enormous communities very inexpensively in a very short amount of time. His advertisements were of the first generation of American family appeal, using the image of the "nuclear family" looking for a normal, conformist life. Levitt's purpose in the advertisement is to appeal to the vast number of veterans he can persuade to purchase his services and products, and to convince them that his houses fulfill their future needs and desires.
     The first thing that one notices in the ad are the caricatures of the veteran and his wife. The man is clearly in his uniform from the war, and his wife is smartly dressed and clearly adoring of him. Both are smiling, rosy cheeked, and intimate. This is clearly an appeal to pathos, as Levitt wants viewers to consider themselves in the same positions as the characters in the ad: planning a new life is happy. Sketched in the dirt is another appeal to pathos and the subject of the ad: an appealing, average house. People of the 1950s thrived on nondescript conformity, and a symmetrical house sketched in the dirt, while not an accurate representation of the actual houses Levitt built, still conjures up feelings of that ideal "American lifestyle."
     While difficult to read, I believe the paragraphs at the bottom of the ad describe a soldier's need to make smart future plans for his family, especially before he leaves to further serve his country. General Electric, a partner of Levitt, includes small depictions of appliances and a brief description of its services to give the appearance of working for the consumer. It provides many new technologies to make life easier in this time of stress and war.
     Because of its emotional appeals, this ad is a form of propaganda. However, because Americans were so gullible when it came to pursuing the American dream, the advertisement is still effective.