Gray Brechin's Imperial San Francisco is an extensive survey of San Francisco history. I found the advertisements especially compelling because they reveal an imperialistic dynamic that seems to be overlooked today in a lot of ways. One of the ones that really spoke to me was the advertisement of the Pear Soap ad. The picture in itself is rather simplistic, but the images depicted mediate a very powerful message. A woman stands upon a bar of soap, in the background, sailing into the horizon, are the Great White Fleet, the caption reads: “Two of the world’s most useful and valued necessities to protect our women and keep them happy”. The woman’s dress is quite conservative, long, and white with a high ruffled neckline, wearing what look like Puritanical footwear, while she waves her handkerchief at the ships sail as they into the distance. The soap is from Great Britain which is the epitome of imperial expansion and colonialism at this time and also signifies racial purity. Solidifies this idea that cleanliness is associated with more civilized or western/ European sense of superiority. The next image I would like to draw attention to would be the ships themselves, they seem to represent ideas of power and security. The ships themselves have many colonial implications in terms of conquering territories and transporting commodities from the East and Europe. This idea of protecting this imperial city seems to be a consistent theme, not only in the advertisement I selected, but also in the undertone of the book as a whole.
Question: Does Brechin’s construction of San Francisco and its history imply anything about its future?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I also did a close reading of that ad and whereas we more or less made similar observations, the fact that the soap came from Britain totally slipped under my radar.
More than any other ad in Brechin, this one spoke to me the most.
Nice attention to details mighty scholar!
C...Nice observation about the British soap. Isn't it curious that the ad throws back to British imperialism (which Americans, in other times, are so quick to denounce!) in order to make expansion in other areas seem like a good idea?? What strange alliances. I like your reading of the woman's dress, white and blank and so simple compared to the heavily constructed, complicated ships in the middle part of the ad. Color (black and white) seems to be strategically put to use here...some soaps are white, some black...
Post a Comment