The Fifties: Selling The American Way

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The documentary, “Selling The American Way”, begins telling the audience what seems to be a Christmas story during a time period when television sets were being incorporated into every American home. Because of this, the 1950’s were a changing time when people were being bombarded with television ads which were thought to incorporate the ideas of psychology into the media with the purpose of persuading the viewers that they deserved to indulge on themselves. In the people, there was a fear of spending the money they earned because their parents were the generation that suffered through the Great Depression. In a short time period, Rosser Reeves dominated the media space with his Anacin ad, but this was not his greatest achievement. In the year 1951 and 1952, Reeves promoted Dwight D. Eisenhower through a series of ads on television. Later in the…show more content…
Many reporters were sent to Guatemala to cover the story but only one told the real story, Sydney Gruson. Ethos can be identified in the people who are being interviewed through the documentary based on David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way”. The people can be thought of as a reliable source because they are speaking first hand about an experience they have lived through. Although, the viewers can construe Ernest Dichter to be an noncredible source because he was a man driven by money which causes you to have lapses in judgement and a wildly different perception than those of the common people. Another element identifiable through this documentary is Logos, the principle of reason and judgment. Logos can be identified as a tangent in the later section of this documentary. What started out as describing the effects of television and the advertisements on politics turned into a description of the Cold War, a fruit company named United Fruit Company, and Guatemala. These ideas were

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