 She was charismatic, a center of attraction, who seemed to embody what was taken to be a central feature of human existence at that time. After her death at least as much as during her life, the image of Marilyn Monroe has fueled prurient fantasy. An industry devoted to the exploitation of the enigma has invaded every aspect of her life in search, not of answers, but of new images.
Computer graphics, computer-aided design, lasers and video technology came together in the 1980s to create a new visual world, in which the new possibilities of electronics were enthusiastically celebrated, and the imagination stimulated by the sheer power of the silicon chip. Read More
Streamlining spawned visions of the future, nowhere more so than at the Big Fair - the New York World's Fair which opened in April 1939. International expositions had occured regularly since 1851 - the Eiffel Tower had been built for the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1899 - but "the People's Fair" proclaimed itself "the rnightiest exposition ever conceived and built by man." Read More
From the early 1910s, going to the movies became an event in itself. As Adolph Zukor explained, middle-class audiences demanded better facilities: "The nickelodeon had to go, theaters replaced shooting galleries, temples replaced theaters, and cathedrals replaced temples". By 1925, the United States had nearly a thousand picture palaces... Read More
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 In the vortex of the 20th century's constant change it has been a source of reassurance to find a new points of stability, a few commodities not subject to the whims of fashion and planned obsolescence. The red and white Coca-Cola logo is instantly recognizable, a guarantee of standardization and an emblem of the American Way of Life, as potent as the Stars and Stripes itself. Read More
Greatest stars of Hollywood's formative years were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. From 1914 they, with Charlie Chaplin, achieved a celebrity quite unlike anything ever seen before them. More than the scale of their popularity, what made stardom a new phenomenon was that it detached fame from achievement in the... Read More
In June, 1927, Charles Lindbergh received 3,500,000 letters, 14,000 parcels, and 100,000 telegrams. The New York World got two bushels of Lindbergh poetry. While he was having dinner in New York, a woman broke through his guards to peer into his mouth and determine for herself whether he preferred green beans or green peas. Read More
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In the story of Mickey Mouse reality is denied and overcome in still another variation of the castration theme. Mickey's solution is different and most original. Read More
The British royal family is a unique survivor of the past. This survival is probably due to the fact that Britain has escaped recent revolution or invasion by a foreign power. Because the royal family is an anachronism, a piece of the past which has somehow made it into the modern age, it is of course riven by contradictions. Read More
 For a few years, the large, outdoor rock festival an idea borrowed from the tradition of folk and jazz festivals begun in the 1950s and from San Francisco's "human be-in" gatherings or "happenings" - became a symbolic expression of the counter-culture. Read More
Before ragtime and the new dances captured the public imagination the musical stage was preeminent in the provision of commercial entertainment in both Europe and... Read More
In the 1960s there emerged two sportsmen both black men from unpromising backgrounds - who each won vast fortunes and became amongst the best known faces and names in the world.
The two of them challenged many conventional assumptions about the place of the sportsman in modem society... Read More
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