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Canadian Review of American Studies 34.1 (2004) 83-103



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"Uncle Sam Wants You ... to Go Shopping":

A Consumer Society Responds to National Crisis, 1957-2001


In the spring of 2002, columnist William Pfaff contrasted what he saw as Americans' over-reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, with their steadfast behaviour during the Cold War. Despite the Soviet challenge and the threat of thermonuclear war, he asserted, "There was never much anxiety in the United States about future events, or fear of enemy attack, during the Cold War ... ." But Pfaff's memory seemed to have failed him, for at least one major Cold War episode did evoke fear of physical attack and doubts about national survival. Ironically, it was not a military action that triggered it but rather an ostensibly peaceful, scientific demonstration. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first earth satellite, dubbed "Sputnik," and thereby aroused both an immediate panic and a longer-range reassessment of America's character, goals, and purposes, both reminiscent of and intriguingly different from the country's reaction to the assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Comparing and contrasting American public discourse about these two national crises reveals much about the shifting role of consumerism in American life. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, public spokespersons pointed accusing fingers at their countrymen's allegedly sybaritic life-styles and hunger for ever more consumer goods, contrasting America's satiated plenitude with the discipline and rigour that made possible the stunning scientific, educational, and diplomatic achievements of their Russian and Chinese rivals. Calls for sacrifice and criticisms of mindless consumerism filled the print [End Page 83] media and the airways. But in the wake of what everyone quickly began to call "9/11," public tribunes, led by the president, embraced consumer excess as central to an American way of life against which Islamic fundamentalists raged. To be sure, forty years ago the same Jeremiahs who warned of popular material excess acknowledged that consumer spending was critical to the health of the economy; but whereas, for them, this fact was a source of dismay and perplexity, now it was the centrepiece of the nation's ebullient response to violent attack.

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Within an hour of the first reports of the events of September 11, a student journalist knocked on the history professor's door. The campus newspaper, it seemed, wanted to run a story the next day featuring local reactions to the disaster, and the young reporter had come to the professor's office seeking context. To what previous catastrophes in American history, he asked, might the World Trade Center- Pentagon (WTC) attacks be most appropriately compared? When the professor fumbled for an answer, the journalist helpfully suggested that, on news broadcasts, there was frequent mention of Pearl Harbor. Yes, indeed, the professor quickly agreed. In its shocking nature and devastating effect, Pearl Harbor was truly the closest parallel.1

Yet doubts soon surfaced. On reflection, the differences between the Japanese attack on US air and naval installations in Hawaii in 1941 and the WTC attacks seemed to outweigh the similarities. However unexpected, the Japanese raid was a military attack on military installations, conducted by the regular forces of a recognized government. Civilians had not been targeted, though naturally there was "collateral damage." And, of course, Americans had to wait for the images, which were shown in the movie theatres only days later.

If December 7 was turning out to be not much of a parallel, were there other episodes that might be invoked? What about, for example, the sinking of the Lusitania on May 8, 1915? After all, writes historian David Reynolds, "For the early 20th century, this was the defining act of terrorism against innocent civilians." True, this disaster hadn't occurred on American soil or even involved an American ship. Yet many Americans—128—were killed, along with 1,500 other non-combatants. Although a recognized government was responsible, the attack was directed...

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