During the 1920s, Jell-O advertising in North America focused on both the product’s convenience (the fact that it could be consumed almost anywhere) and its connection with idealized domestic settings. Both themes were central to a 1922 “at home everywhere” advertising campaign in the United States and Canada. Booklets distributed in both countries featured images of people serving or consuming Jell-O in a series of disparate settings: camping in the woods, on a farm in the “wheat belt,” and in a snow-bound cabin. Indeed, both the American and Canadian versions of the booklet featured a bear and a cabin on the cover. But the Canadian and American booklets differed on one key point. The American booklet included a plantation in its compilation of idealized Jell-O consuming locations and featured an illustration of an African-American boy serving the dessert to a white woman at the “Big House.” The Canadian version did not. When it came to promoting their product in Canada, Jell-O’s advertisers recognized that while some cultural allusions were transferable, others were not. Jell-O could be both Canada’s and America’s “most famous” dessert but the reference points used to justify such claims required selectivity and political awareness.
https://media.rss.com/whatsoldisnews/2024_06_11_04_11_20_9548fad5-99cc-4c47-a7a8-efa52384875d.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham This week, I’m joined by Raymond Blake, author of Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of National Identity. We discuss the role of the Prime Minister, how mass media changed the office, and the ways in which Prime Ministers have influenced national identity. We also chat about how international affairs shape… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/History-Slam-212.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham On February 24, 1884, Louie Sam, a Stó:lo teenager, was accused by an angry mob of starting a fire that killed James Bell, a shopkeeper in the settler community Nooksack, in what is now Whatcom County, Washington, which borders British Columbia. Without any evidence, the assembled mob determined that Sam was… Read more »
By Stephen Brooke On Friday, 23 June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union, with 51.89% in favour of leaving and 48.11% in favour of remaining. And thus Britain embarked on what was certainly the most important political decision of the past forty years (going back to the 1975 referendum which approved membership in what was then called the… Read more »
By Merle Massie When Senator Nicole Eaton called for Canada to declare a new biopolitical symbol in the fall of 2011, she suggested replacing the ‘dentally defective rat’ –– known as beaver, or castor Canadensis –– with the perhaps more ‘stately’ polar bear. In one simple suggestion, she set off a firestorm of controversy across Canada’s social and public media… Read more »