The American Dream

During the course of Edward Albee’s play, The American Dream, we hear a horrific tale of two parents who so desperately wanted the perfect child; they were willing to destroy everything that made him imperfect. They cut off his feet and hands to keep him out of trouble. They cut out his tongue so he couldn’t speak and his brain so he couldn’t think. The story continues until the child, now an adult, appears on stage. He is gorgeous. He looks like James Dean, walks like a gentleman and speaks like an angel. He is “the American Dream.” He is pretty to look at but a mere shell on the inside. Once the dream was realized, the reality was hollow. Albee’s metaphor is quite clear.

Written in 1959, “the play is an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity; it is a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen,” according to Albee. It is not surprising that Mr. Albee would take such a dramatic stand in one of his plays. After all, his mentors were all products of the Federal Theatre Project and the Great Depression. He knew how theatre had been propagandized during the House Un-American Activity Committee hearings in the late 1930’s and he was now seeing it happen all over again in the 1950’s.

Selling a New Vision of America to the World, by Andrew Yarrow, provides fascinating insights into the PR shift from early to mid century America and the reasoning behind these shifts. He addresses propaganda by saying it “is generally defined as persuasive communication intended to appeal to a target audience’s latent beliefs or, with more difficulty, to change their beliefs and actions.” If we can accept the concept that art, which often includes writing and editorial, is a reflection of the times in which they operate, then it we may also assume that PR Theory also reflects these same periods. Vasquez and Taylor state, “Only seldom, however, do people ask if this perception of history is the only way to interpret the evolution of PR. If we look at propaganda as a persuasive tool, and consider its’ use throughout history, we understand the negative connotation of the word. Whether something is considered propaganda is in direct relation to which side of the story the listener is placed. 

The WPA during the 1930’s put many Americans back to work but it was widely viewed as a socialist program. With rising concerns over unionism, socialism, communism and the fear of revolution, a new story needed to be told. During World War II, a new sense of unity was sold to Americans with the ultimate promise of “The American Dream.” Soldiers came home from the war with visions of work, family, home and, white picket fence. Prosperity in America was a new story to sell to the world. “The paradigm was ostensibly an apolitical and upbeat message that could unite Americans, patching over the bitter social divisions not only of the 1930’s but of the preceding half century,” says Yarrow. If the country needed to “fight the spread” of communism, then a story of prosperity in a Capitalistic society was a much stronger sell than freedom. In fact, the two concepts could be combined. It is through freedom that you can gain prosperity.

The American Dream became an advertisers dream. Now the dream had to include new cars, new appliances, bigger homes and travel. Citizens of other countries started to believe that all Americans were rich, while in America, debts were rising and tensions over freedom were mounting. Edward Albee’s play debuts on the fringe of 1960. Soon, a new war will sweep the country; carrying with it new voices concerning freedom, lack of prosperity and the dismantling of the American Dream. The story would need to be changed once more.

I had a professor in graduate school who stated, “There is no such thing as historic fact. Fact is based on the perception of the story teller and the perception of the listener”. I guess one could make the same argument about the history of PR Theory. Several possible origins can be discussed, but we seem to arrive at the same conclusions.

One final note; the Federal Theatre Project, which I mentioned at the beginning of this article, was closed on June 30, 1939. Before it closed, a play titled The Cradle Will Rock was supposed to open on Broadway. The play was shut down by the government because of its’ pro-union and socialist themes. This is the only time in American history that a play is closed by the United States government. In defiance, the actors marched to another theatre and performed their roles from their seats in the audience. It is considered a defining moment in American theatre history. However, it is, at best, a footnote in American history.

The story didn’t fit well with the new vision that was being sold to the world.