After I mopped the winter slush off the floor of my circa 1980's kitchen, I relaxed by watching some some of the long-forgotten sales films and commercials available online through the invaluable Moving Image Archive. In the 1955 film pictured above, A Word to the Wives (sponsored by America's Homebuilders), housewife Jane Peters commiserates to her friend Mary Edwards about her "nightmare kitchen." Mary, in her gleaming new kitchen with steel cabinets and an automatic flour dispenser, suggests a way to "trick" her husband into buying her a new house: go visit her brother in Cleveland and leave hubby and son to fend for themselves. Disaster ensues when George tries to cook himself and his son dinner! He's so incompetent he can't even open the kitchen cabinets by himself. When the Peters go the Edwards' house for a dinner party, Mary prepares a delicious dinner of baked ham with grape jelly and mustard dressing and a sweet potato casserole with pineapple and marshmallows. George is sold! He buys Jane a new house. Now Jane has time to indulge in the only activities this film could imagine for women outside of housework and child-raising: shopping and playing golf. I feel mildly guilty watching these old films; I feel like I'm snooping in on my parents' generation and seeing their humble desires commoditized in a way that, crass as these films are, is oddly touching.
