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Mass Producing The Personal: The Greeting Card Industry’S Approach To Commercial Sentiment, Emily West
Mass Producing The Personal: The Greeting Card Industry’S Approach To Commercial Sentiment, Emily West
Emily E. West
The greeting card industry manages the challenge of mass-producing images and texts for use in interpersonal communication through both specific production techniques and narratives that “make sense” of this seemingly paradoxical task. The mass production of the personal is negotiated in the processes of writing sentiments and creating designs, as well as in identifying sending situations for cards. At Hallmark, the approach to creating emotional, relational communication for anonymous others is captured by the phrase “universal specificity,” which suggests that people’s emotions are essentially universal, and that the industry can meet the nation’s social expression needs by customizing these core …
When You Care Enough To Defend The Very Best: How The Greeting Card Industry Manages Cultural Criticism, Emily West
When You Care Enough To Defend The Very Best: How The Greeting Card Industry Manages Cultural Criticism, Emily West
Emily E. West
The American greeting card industry, in particular industry leader Hallmark Cards, makes substantial efforts to deflect cultural critiques in its communications with the public, demonstrating how culture industries actively manage their negative associations with mass culture as well as the public’s fears of an advancing ‘commodity frontier’ (Hochschild, 2003: 30). Hallmark frames its cultural production as creative while de-emphasizing its industrial nature, and whenever possible, aligns itself with the legitimating cultural categories of art and the folk to counter the idea that greeting cards are false, manufactured sentiment. Hallmark also argues that the consumer is sovereign in order to contradict …