Printed Advertisement 1947-1970: Bengali Middleclass; An Interaction

This work explains the politics of the patterns of the advertisements printed in the newspapers published in Bengal between 1947 and 1970, and the sociology of the encounter of the Bengali middleclass with these. Many of the cited advertisements were meant for the entire country but regional particularities were pronounced during the period under review, and the bhadralok consciously maintained a unique constructed identity that dates back to the colonial epoch. Therefore, their encounter with these advertisements too had regional peculiarities.The advertising texts of this period frequently referred to nationalism, tradition and work ethics, and were remarkably sober and controlled, compared to modern advertisements. Nevertheless, they contrived to reiterate the existing and emerging desires of probable consumers. The idiom of those advertisements prescribed a lifestyle and consumption pattern for the most volatile class, ready to satisfy their desires, if only symbolically, through consumption, and prepared the ground for present-day advertisements. The language was restrained only because the market culture was still weak then, and some traditional values had persisted, among the probable consumers, because of the objective conditions. But even without those advertisements, such traditional values would not have been perpetual, though present-day advertisements would have to grope for a language required to encourage consumerism.