The Pulps in the Consumer’s Republic

Abstract

Abstract: Chapter 2 considers the sort of advertising typically found in the SF pulps. During the formative pre-war years, advertising was seldom about the movies, but it frequently implicated and even exploited a developing film consciousness in the pulp readership. And although some have argued that, in comparison to the numerous “slick” magazines of the period, advertising was not very important to the pulps, this chapter argues otherwise, particularly noting the various film-related ads that were common to all the SF magazines, including education in film-related occupations; placement of film scripts; opportunities for screen tests; and films, cameras, and projectors that were already being marketed to the pulp readers. Those readers were seen as part of what Lizabeth Cohen has termed the new “Consumer’s Republic” of America, with its tastes and desires in consumption already being partly shaped by their experience of the new modernist art of the movies.