col49 2 pt2

[Paul Mackin]

Dave Monroe wrote: (quoting Jeffrey L. Meikle whom I think used to be a
p-lister)

> . its cultural significance was
> contained in the words of a skeptical John Gloag, who
> suggested that plastiuc should be understood as what
> happens 'when the artificial becomes the real.'" (pp.
> 181-2)

My comment would be that this sounds like a definition of postmodernity.

For example "Postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process
is complete and nature is gone for good. It is a more fully human world
than the older one, but one in which 'culture' has became a veritable
'second nature'."  --Fredric Jameson

Tupperware was  an attractive and durable product. The only complaint I
remember hearing back then was that it was  pricey--an expensive means of
storing meal leftovers for future use. Cheaper although inferior plastic
containers were available.

I think the Tupperware phenomonon   might have been a little like Amway. A
Tupperware hostess would make money  or at least receive free gifts as the
result of  sales of the product to her friends. Plus some of the buying
friends  would be recruited to become in turn hostesses themselves.

Off the top of my head I'd say there was a large socio-economic strata in
the 50s  (also in the 60s)  made up of nuclear familes in which  the
husband's income was enough so that the wife did not have to work outside
the home but with  family income still insufficient to afford many of the
goods  available to buy. Not many of these women had been mistresses of
rich industrialists however. Oedipa with her lawyer and psychotherapist
seems to me an unlikely candidate for a Tupperware Party. (just an unlikely
as her being married to a diskjockey unless he happened to be one of the
few highly paid ones which Mucho does not seem to have been)  Women of a
slighty higher status would probably say they would not be caught dead at a
Tupperware party.

Forgive me I have  nothing but misty memory to support any of this
pontificating.


                            P.