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When you care enough to defend the very best: how the greeting card industry manages cultural criticism

University of Massachusetts at Amherst

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’. 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 critics’ claims that it imposes its mass-produced cards on the public. The way the greeting card industry seeks to manage cultural anxiety about industrialized culture is discussed, as well as the limits of their response.

Key Words: authenticity • commodity frontier • consumers • cultural production • public relations

Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 29, No. 2, 241-261 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0163443707074255


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