{"id":19736,"date":"2013-04-06T07:41:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T12:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19736"},"modified":"2013-04-06T07:41:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T12:41:24","slug":"an-unusual-hero-for-a-modern-tv-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/06\/an-unusual-hero-for-a-modern-tv-show\/","title":{"rendered":"An unusual hero for a modern TV show"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-04-05\/how-mr-selfridge-created-the-modern-economy.html\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia Postrel<\/a> briefly reviews a British show that just made its way across to North America:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When the British drama <em>Mr. Selfridge<\/em> debuted on PBS this week, American viewers saw two things rarely on display in contemporary popular culture: a businessman hero and, more remarkably, a version of commercial history that includes not just manufacturing but shopping.<\/p>\n<p>The show, which is also streamed on PBS.org, stars Jeremy Piven as Harry Gordon Selfridge, the American-born founder of the London department store. In the first episode, he arrives in 1909, determined to shake up U.K. retailing with the techniques that made him a success as a partner at Chicago\u2019s Marshall Field\u2019s: showmanship, tons of advertising, and displays that let customers easily handle the merchandise. In the second, he puts perfumes and powder on display right by the store\u2019s front door and introduces an affordable house fragrance concocted with new chemical processes. <\/p>\n<p>Ambitions that an American drama might treat as self- centered greed become, in a British context, a bold strike against class privilege. \u201cYou show great potential,\u201d Selfridge tells the talented shop girl Agnes Towler (played by Aisling Loftus), the show\u2019s working-class heroine. \u201cYou remind me of myself when I started out &mdash; grasping for every chance, keen as mustard to learn. You love it, don\u2019t you? The customers, the selling, the feeling of the merchandise under your hands \u2026\u201d <\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Yet like railroads and telegraphs, the department stores of the late 19th and early 20th century were socially and economically transformative institutions. They pioneered innovations ranging from inventory control and installment credit to ventilation systems, electric lighting and steel construction, along with new merchandising and advertising techniques. They brought together goods from all over the world and lit up city streets with their window displays. They significantly changed the role of women, giving them new career opportunities and respectable places to meet in public. They popularized bicycles, cosmetics, ready-to-wear clothing and electrical appliances. They even invented the ladies\u2019 room. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Postrel briefly reviews a British show that just made its way across to North America: When the British drama Mr. Selfridge debuted on PBS this week, American viewers saw two things rarely on display in contemporary popular culture: a businessman hero and, more remarkably, a version of commercial history that includes not just manufacturing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,831,7,28],"tags":[428,159,101],"class_list":["post-19736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","category-history","category-media","tag-marketing","tag-shopping","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-58k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19737,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19736\/revisions\/19737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}