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Cultural Impact of Plastics Reviewed by Κ. Μ. Reese
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omparisons are odious—a line well known during the 14th cen tury, according to Bartlett's "Fa miliar Quotations"—but a combined re view of two books on the same topic can hardly avoid them. At any rate, the topic is the movement of synthetic polymers into popular culture, where, say both au thors, they are now firmly ensconced. A few thematic lines will convey the idea: From Stephen Fenichell's "Plastic— The Making of a Synthetic Century": "In the five decades since the end of World War II, plastic has crept unceasingly, and often invisibly, into our homes, cars, of fices, even our bodies. Some of us have plastic hearts, joints, valves, limbs. . . . Plastic has become the defining medium of our Synthetic Century precisely be cause it combines the ultimate twentiethcentury characteristics—artificiality, disposability and synthesis—all rolled into one. The ultimate triumph of plastic has been the victory of package over prod uct, of style over substance, of surface over essence." From Jeffrey L. Meikle's "American Plastic—A Cultural History": "The post war generation grew up with plastic. . . . Baby boomers played with Wham-O hula hoops and frisbees, Barbie dolls and Revell airplane models. . . . Their families ex perienced a flood of new plastic prod ucts—Tupperware, garbage pails and laundry baskets, Melamine dishes, appli ance housings. . . . Only superficially imi tative, plastic was in essence artificial. It seemed nearly miraculous. . . . The artifi ciality of [these] materials and the prolif eration of things have changed our per ception of reality by making it seem more malleable, less permanent, even ephemeral." These theme-setting selections may sound moderately negative—not to men tion ethereal—but neither author ap pears to be a dedicated plastics basher. Fenichell, a New York City-based free lance writer, even recalls rushing out "in a fleeting fit of antiplastic passion" to buy a few natural household products (like a pure cotton shower curtain), only to find that they did not perform as well 44 SEPTEMBER 30, 1996 C&EN
as the plastic alternatives. His conclu sion: "A full-fledged plastic purge is a luxury few of us can afford." Worth pondering, perhaps, is the use of plastic instead of plastics in the title of each book. This usage may reflect simply the authors', or their publishers', lay view of a large class of internally quite different materials as singular. It may also reflect their cultural view, hardly argu able, that plastic over the years has crept into the language—American English, at least—as a collective, but clearly pejora tive, part of speech. Meikle, a professor of American stud ies and art history at the University of Texas, Austin, writes: "These baby boomers had experienced cheap toys and heard their parents curse shoddy
"Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century," by Stephen Fenichell, HarperBusiness, 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022-5299, 1996, 356 pages, $25 (ISBN 0-88730-732-9) and "American Plastic: A Cultural History," by Jeffrey L. Meikle, Rutgers University Press, Box 5062, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903-5062, 1995, 403 pages, $49.95 (ISBN 0-81352234-X)
plastic products. The material did not ring true; nor did the society that pro duced it. Whether the opening scene of 'The Graduate' [see below] catalyzed the transformation or merely reinforced it, plastic became an adjective meaning fake or insincere—referring especially to the older generation, its activities, its accomplishments. ' ' Fenichell makes the same point: "But in America, where plastic has made
Bedroom designed by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian and constructed for the Pace Gallery in New York City in 1970 is made entirely of plastic laminated on plywood. Even the pillow is made of Formica.
the greatest cultural inroads, high-IQ types make despising it a point of pride. The very word has become a term of derision, signifying anything in contem porary life that is postmodern and grotesque." Both authors find deep significance in a line from the late-1960s movie, "The Graduate": "I just want to say one word to you, Ben. Just one word . . . Plastics . . . There's a great future in plastics." They quote the line slightly differently, but the discrepancy need not detain us here. More to the point, Meikle writes, "This odd pronouncement, isolated in the film's opening scene, convulsed audi ences and became a line 'repeated into classicdom by a whole generation of kids.' The scene made a permanent im pression—and not just among dismayed plastics executives. . . . Most viewers would have had trouble explaining their laughter. . . . Whatever the reasons, the scene hit a nerve and entered communal memory." All very true, no doubt, and not surprising in an era when accredited universities grant advanced degrees in movies, or film, as the cognoscenti would have it. The backbone of each of these enter taining books is a history of the develop ment of synthetic polymers. Both au thors in their fashions cover the familiar materials: celluloid, Bakélite, cellophane, polyethylene, vinyls, polyester, and so forth. Both also cover various familiar ap-
plications of polymers, including nylon hose, plastic soft-drink bottles, Chevrolet's Corvette, Saran Wrap, acrylic bubbles on military aircraft, R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, and, in Fenichell's case, 200,000 plastic bugles ordered by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during World War II. These accounts of the development and uses of plastics would not satisfy specialists interested in the detailed technical and commercial history of the materials. They are fine, however, for readers of all stripes who are interested in the cultural impact of synthetic polymers. Given their identical theses, the two books necessarily cover many of the same bases, if in varying degree. Each features an extensive cast of characters including discoverers and developers of polymers such as Leo Baekeland, Wallace Carothers, Paul Flory, John Wesley Hyatt, Herman Mark, Carl Marvel, Roy Plunkett, Waldo Semon, and Hermann Staudinger, and many others from society at large. Both even mention William Henry Perkin (Fenichell at some length). Perkin is the 19th-century British chemist who, by in-
venting and marketing the first coal-tarbased dye, can arguably be said to have founded the synthetic organic chemicals industry. The authors include what amount to nutshell biographies of some of these notables, such as Baekeland and Carothers. They also portray the commercial operations of the many companies and other organizations that have been involved with polymers during the past 150 years or so. Both books cover environmental problems entailed by the manufacture, use, and disposal of plastics. Fenichell and Meikle drape on this framework voluminous evidence for the cultural impact of plastics. They do so in terms of practices and products that could hardly fail to attract the attention of even the dimmest observer, at least to some degree. They touch on marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. They speak of many high-visibility products, including plastic boats, Eames and Saarinen furniture, Formica household surfaces, vinyl phonograph records, Naugahyde upholstery, and the works of contemporary artists. They cite many
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deep thinkers from the nontechnical world who have said or done things of culturoplastic import. Both, for example, devote differing levels of attention to the activities of personages such as Roland Barthes, Robert Jay Lifton, Norman Mailer, and Andy Warhol. Meikle's "American Plastic," which appeared late in 1995, recently received the 1996 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology. The prize is awarded to the best book on the history of technology written in the preceding three years. This book is the longer of the two and much the more scholarly; it includes extensive notes and references, whereas "Plastic" contains none. Fenichell's book, on the other hand, is the lighter hearted work. The author appears to have enjoyed almost romping through his material, which may account partly for the translation of lebensraum as "making room"; the description of Thomas Edison as the "founder of electricity"; and the identification of the components of natural gas as "acetylene, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen." These and other transgressions, including the
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odd dangling participle, may irritate some readers, but they don't affect the sense of the book. Cultural impact may well materialize independently of facts and grammar. Κ. Μ. Reese is a one-time chemical engineer and Newscripts editor for Chemical & Engineering N e w s . ^
Pollution Prevention Economics: Finan cial Impacts on Business and Industry. James R. Aldrich. xxii + 169 pages. McGraw-Hill, 11 West 19th St., New York, N.Y. 10011. 1996. $55. Polymer Spectroscopy. Allan H. Fawcett, editor, xv + 393 pages. John Wiley & Sons, 605 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10158. 1996. $95. Polymer Toughening. Charles B. Arends, editor, xi + 415 pages. Marcel Dekker Inc., 270 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. 1996. $160. REAL Computing Made REAL: Preventing Errors in Scientific and Engineering Calculations. Forman S. Acton, xv + 259 pages. Princeton University Press. 41 Wil liam St., Princeton, N.J. 08540. 1996. $29.95.
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Research-Doctorate Programs in the Unit ed States: Continuity and Change. Mar vin L. Goldberger, Brendan A. Maher, Pam ela Ebert Flattau, editors, xiv + 740 pages. National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418. 1996. $59-95.
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The Safe Handling of Chemicals in In dustry. Vol. 3. P. A. Carson, C. J. Mumford, xii + 745 pages. John Wiley & Sons, 605 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10158. 1996. $185.
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Safety by Objectives: What Gets Measured and Rewarded Gets Done. 2nd Ed. Dan Petersen, xviii + 221 pages. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 115 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10003. 1996. $49.95.
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Step-Growth Polymers for High-Performance Materials: New Synthetic Meth ods. ACS Symposium Series 624. James L. Hedrick, Jeff W. Labadie, editors, ix + 469 pages. American Chemical Society, 1155— 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 1996. $125.95. Supercritical Fluid Extraction. Larry T. Tay lor, xiv + 181 pages. John Wiley & Sons, 605 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10158. 1996. $49.95. Surface Analysis with STM and AFM: Ex perimental and Theoretical Aspects of Image Analysis. Sergei N. Magonov, Myung-Hwan Whangbo. xii + 323 pages. VCH Publishers, 220 East 23rd St., New York, N.Y. 10010. 1996. $125.^
