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Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage.
Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance―from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses―is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of material goods and happiness are available to all.
Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance―from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses―is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of material goods and happiness are available to all.
Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
332 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 1997
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About the author
Eva Illouz
50 books643 followersEva Illouz (Hebrew: אווה אילוז) is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since October 2012 she has been President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. She is Bezalel's first woman president. Since 2015, Illouz has been a professor at Paris's School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales).
The research developed by Illouz from her dissertation onward focuses on a number of themes at the junction of the study of emotions, culture and communication:
The ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns
One dominant theme concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.
Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Illouz's first book addresses a dual process: the commodification of romance and the romanticization of commodities. Looking at a wide sample of movies and advertising images in women’s magazines of the 1930s, Illouz finds that advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of romance. Commodities of many kinds – soaps, refrigerators, vacation packages, watches, diamonds, cereals, cosmetics, and many others – were presented as enabling the experience of love and romance. The second process was that of the commodification of romance, the process by which the 19th-century practice of calling on a woman, that is going to her home, was replaced by dating: going out and consuming the increasingly powerful industries of leisure. Romantic encounters moved from the home to the sphere of consumer leisure with the result that the search for romantic love was made into a vector for the consumption of leisure goods produced by expanding industries of leisure.
Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul
In Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul Illouz examines how emotions figure in the realm of economic production: in the American corporation, from the 1920s onward emotions became a conscious object of knowledge and construction and became closely connected to the language and techniques of economic efficiency. Psychologists were hired by American corporations to help increase productivity and better manage the workforce and bridged the emotional and the economic realms, intertwining emotions with the realm of economic action in the form of a radically new way of conceiving of the production process. So whether in the realm of production or that of consumption, emotions have been actively mobilized, solicited and shaped by economic forces, thus making modern people simultaneously emotional and economic actors.
The role of popular clinical psychology in shaping modern identity
Illouz argues that psychology is absolutely central to the constitution of modern identity and to modern emotional life: from the 1920s to the 1960s clinical psychologists became an extraordinarily dominant social group as they entered the army, the corporation, the school, the state, social services, the media, child rearing, sexuality, marriage, church pastoral care. In all of these realms, psychology established itself as the ultimate authority in matters of human distress by offering techniques to transform and overcome that distress. Psychologists of all persuasions have provided the main narrative of self-development for the 20th century. The psychological persuasion has transformed what was classified as a moral problem into a disease and may thus be understood as part and parcel of the broader phenomenon of the medicalization of social life. What is common to theme 1 and theme 2 is that both love and psychological health constitute utopias of happiness for the modern self, that both are mediated through consumption and that both constitute horizons to which the modern self aspires. In that sense, one overarching theme of her work can be called
The research developed by Illouz from her dissertation onward focuses on a number of themes at the junction of the study of emotions, culture and communication:
The ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns
One dominant theme concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.
Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Illouz's first book addresses a dual process: the commodification of romance and the romanticization of commodities. Looking at a wide sample of movies and advertising images in women’s magazines of the 1930s, Illouz finds that advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of romance. Commodities of many kinds – soaps, refrigerators, vacation packages, watches, diamonds, cereals, cosmetics, and many others – were presented as enabling the experience of love and romance. The second process was that of the commodification of romance, the process by which the 19th-century practice of calling on a woman, that is going to her home, was replaced by dating: going out and consuming the increasingly powerful industries of leisure. Romantic encounters moved from the home to the sphere of consumer leisure with the result that the search for romantic love was made into a vector for the consumption of leisure goods produced by expanding industries of leisure.
Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul
In Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul Illouz examines how emotions figure in the realm of economic production: in the American corporation, from the 1920s onward emotions became a conscious object of knowledge and construction and became closely connected to the language and techniques of economic efficiency. Psychologists were hired by American corporations to help increase productivity and better manage the workforce and bridged the emotional and the economic realms, intertwining emotions with the realm of economic action in the form of a radically new way of conceiving of the production process. So whether in the realm of production or that of consumption, emotions have been actively mobilized, solicited and shaped by economic forces, thus making modern people simultaneously emotional and economic actors.
The role of popular clinical psychology in shaping modern identity
Illouz argues that psychology is absolutely central to the constitution of modern identity and to modern emotional life: from the 1920s to the 1960s clinical psychologists became an extraordinarily dominant social group as they entered the army, the corporation, the school, the state, social services, the media, child rearing, sexuality, marriage, church pastoral care. In all of these realms, psychology established itself as the ultimate authority in matters of human distress by offering techniques to transform and overcome that distress. Psychologists of all persuasions have provided the main narrative of self-development for the 20th century. The psychological persuasion has transformed what was classified as a moral problem into a disease and may thus be understood as part and parcel of the broader phenomenon of the medicalization of social life. What is common to theme 1 and theme 2 is that both love and psychological health constitute utopias of happiness for the modern self, that both are mediated through consumption and that both constitute horizons to which the modern self aspires. In that sense, one overarching theme of her work can be called
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February 20, 2018
This is a stupendous entry in the history of emotions, drawing together sociological techniques and Barthesian exegesis of advertising and consumerist literature to construct a genealogy of the discourse and practices surrounding romantic love within twentieth-century America.
Illouz begins by examining the extent to which contemporary American romance is grounded in capitalist consumerism with the increased emphasis on extravagant weddings, perpetuating passion through luxurious gifts or vacations, and how the system of dating is itself a capitalist construction based around mass market consumerism (going to a restaurant or movie) in contrast to the earlier systems of courtship. These practices both encourage and are catalyzed by Hollywood, self-help, and advertising which constructs public perceptions of what love really is.
She then goes on to describe the liminal developments of postmodern romance (i.e. how religious language and affectations suffuse and ground our understanding of the romantic), and how postmodern romance draws upon many of the themes of 19th century Romanticism like solitude, travel, and contemplation, but sexualizes these within the soulmate mentality that has permeated romantic discourse today.
What was perhaps most fascinating about this point was that many of her interviewees were heavily aware of how Hollywood depictions of love and all the related tropes and cliches are not really authentic. Individuals acknowledge these depictions of romance as constructed. But at the same time when asked to describe the most romantic experiences of their personal lives, these same individuals offered anecdotes that lapse into these very same cliches, using the same romantic vocabulary that they earlier had described as cliched.
While Engels or the Frankfurt Critical Theorists would decry this kind of capitalist commodification of love through mass-media discourses as a betrayal of a kind of real, objective love that exists outside the system of capitalism, Illouz takes a very different approach. She argues that the diffusion of consumerism in romance does not obstruct or destroy the meaningfulness of these understandings of sexual love but rather operate as the new vehicles through which we can engage in the currency of love. The cliches and consumerism may be constructions, but that does not make them any less real. This speaks strongly to the merits of Illouz's argument especially as it is cached within postmodern understandings. The true postmodern does not lament the loss of objective love as the modern would, rather the postmodern cherishes the historically contingent development of love as something meaningful for us today, because the historically contingent is real in itself. We live as simulacra, but why should that be an issue?
One other great point Illouz makes is the dialectical tension between contemporary descriptions of love as (1) a kind of rational ('erosic') partnership between two socioeconomically compatible individuals versus (2) a passionate, irrational ('agapic') force which is the purest expression of ourselves regardless of class or education. Both these points have a strong hold on the public imagination, and Illouz believes that these two tendencies converge upon the idea of the therapeutic ethos of the romantic through language. In the past century, communication has become a central, defining feature of successful relationships, and for Illouz this is the common ground in which two rational persons can come together and connect at an intellectual level, but it is also through deep conversation that lovers can pour words into each other as an expression of their deepest, most authentic selves. Conversation is simultaneously erosic and agapic as the binding glue of romance.
Illouz makes a number of other fascinating arguments, and this book is an essential read for those interested in the history of love, the cross-fertilization of mass media and cultural practices, or those interested in the ontologizing of what genealogy has rendered historically contingent, of retaining and celebrating meaning within the structures of late capitalism.
Illouz begins by examining the extent to which contemporary American romance is grounded in capitalist consumerism with the increased emphasis on extravagant weddings, perpetuating passion through luxurious gifts or vacations, and how the system of dating is itself a capitalist construction based around mass market consumerism (going to a restaurant or movie) in contrast to the earlier systems of courtship. These practices both encourage and are catalyzed by Hollywood, self-help, and advertising which constructs public perceptions of what love really is.
She then goes on to describe the liminal developments of postmodern romance (i.e. how religious language and affectations suffuse and ground our understanding of the romantic), and how postmodern romance draws upon many of the themes of 19th century Romanticism like solitude, travel, and contemplation, but sexualizes these within the soulmate mentality that has permeated romantic discourse today.
What was perhaps most fascinating about this point was that many of her interviewees were heavily aware of how Hollywood depictions of love and all the related tropes and cliches are not really authentic. Individuals acknowledge these depictions of romance as constructed. But at the same time when asked to describe the most romantic experiences of their personal lives, these same individuals offered anecdotes that lapse into these very same cliches, using the same romantic vocabulary that they earlier had described as cliched.
While Engels or the Frankfurt Critical Theorists would decry this kind of capitalist commodification of love through mass-media discourses as a betrayal of a kind of real, objective love that exists outside the system of capitalism, Illouz takes a very different approach. She argues that the diffusion of consumerism in romance does not obstruct or destroy the meaningfulness of these understandings of sexual love but rather operate as the new vehicles through which we can engage in the currency of love. The cliches and consumerism may be constructions, but that does not make them any less real. This speaks strongly to the merits of Illouz's argument especially as it is cached within postmodern understandings. The true postmodern does not lament the loss of objective love as the modern would, rather the postmodern cherishes the historically contingent development of love as something meaningful for us today, because the historically contingent is real in itself. We live as simulacra, but why should that be an issue?
One other great point Illouz makes is the dialectical tension between contemporary descriptions of love as (1) a kind of rational ('erosic') partnership between two socioeconomically compatible individuals versus (2) a passionate, irrational ('agapic') force which is the purest expression of ourselves regardless of class or education. Both these points have a strong hold on the public imagination, and Illouz believes that these two tendencies converge upon the idea of the therapeutic ethos of the romantic through language. In the past century, communication has become a central, defining feature of successful relationships, and for Illouz this is the common ground in which two rational persons can come together and connect at an intellectual level, but it is also through deep conversation that lovers can pour words into each other as an expression of their deepest, most authentic selves. Conversation is simultaneously erosic and agapic as the binding glue of romance.
Illouz makes a number of other fascinating arguments, and this book is an essential read for those interested in the history of love, the cross-fertilization of mass media and cultural practices, or those interested in the ontologizing of what genealogy has rendered historically contingent, of retaining and celebrating meaning within the structures of late capitalism.
December 13, 2025
Trata temas interesantes bebiendo de sociólogos como Bourdieu y Weber, pero que importa el feminismo si este viene de una sionista como Illouz. Palestina Libre.
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July 1, 2025una de las biblias de mi tesis
December 27, 2020
A surprisingly easy read. The reference to the interviews over and over again was a little much for me, especially the repetitions, yet a neat text overall. I was hoping to get a little more insight regarding the relation of capitalism and relationships, the focus was pretty strict on romance and consumerism.
September 1, 2021
A partir de ahora voy a ser incapaz de no ver las garras del capitalismo y la publicidad sobre algo que yo creía tan puro como el amor. Aunque algo repetitivo, es interesantísimo y pone de manifiesto contradicciones gordas en cuanto a lo alejados que creemos estar del amor consumista y lo jodidamente inmersos que estamos en él, entre otras perlitas.
March 14, 2023
A pesar de ser un libro académico, se lee como si fuese divulgativo. En parte por la temática (muy cotidiana y sobre la que todo el mundo hemos reflexionado, en mayor o menor medida) y en parte por la claridad de la autora.
Me ha encantado reencontrarme con viejos amigos (Bourdieu, Habermas, Turner, Weber...) con los que hacía mucho que no dialogaba.
Me ha encantado reencontrarme con viejos amigos (Bourdieu, Habermas, Turner, Weber...) con los que hacía mucho que no dialogaba.
May 23, 2021
Ein Buch das für Amis und Amerikanist*innen spannender sein dürfte als für europäische Menschen. Ein Grund dafür: Romantik wird hier ausschließlich als Liebesromantik verstanden, der Volksmund diktiert es. Der – ich nenne ihn mal – conventional turn ist überhaupt Illouz' Methode: Man beschäftigt sich mehr mit Konventionen, common sense, Massenkultur (doch komischerweise nicht mit dem Fernsehen). Dem Individualismus wird eine lange Nase gedreht. Aussagen können getroffen werden zum Allzugewöhnlichen, Klischees, und im besten Fall noch zu Klischees über Klischees.
Entsprechend dachte ich (noch viel mehr, als ich 2016 schon mal anfing, es zu lesen) manchmal darüber nach, was diese Befunde eigentlich mit mir zu tun haben. Was, wenn man sich gegen herkömmliche Beziehungsmodelle versperrt? Ganz so einfach ist es dann doch nicht, und ich versteh auch, dass Soziologie so funktionieren muss. Man kann hier garantiert ganz wichtige Dinge herausarbeiten.
Alles in allem keine Lektüre, zu der man morgens/mittags/abends freudestrahlend zurückkehrt. Habe mich da in den letzten Monaten eher schleppend durchgebissen. Zum Glück gibt es manchmal Auflockerungen; ein Unterkapitel heißt nur deshalb "Eine alles verzehrende Liebe", weil die Verliebten ihre Rendezvous oft in Restaurants abhalten. In der Übersetzung kommt es zu lustigen Ausdrucksweisen: Bei Illouz heißen Wissenschaftlerkolleg*innen "Gelehrte", Interviewte "Gewährspersonen" und jeder noch so kleine gesellschaftliche Wandel ist ein "dramatischer" Anstieg von irgendetwas.
Die Interview-Transkripte machen schon Spaß. Kritikpunkt: Es wurden keine Lehrer*innen interviewt. Universitätsleute zählen nicht! Und ich weiß immer noch nicht, was Liminalität ist, und werde es, sobald ich es erneut nachschlage, innerhalb kurzer Zeit vergessen.
Entsprechend dachte ich (noch viel mehr, als ich 2016 schon mal anfing, es zu lesen) manchmal darüber nach, was diese Befunde eigentlich mit mir zu tun haben. Was, wenn man sich gegen herkömmliche Beziehungsmodelle versperrt? Ganz so einfach ist es dann doch nicht, und ich versteh auch, dass Soziologie so funktionieren muss. Man kann hier garantiert ganz wichtige Dinge herausarbeiten.
Alles in allem keine Lektüre, zu der man morgens/mittags/abends freudestrahlend zurückkehrt. Habe mich da in den letzten Monaten eher schleppend durchgebissen. Zum Glück gibt es manchmal Auflockerungen; ein Unterkapitel heißt nur deshalb "Eine alles verzehrende Liebe", weil die Verliebten ihre Rendezvous oft in Restaurants abhalten. In der Übersetzung kommt es zu lustigen Ausdrucksweisen: Bei Illouz heißen Wissenschaftlerkolleg*innen "Gelehrte", Interviewte "Gewährspersonen" und jeder noch so kleine gesellschaftliche Wandel ist ein "dramatischer" Anstieg von irgendetwas.
Die Interview-Transkripte machen schon Spaß. Kritikpunkt: Es wurden keine Lehrer*innen interviewt. Universitätsleute zählen nicht! Und ich weiß immer noch nicht, was Liminalität ist, und werde es, sobald ich es erneut nachschlage, innerhalb kurzer Zeit vergessen.
October 27, 2014
Excelente!! Es deprimente la verdad pero reveladora, y liberadora!!!
Este libro es ejercicio de pensamiento!! Genialidad total!!! Me encantó!!!
Este libro es ejercicio de pensamiento!! Genialidad total!!! Me encantó!!!
July 18, 2022
Insgesamt ein sehr spannendes Werk über die Verflechtungen von romantischer Liebe/Partner:innenwahl , Klassismus und Konsumkapitalismus.
Im Vergleich zu „Warum Liebe weh tut“ von Illouz fokussiert sich das Buch stärker auf ein Kernthema. Das macht es leichter lesbar, sorgt aber auch dafür, dass sich die Autorin in einigen Punkten oft (unnötigerweise) wiederholt.
Sprachlich halte ich auch „Der Konsum der Romantik“ stellenweise für zu akademisiert, verglichen mit anderen Werken hält es sich aber durchaus noch im Rahmen.
Außerdem hätte ich mir teilweise etwas mehr Intersektionalität gewünscht, insbesondere im Bezug auf die Reproduktion kapitalistischer Machtstrukturen durch das Zusammenspiel von Patriarchat und Klassismus.
Im Großen und Ganzen zu empfehlen, wenn man sich durch gut 300 Seiten wissenschaftliche Studie(n) kämpfen möchte. Vorwissen über Klassismus und (Konsum-)kapitalismus ist von Vorteil. Das Lieblingswort der Autorin ist anscheinend „Postmoderne“, davon sollte man also schonmal gehört haben ;)
Ich fand es spannend und habe es gerne gelesen, es hat mich allerdings nicht so gefesselt wie „Warum Liebe weh tut“. Trotzdem 4 Sterne, weil es 3 nicht verdient hat und es 3,5 nicht gibt.
Im Vergleich zu „Warum Liebe weh tut“ von Illouz fokussiert sich das Buch stärker auf ein Kernthema. Das macht es leichter lesbar, sorgt aber auch dafür, dass sich die Autorin in einigen Punkten oft (unnötigerweise) wiederholt.
Sprachlich halte ich auch „Der Konsum der Romantik“ stellenweise für zu akademisiert, verglichen mit anderen Werken hält es sich aber durchaus noch im Rahmen.
Außerdem hätte ich mir teilweise etwas mehr Intersektionalität gewünscht, insbesondere im Bezug auf die Reproduktion kapitalistischer Machtstrukturen durch das Zusammenspiel von Patriarchat und Klassismus.
Im Großen und Ganzen zu empfehlen, wenn man sich durch gut 300 Seiten wissenschaftliche Studie(n) kämpfen möchte. Vorwissen über Klassismus und (Konsum-)kapitalismus ist von Vorteil. Das Lieblingswort der Autorin ist anscheinend „Postmoderne“, davon sollte man also schonmal gehört haben ;)
Ich fand es spannend und habe es gerne gelesen, es hat mich allerdings nicht so gefesselt wie „Warum Liebe weh tut“. Trotzdem 4 Sterne, weil es 3 nicht verdient hat und es 3,5 nicht gibt.
January 20, 2025
ich erlaube mir dieses buch nach abgabe der hausarbeit stellvertretend für alle literatur zu loggen die ich dafür lesen musste. war interessant etc pp
January 3, 2025
Algo extenso pero una joya. Eva sabe lo que dice y sabe de lo que habla. Dura crítica al capitalismo, dura crítica al amor que vivimos hoy en día, a los sistemas de idealización del presente y del pasado...
Increíble como analiza desde dentro la gramática cultural del amor: todas esas expresiones que se han capitalizado en pro de un amor comercial. Hollywood, las redes sociales, san Valentín o novelas como Orgullo y Prejuicio.
Es una obra larga, si bien todo se enfoca en lo mismo, es imposible comentarlo todo. Bastante disfrutable si te interesa el tema y manejas un mínimo de temas económicos.
Increíble como analiza desde dentro la gramática cultural del amor: todas esas expresiones que se han capitalizado en pro de un amor comercial. Hollywood, las redes sociales, san Valentín o novelas como Orgullo y Prejuicio.
Es una obra larga, si bien todo se enfoca en lo mismo, es imposible comentarlo todo. Bastante disfrutable si te interesa el tema y manejas un mínimo de temas económicos.
March 5, 2020
I read this book two times from the library. Quite depressed after finished reading because it made me feel doubt about our social behaviors.
We think there’s nothing to doubt why we behave like that in ordinary lives, but there’s always a possibility that they are driven or intended by the media and some government plan.
We think there’s nothing to doubt why we behave like that in ordinary lives, but there’s always a possibility that they are driven or intended by the media and some government plan.
April 27, 2019
Extraordinary in depth overview of the idea of "Romantic" in the postmodern age. Highly recommended!
August 24, 2020
Excellent text!
December 12, 2020
A very good and insightful study. As such studies go, its a dry read, but that goes with the territory.
April 15, 2024
mucho contenido de entrevistas pero un análisis muy exhaustivo
July 23, 2025
Pésima elección de traductora para un libro que puede dar para mucho
December 8, 2022
Este me ha costado más terminarlo, se repite mucho. El tema nuclear es que el capitalismo se ha trasladado a las relaciones íntimas, convirtiendo estas en intercambio de bienes, "tú me das y yo te doy", por lo que, en el momento en que el bien que recibo es insuficiente o dar empieza a ser extenuante porque no me compensa, busco otro objeto de consumo, y me olvido de ti.
October 16, 2008
This book challenges the idea that romantic love is original and asks whether it can be separated from the forces of consumer capitalism. Using ads and personal reactions, she is able to illustrate that romantic love in the US for the most part is the product of media machines (television, film, ads,) as well as our own parents who have also been inculturated by these self-same forces.
February 15, 2016
For my Philosophy/Religious Class called Love
April 3, 2017
Completely fascinating sociological account of how romance in modern industrial/postindustrial societies is pervaded by and built on consumption. Illouz provides nuance to previous account that see this process as completely negative, showing how capitalist consumption can help people to sustain romance (especially the better off and more "culturally competent" social classes) and can be a means to greater gender equality.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews