The American dream is an old idea that started in 1492 with the arrival of the first Europeans on American lands, and that got bigger with the “Bill of Rights” and the creation of a free country. But in the middle of the XXth century, the American Dream took another form. It is the idea that any American citizen can succeed through hard work and can possibly live the perfect happy life with an egalitarian society and material prosperity thanks to technological progress. 

The ideal of the American Dream appeared after the Great Depression that occurred during the 30’s, after the Wall Street crash. American people where looking for a better life and did not want to come to what some older generations had to live in the past like famine for example. They believed in the fact that there was a possibility for this to happen. Every parent's desire is for their children to have a happy life with everything they need. For millions of Americans, this dream became a reality in the 1950’s. Indeed, back in those days we see in the United States a movement of the population going from cities to suburbia areas. Poverty was gone with the Great Depression and the years of wartime sacrifices were over. The American population started getting richer and developed the desire to live cities and to own an individual house. No one promoted suburban growth more than William Levitt did. We assisted to the massive constructions of individual houses in suburbans. The largest planned-living community in the United States was implanted in Long Island, New York in 1947. Levitt identified 27 different steps to build a house, so every houses would look the same. Each house had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and no basement. The kitchen was situated near the back of the house so mothers could keep an eye on their children in the backyard. At first, those houses were destinated to the veterans, but fast, they were opened to others as well. Moreover, due to the mass production, these houses were really affordable for the middle class, and became the typical American house everyone wanted to have. 

                                                                                       The propaganda of suburban homes in the 1950's.

 At the same time, popularization of some revolutionary inventions as refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, made life at home way easier for women and every home started to get those household appliances. The perfect suburban life was having a car, a dog, and 2 or 3 kids with the housewife that stays home while her husband is at work. This is actually represented on the TV show “Leave it to Beaver” that was broadcast on ABC from 957 to 1963. This Tv show portrayed the iconic postwar American family: June the perfect housewife, Ward the dad, big brother Wally, and of course Theodore ("The Beaver"), the good-hearted kid whose adventures propelled the show. A lot of families can identify themselves to this fictive American family.                                            The family of "Leave it to Beaver".

    Indeed, with the suburbian movement, America entered in a consumption society and the expression “Keeping up with The Joneses” was used to denounce this society with the people’s need to always have more than they already have and to accumulate material goods. More than that, as suburbia grew, fast food restaurants, as well as supermarkets began to pop up all over the Unites States so they could be more accessible to the suburban population. It emphasized the phenomenon of consumption, because the temptation was present everywhere.

              By adopting this American model, French people saw the prospect of a higher level of life wit a new way of consumption because America was considered as the prototype of a consumption society due to the development of many multinational companies and rising brands like Coca-Cola for example. French people started consuming more, in the same way as Americans did, and were able to consume american products with the development of international trade of goods between countries. But the Coca-Cola Company, symbolism of the American imperialism created a controversial debate when it tried to conquer France in 1953 with the new slogan “Drink fresh” and a lot of adds released in the country . Coca-Cola was really popular in the United States since it was the first soft drink to be widely marketed, however, when the soda arrived in France, it was not that popular, because it represented America and its capîtalist society. The Coca-Cola move in France started a wave of resistance. Some doctors starting beeing against, saying that it is dangerous for your health, also, wine-grower wanted to prohibit Coca-Cola because it represented a rivality for them. The French public did not want France to be overtaken by American firms,so they fought to prevent the mass production of Coca-Cola in the country. They invented the term coca-colonisation that shows the huge impact of Coca-Cola in France.

   
           A Coca-Cola add of 1950.                                                                                 A Coca-Cola delivery driver, in Paris, France 

Even if French people saw America as a great country that maintained a strong economic, and was really advanced with a new way of life, and a new way of consuming, they did not want to take everything from the American culture and that’s why in 1958.