`Now you see 'em,now you don't': Jewish visibility and the problem of citizenship in the British Telecom `Beattie' campaign

Abstract

The use of a Jewish family as icons of the British middle class in British Telecom's famous `Beattie' campaign of the 1980s and early 1990s raises questions about the place of Jews in British cultural life. By connecting this episode in the history of Anglo-Jewry to more long-standing social dynamics and to recent arguments about advertising and citizenship, it becomes apparent that, rather than expressing a hard won enfranchisement through the democratizing field of consumption, these ads extend earlier forms of the perpetual qualification of Jewish citizenship in Britain.