'50s & '60s Popular Culture [MY STAFF]

1. Music

   Source A

   We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.

   A line from Bruce Springstein’s No Surrender – a nostalgic song about his youth in the 1960s.
   Springstein shares another memory of life in 1950s New Jersey in: My Hometown.

    

   It is hard to overstate the HUGE effect that pop music had on the culture and attitudes of the times, particularly on young people. 

   • Rock 'n' Roll: The emergence of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s, with artists like Elvis Presley (his first hit was Heartbreak Hotel, 1956), Chuck Berry (Maybellene, 1955), and Little Richard (Tutti Frutti, 1955), revolutionized music and youth culture.  Rock 'n' roll horrified staid, middle-class America, and was condemned by preachers such as Rev Jimmy Snow as 'the devil's music'.

   • California Sound: The Beach Boys (Surfin USA, 1963) captured the positivity and fun aspects of being young. 

   • Folk and Protest: In the 1960s, folk music and protest songs by artists like Bob Dylan (Blowin' in the Wind, 1963) and Simon & Garfunkel (America, 1968) became popular, reflecting the era's social and political activism. 

   • British Invasion: The arrival of British bands, notably The Beatles (Love Me Do, 1962) and The Rolling Stones (Satisfaction, 1965), had a huge impact on American music and culture in the mid-1960s. 

   • Music Festivals: The idea of music festivals as celebrations of love and peace began in 1967 with the Monterey International Pop Festival, which featured Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Who.  The most famous was Woodstock in 1969. 

2. Youth Culture

   The concept of ‘teenagers’ as a distinct demographic emerged, with their own fashion, music, and language. 

   • Rebellion: Teen alienation – disenchantment and a rejection of middle class materialism & the rat race – found its way into popular culture, exemplified by movies like Rebel Without a Cause (1955), books like Catcher in the Rye, and songs like My Generation (1965). 

   • Teenspeak: good things were ‘far-out’ (1954), ‘a gas’ (1955), ‘with it’ (1959), ‘swinging’ (1957), but if it was ‘dullsville’ or ‘squaresville’ (1956) you would ‘split’ (1956) saying ‘see you later, alligator’ (1954) … you weren’t a ‘cube’ (1959). 

   • Students for a Democratic Society: formed 1962 with the Port Huron Statement – a denunciation of racism, consumerism and the Cold War.  Through the 1960s the SDS organised student sit-ins and demonstrations protesting about Civil Rights, and Vietnam.  In 1969, a faction called the Weather Underground organised riots in Chicago (called the ‘Days of Rage’) and bombed banks and government buildings

   • Hippies & Drugs: In the late 1960s, the hippy counterculture emerged, centred on San Francisco and based around peace, free love and ‘psychedelic’ experiences.  In 1967 the American psychologist Timothy Leary – speaking at a human ‘be-in’ San Francisco – advised young people to “tune in, turn on, and drop out”.  Not all hippies took drugs, but many would smoke pot or take LSD. 

3. Sports and Leisure

   • Major Sports: Baseball, football, and basketball continued to be hugely popular. 

   • Leisure Activities: The rise of middle class led to increased participation in activities such as bowling, golf and jogging.  ‘The family’ became an important focus, with family road trips, camping trips, holidays and BBQs. 

4. Television

   Television became the dominant form of media entertainment, with most households owning a ‘box’ by the end of the 1950s, with colour TV becoming affordable from the mid-1960s.  The television replaced the fireplace as the focal point, not only of the living room, but of family socialisation, and played a major role in national attitude-forming. 

   • Popular Shows: TV fed families an attractive diet of variety shows and panel games, breakfast-time television (1952) and even pay television (1956).  'Sitcoms' such as I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver not only entertained – they influenced how people thought and how they lived.  Children got 'square eyes' watching wholesome shows such as Captain Kangaroo and Mr Rogers' Neighbouhood.

5. Art and Literature

   • Abstract Expressionism: Artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. 

   • Pop Art: Artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. 

   • Beat Generation: Writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S.  Burroughs challenged convention and inspired the countercultural movements of the 1960s. 

   • Marshall McLuhan: coined the phrase introduced 'the medium is the message',  He argued that civilisation had been revolutionised by the move from spoken to written thought, then from hand-writing to print … and foresaw that it would be revolutionised again by a move to ‘electronic interdependence’ and ‘the global village’. 

6. Fashion

   • The 1950s: were marked by conservative fashion, with men in suits and women in feminine/domestic dresses. 

   • The 1960s: '60s fashions saw the ‘Mod’ movement, featuring bold colours, mini-skirts, and more casual styles.  The hippie movement introduced tie-dye, bell bottoms, and unisex clothing. 

7. Films!

   Drive-in movies were popular in the 1950s, with multiplexes developing in the 1960s.  Cinema moved with the technology, as directors experimented with Cinerama curved-screen (1950), CinemaScope wide-screen (1953) and 3D (1955) filming, but a more significant long-term development was the appearance of videotape (1953). 

   • 1950s Themes: Societal anxieties, such as the Cold War, teenage rebellion, and shifting social norms, dominated 1950s films, from films about alien invasions to 'Film Noir' detective thrillers. 

   • 'New Hollywood': The late 1960s saw the start of the ‘New Hollywood’ films aimed at younger audiences, with shocking scenes and themes, anti-heroes, ‘gritty’ feel and stylistic interludes – films such as Bonnie & Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Easy Rider (1969). 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic account from BBC Bitesize

The film Pleasantville - an allegory of the transition in America from the certainties of the 1950s to the turbulence of the 1960s, and the tensions it aroused - includes many stereotyped scenes of 1950s life:

- breakfast

- underwear

- book scene

- the Mural

YouTube

Daily Life in the 1950s and in the 1960s

Source C

'Them' (1954), a film about an invasion of giant ants, was one of many movies which reflected American fears about the Cold War. 

Source D

The dark 'Film Noir' genre played to society's awareness of a rotten underbelly they were choosing to turn a blind eye to.  'Kiss Me,Deadly' (1956) doubled down on this, because “the great whatsit” causing all the trouble turns out to be, in fact, an atomic bomb.