50s-The early 1960s

[FedoraFan112390]

Hi!

I know this is for the '30s and 40s but I have a question: how were the '50s-1964 like the '30s and 40s and how were they different? What was the atmosphere, and culture like from 1946-1963, and how did it change over time, and what were popular trends, clothes, fashion, movies and music and what was the mindset in those years and how was it alike and how did it differ from the 30s and 40s? What was like family life like then and what were men's and women's attitudes and politics? Are there any sites I can find this information along with photos, ads (for any item) and clothes catalogs from t hose years? And how and why did the American culture change so rapidly between 1960 and 1969?

 

[Nathan Dodge]

When is this report due?

 

[Paisley]

Welcome! I'm sure you can find a lot of info here, (and I mean A LOT) but you'll have to do some Google searches of the site. Happy hunting!

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I don't want my previous post to be construed as "flip", so here's a link that might be helpful, especially in terms of fashion, culture, and architecture:

http://www.lottaliving.com/index.shtml

 

[Paisley]

When is this report due?

Great minds think alike. lol

 

[dhermann1]

You could start by seeing the movie "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit", with Gregory Peck. It shows a WW II army veteran trying to adjust to a dull routine life in 1950's suburbia. Then see "Rebel Without a Cause". Keep in mind that flick was originally written in 1945, so those trends of youth rebellion actually started during the war.
The main thing that was happening was the contrast between the trials and tribulations of the 30's and 40's, the Depression and the War, as opposed to the unprecedented period of growth and prosperity that followed it.
During the previous period people seem to have been more open to each other. There was more of a sense of shared experience. People rode trains and trolleys and got face to face with each other.
After the war there was a huge flight to the suburbs. People started spending more and more time in cars. There was more isolation into homogeneous groups. You were less likely to have to deal with anybody that was different from you.
Then there was TV. People always say that radio was a shared experience, and that it required active participation from the audience. Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian social theorist, described movies and radio as "hot" mediums, and TV as a "cool" medium. Watching TV has a sedating effect on the brain.
In the 50's women, who had worked in all industries doing the jobs of men, were relegated back to the kitchen, and a very rigid stereotype of their role became dominant. Check out all those 50's sitcoms, all moms wore make up and high heels to vacuum the house. At least that was the image we all strove for.
We had a big father image, Dwight Eisenhower, as president. All the liberals (e.g. good old Mort Sahl) knew the old guy was an idiot, but a benign one. In the years since, Ike's brainpower has come to be more and more appreciated.
By 1960 a lot of people, especially young people, felt like American culture had reached a totally stultifying point. The whole world had settled into deep middle aged complacency.
John Kennedy tapped into this when he said he wanted to get the country "moving again". What his presidency might have become will be one of those forever unanswered questions.
Along with this pleasant domestic complacency there was an external Cold War. We were nose to nose with the Russians, with nuclear annihlation threatening all the while. Anti Communist hysteria grabbed the country by the throat in the post war era, and this reinforced the trend toward conformity.
The sixties were really about the lid blowing off this simmering stew pot. The threat of nuclear war seemed to have subsided after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Young people started questioning whether all there was to life was to grow up, get married, start a family and move to the suburbs, just like their parents. My generation (I was born in 1946) had grown up without the vicissitudes of our parents, and didn't feel the insecurity that underlay the older generation's materialism.
Another factor was the Civil Rights movement. After the War, African Americans who had served their country, but couldn't sit at a lunch counter in their own home town, decided this had to end. The battle over Civil Rights was a real domestic war. If you don't remember Eisenhower sending Federal troops to Little Rock to enforce desegregation in 1957, it's hard to realize what a great convulsion this brought.
Between this new questioning attitude of youth, and the Vietnam War, which may or may not have been winnable, but was entered into without the clear support of the American public, the unrest of the 60's was inevitable.
The Civil Rights movement segued directly into the anti-war movement, and a decade of social strife set in.
This is just an off the top of my head sketch, but I think it covers most of the salient issues.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

I dont have a report or anything, I'm just very, very interested in the culture of the twentieth century, especially from 1910-1970 and how it changed very rapidly.

 

[dhermann1]

Another book, which I haven't read yet, but is on my "list", is "On the Road", by Jack Kerouac. It was a seminal work in the 60's, but it's all about events that happened in 1945. The thing is, all the things which broke out into the open after 1963 were bubbling beneath the surface for a long time before that. Another book: Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test", chronicles the birth og the Hippy era around 1963 to 65.