The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[LizzieMaine]

No, not the actual 1950s, not Jonas Salk and Faye Emerson and "I will go to Korea" and Dave Garroway and Elfrida Von Nardroff and King Size Coke and Jackie Gleason and Estes Kefauver and chlorophyll chewing gum and Tom Rath and Adlai Stevenson and "let's hopscotch the world for headlines" and Orval Faubus and Billy Graham and "Keep The Dodgers In Brooklyn." Not the fifties most Americans experienced and remembered. I'm talking about "The Fifties" -- you know, ducktail haircuts and leather jackets and poodle skirts and grease is the word is the word is the word. What most people today think of when somebody says "The Fifties."

Ever wonder just when *that* image of "The Fifties" became *the* image of "The Fifties?" Here's an interesting bit of scholarly analysis that suggests the entire modern cult of "The Fifties" owes itself to a group of Columbia University a capella singers who one day in 1969 decided to do their act a little differently. Interesting food for thought on just how cleverly a bit of marketing can change the entire mass perception of an era.

 

[Nobert]

Without having clicked on the link, is this Sha-na-na?

After clicking: well, they were about the best act at Woodstock.

 

[Tomasso]

Interesting food for thought on just how cleverly a bit of marketing can change the entire mass perception of an era.

Never, ever, underestimate the power weilded by TBFM.

 

[sheeplady]

That's a fascinating article. Before I read it (and admittedly, I haven't fully studied it as I've got dinner in the oven warming and a baby about to wake up) I was thinking somewhere along these lines:

I believe the Boomers are a generation of dreamers and idealists. I am not sure what made them so, but they are. (Please don't take anything I say in this about Boomers to mean every Boomer or that the generation is any different than other generations as far as being shaped by external forces.) I think they were the first generation that was raised with lofty goals. Goals about work and family. Goals like being "college bound" and "middle class." They obviously got this from their parents.

I think this is one of the reasons why they took the youth movement and ran with it. The youth movement was actually started by the Lucky Few (the previous generation that was a bit older than the Boomers but not old enough to fight in the war) but the Boomers ran with it. I think they are a generation of dreamers (not necessarily achievers, but dreamers). But by the end of the 60s and the early 70s it was becoming clear that their dreams wouldn't pan out. The goals of the hippie movement were falling very short of their goals. The 1970s wasn't the best time for most of the United States. We started to see the decay of good manufacturing jobs, a rising distinct distrust of government (thanks to things like Watergate), and the start of the decline of the United States as a world power.

I think when you combine this sense that the "dream wasn't going to happen" for many of the boomer generation with a quickly darkening environment (with many of these changes affecting most strongly the young- such as the lack of good entry-level jobs and the idealistic- seeing how corrupt the government was) resulted in people searching frantically for a new dream. The issue is that I think the boomer generation was never very good for coming up with its own dreams- the youth movement and various aspects of it (the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, etc.) having all been started and led (and even the major leaders for the boomers) being of previous generations.

So what happens when you have a generation that is in the crunch- finding their dreams haven't panned out and they don't have a new one? They invent one. And I think in many ways that the dream of the idyllic 1950s was something that was soothing to a generation that had such a horrid let down as the failure of the youth movement. I think this vision of the 1950s served many groups well- for those who would go on to lead the third wave of feminism and other social movements it was something to fight against. For those who wanted a retreat from the chaos of the late 60s and early 70s it was like a security blanket. But most importantly, it was like many things for the boomers- a dream- without much basis in reality.

I think it became such a popular view because there are so many boomers, so many dreamers who dreamed the 1950s as something it wasn't. The boomers are so massive of a generation that they simply shouted everyone else who argued with this interpretation down. If you ask most boomers what they remember from the 1950s, they'll say it was "boring" or "stifling" but they eat up media that presents this vision of the 1950s like hotcakes. Only the oldest boomers remember the 1950s clearly, the ones that were young simply have this vision that has become popular in our culture.

I am not a historian nor do I pretend to be one. But I have read a lot on the characteristics of the various generations and I could see this being plausible.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother graduated from high school in 1957. Her favorite musical artist as a teenager was Liberace, and every single boy in her graduating class had a crew cut. She always makes a face when somebody mentions Elvis -- "We thought he was disgusting." "The Fifties" come across to her as some kind of weird cartoon, not relevant to anything she ever experienced -- or that anyone she knew ever experienced.

The oldest Boomers were only fourteen years old when the actual 1950's ended. They were just the right age to have a memory of the decade, the way a kid remembers such things, but with the exception of a few prodigies, it's doubtful many of them had any real awareness of what the decade was like for adults. As a result, I think it's safe to say that "The Fifties" are the first decade for which the popular perception is framed almost entirely thru the eyes of children. Maybe that's the root of the juvenilization popular culture has seen ever since.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Interesting read.

I am often bothered by people who think that the entirety of the fifties was ducktails and poodle skirts, or "Leave it to Beaver" they're great, kitschy ideals, but the truth is somewhere under the polished stereotypes. My grandparents raised a family in the suburbs in the fifties and they were your stereotypical family of the time and place, Grandpa worked, Grandma stayed at home and raised a family and to most, they probably looked like Ward and June, but when you listen to the stories, the reality of things, it's not much different than today. There were plenty of problems and life was no picnic.

 

[Edward]

It's interesting how a decade can shift in retrospect. At one time I eulogised the latter Seventies as a period when truly great music was everywhere. Yeah- the Clash, the Damned, The SexPistols, The Ramones, Blondie, an interesting period of Dylan, Slade... the first revival of rockabilly and rock and roll... Then the Beeb started rebroadcasting old episodes of Top of the Pops from that decade. A heavy reminder of just how much diabolical rubbish has been forgotten, and how far off the mainstream much of the truly great stuff was. All decades are the same. Nostalgia has a way of making us forget that the 99% rule applied to the past too!

 

[Tomasso]

The 1970s............. and the start of the decline of the United States as a world power.

This decline you speak of must be of a glacial nature.

 

[sheeplady]

The oldest Boomers were only fourteen years old when the actual 1950's ended. They were just the right age to have a memory of the decade, the way a kid remembers such things, but with the exception of a few prodigies, it's doubtful many of them had any real awareness of what the decade was like for adults. As a result, I think it's safe to say that "The Fifties" are the first decade for which the popular perception is framed almost entirely thru the eyes of children. Maybe that's the root of the juvenilization popular culture has seen ever since.

My mother and father are among the oldest boomers- they are actually on the edge of being non-boomers. Your post brought back a memory which I think is an example of this.

I can remember when we had a sock hop in middle school. My mom got all excited dressing me in stereotypical 1950's stuff. Poodle skirt? Check. Bobby socks? Check. Saddle shoes? Check. Scarf in the pony tail? Check.

I asked my mother if she ever went to a sock hop. No. I asked her if she ever had a poodle skirt. No. Did she ever have a pony tail? No. Did she know anyone who dressed like this when she was young- like her older neighbor? No. Did she have saddle shoes? Yes.

Well, that was something.

What did she actually remember about the 1950's? Well, she remembers hiding under her desk. And being scared as **** the Russians were going to blow up the nearby base with The Bomb and they'd all be crispy bacon sitting at the kitchen table.

"But let's get back to Bobby Socks, and your pony tail should be right here on your head, and.... "


I think that perfectly sums up the older boomer's experience. It isn't that they actually mis-remember the decade- because if you peel back the memories they have they are there. I just think that they are repressed. It is similar to a young depression child's remembrance of the Great Depression- "we were poor, but everybody was poor so nobody noticed" is a similar statement. There are painful memories under there, but they are deeper down. The only difference is that the boomers had such an active imagination and such influence on popular media that a recreated imagining became the fifties.

I think that's something else to consider- you had massive media both in terms of the number of forms (television, radio, print) that exploded that carried on this version of the fifties-aimed mostly at the boomer market.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We had a sock hop every Friday night after football games. This was the '80's, though so we didn't have poodle skirts or ducktails.

As for the actual '50's, I've seen pictures, high school yearbooks and such from my parents who were high school in the 50's, and there was definitely the stereotypical looks. Of course, not everyone was dressed that way, but it was definitely present. I don't know what they were listening to, but *someone* was listening to Elvis.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I remember the '50s quite well and find much of this thread quite amusing. Makes me wonder just how much history is really evaluated accurately by the following generations including the sources some seem to willingly and selectively put their faith in. Then it's justified that us boomers are way off in our recollects for various reasons. I'll leave it at that..but most of this sure takes the cake...from my view.
HD

 

[MikeKardec]

It feels to me like a lot of this is how different cultures, within the American mainstream, moved through different time periods. People tend to get stuck in the mentality of times when they feel powerful or "right." A nice example, since we are on this particular subject, might be Paul LeMat's character in American Graffiti, older, yet behind the times in attitude and dress.

I myself worked for a guy who had once been a big cheese in the Detroit Car Ad world. He'd directed probably 3000 commercials in the 1970s (think CORDOBA) but 25 years later he still sought out pimp-mobile Lincolns and wore leisure suits. I've always wondered if he ever made a come-back and then was mentally able to update his image to something that postdated Serpico.

If we are talking about individuals we sort of have to think about the intersection of their culture, the time period, and how the two can converge or diverge.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

No, not the actual 1950s, not Jonas Salk and Faye Emerson and "I will go to Korea" and Dave Garroway and Elfrida Von Nardroff and King Size Coke and Jackie Gleason and Estes Kefauver and chlorophyll chewing gum and Tom Rath and Adlai Stevenson and "let's hopscotch the world for headlines" and Orval Faubus and Billy Graham and "Keep The Dodgers In Brooklyn." Not the fifties most Americans experienced and remembered. I'm talking about "The Fifties" -- you know, ducktail haircuts and leather jackets and poodle skirts and grease is the word is the word is the word. What most people today think of when somebody says "The Fifties."

Ever wonder just when *that* image of "The Fifties" became *the* image of "The Fifties?" Here's an interesting bit of scholarly analysis that suggests the entire modern cult of "The Fifties" owes itself to a group of Columbia University a capella singers who one day in 1969 decided to do their act a little differently. Interesting food for thought on just how cleverly a bit of marketing can change the entire mass perception of an era.

I see this when there are articles or TV shows about women living in the Fifties, like Wives With Beehives (and beehives are 60s) or Time Warp Wives. The Fifties seems to give the idea that women were either a Marilyn, June (Leave it to Beaver) or Sandy (Grease) and they are all middle class. I find this to be very plastic. It's a very non-dimensional, non ethnically diverse look at women as well as elitist with the assumption that most women lived in nice houses in suburbia. And for men, you need to decide if you are a Ward, Elvis or James Dean. Not really, of course, but again those are the stereotypes I see over and over.

What I find offensive is when people assume that everyone in the Fifties was a repressed, sexist, racist moron who trusted authority blindly and women were helpless waifs who were forced to stay home. *OR* they were all happy, smiling constantly due to pill popping and everything was "perfection" (as defined by a majority). I say this because a lot of the stuff I see in print and online, when it comes to the Fifties, is seriously snarky/venomous *OR* La La land. People like to assume we're culturally and morally superior now based upon manufactured ideas about what happened in that decade *OR* that was the best. time. ever.

(I do love the 1950s despite not having lived through it and favor it to today, but I base my opinion on period texts, talking to people who WERE alive then and media that did accurately portray some of the IDEALS of the time. I do NOT base it upon advertising from the era.)

 

[Fading Fast]

My mother graduated from high school in 1957. Her favorite musical artist as a teenager was Liberace, and every single boy in her graduating class had a crew cut. She always makes a face when somebody mentions Elvis -- "We thought he was disgusting." "The Fifties" come across to her as some kind of weird cartoon, not relevant to anything she ever experienced -- or that anyone she knew ever experienced.

The oldest Boomers were only fourteen years old when the actual 1950's ended. They were just the right age to have a memory of the decade, the way a kid remembers such things, but with the exception of a few prodigies, it's doubtful many of them had any real awareness of what the decade was like for adults. As a result, I think it's safe to say that "The Fifties" are the first decade for which the popular perception is framed almost entirely thru the eyes of children. Maybe that's the root of the juvenilization popular culture has seen ever since.

My Mom was the same age as Elvis, but was clearly older than his fan base in the Fifties. Even acknowledging that, I was always surprised when I used to ask her about Elvis, how to her, he was something "out there" but not part of her world or day to day - Rock and Roll was the same to her - she knew it existed but as a young woman in her twenties, it was not part of her culture.

Today, it seems that people stay plugged into the youth culture for a much, much longer time. The twenty and thirty year old men (not so much with women) I've worked with are fully engaged in a youth culture - it's music, shows, video games, etc. There is a divide between "kid" culture - things targeted to young teens and younger - and older teen / young men culture (late high school / college); it is this older teen / young men culture that - it's been my observation - young men are staying plugged into much, much longer than they used to.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think one of the interesting things about the post-1970 "Cult Of The Fifties" is how tied up with the merchandising and marketing of Nostalgia it became. Some of us might remember how, for a very brief period in the early '70s, the 1930s and early 1940s were very much in vogue -- there were endless documentaries, TV shows, books, magazines, movie retrospectives, "70s does 30s" fashion focusing on the period from about 1933 to about 1942. And then, just as quickly, all that was gone -- and the Nostalgia Industry embraced "The Fifties" instead and never looked back.

I've often thought about that period -- which I clearly remember being frustrated by, because I *liked all that 1930s stuff," and was irritated when it was all replaced by "At The Hop" and the insufferable smirking face of Fonzie everywhere. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've understood that it had to happen -- because from a Nostalgia Industry perspective, "The Thirties" were a much tougher sell than "The Fifties." There was too much from the real 1930s that impinged on the image the marketers needed in order to sell the period - I saw a lot of Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields merchandise, but nobody but me would have bought a Walter Reuther lunch box.

It was much easier to sanitize and package "The Fifties" because, you'll note, it's always a very narrow section of "The Fifties" that get marketed -- the post-1955 rock-and-roll Fifties, for the most part. Nobody tries to market the early fifties, because there's too much there that's uncomfortable -- Korea, "Red Channels," McCarthy, and so forth. And it doesn't help that those fifties are blurriest in the memories of the older Boomers, and non-existent in the memories of the later Boomers who form the core of their target marget. "The Fifties" persist because the Nostalgia Industry finds them very easy to sell.

 

[emigran]

I'm certainly an older Boomer (b.1947) and am enjoying this thread immensely. The last several decades have all passed so quickly from my youth to today. The idea that the next generation's view of the previous can be jaded strikes a chord with me too well. I'm not at all media and/or device savvy. Elvis was not 'out there" culturally for me. Neither was Woodstock. I recognize that virtually little remains from my '50's family Buick sedan roots. I am out of touch certainly with the likes of Nicki Minaj etc yet (as a musician) feel deeply connected to the Golden Era's "beat" as well as Viet Nam and the Gulf Oil Spill. I have pondered what has been going on since the '50's, knowing that poodle skirts and Doo Wop were not all there was. I haven't yet figured out how we got to where we are now. Of course it's the overabundance and previously unavailable access to techno wizardry that has propelled us far beyond "2001 Space Odyssey". I am reminded of a story a friend of mine related about her father who at 96 was gazing at the lightning like images of TV and asking... Why are they talking so fast...
I too am just watching... and also realize I am slightly out of touch. I can't grasp much of the "stuff" I'm unable to use as easily as a pre-teen can... BUT...I really appreciate threads like this...


Can you dig, man...

 

[sheeplady]

It was much easier to sanitize and package "The Fifties" because, you'll note, it's always a very narrow section of "The Fifties" that get marketed -- the post-1955 rock-and-roll Fifties, for the most part. Nobody tries to market the early fifties, because there's too much there that's uncomfortable -- Korea, "Red Channels," McCarthy, and so forth. And it doesn't help that those fifties are blurriest in the memories of the older Boomers, and non-existent in the memories of the later Boomers who form the core of their target marget. "The Fifties" persist because the Nostalgia Industry finds them very easy to sell.

I think the collective mis-remembering is so bad that Korea is essentially a forgotten war. I don't mean that it *is* actually forgotten, but it is seen more as a footnote in our collective history compared to WWII and Vietnam which get the chapter headings.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of course, everybody knows the Korean War was all about wacky surgeons with a still in their tent always sticking it to military authority.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I'd seen this article before, and while Sha Na Na was arguably ground zero for the fifties revival, it didn't necessarily feel that way at the time.

Sure, Sha Na Na's appearance in the 1970 Woodstock film and its triple-LP soundtrack was significant, but it didn't open the floodgates... They seemed to us more like a pseudo-comedy act spoofing earlier music - yet playing it really well - like Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen did with country and western swing. I was a college freshman in 1973, and seeing American Graffiti (and then constantly listening to its awesome soundtrack album) and the national touring company of Grease (and then constantly listening to its cast album) were the signature events.

Of course, the thing that was and remains shocking about American Graffiti is that the time it depicted was only 11 years earlier than when it came out... and it seemed impossible that things had changed so vastly in that short time!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I'd seen this article before, and while Sha Na Na was arguably ground zero for the fifties revival, it didn't necessarily feel that way at the time.

Sure, Sha Na Na's appearance in the 1970 Woodstock film and its triple-LP soundtrack was significant, but it didn't open the floodgates... They seemed to us more like a pseudo-comedy act spoofing earlier music - yet playing it really well - like Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen did with country and western swing. I was a college freshman in 1973, and seeing American Graffiti (and then constantly listening to its awesome soundtrack album) and the national touring company of Grease (and then constantly listening to its cast album) were the signature events.

Of course, the thing that was and remains shocking about American Graffiti is that the time it depicted was only 11 years earlier than when it came out... and it seemed impossible that things had changed so vastly in that short time!

Sha Na Na was also a TV show from 1977-1981.