The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[sheeplady]

There was quite a bit written in the actual 1950's in the US about the stultifying sameness of the new suburbs and what they were doing to the people who lived there. John Keats' definitive 1957 study "The Crack In The Picture Window" painted a disturbing picture of what mainstream postwar America was becoming -- shallow, consumption-driven, and emotionally-isolated. Richard Yates' 1961 novel "Revolutionary Road" is the most searing literary indictment of suburbia and the mindset it promoted. These were also the days when there was a strong critique arising of what the humorist Jean Shepherd called "creeping meatballism" -- the vapid television shows, the cheesy movies, the smarmy, pandering advertising campaigns, the whole "You Auto Buy Now" idea that you were what you consumed.

Despite the suburban sameness, the popularity of these and similar critical viewpoints demonstrates that there were still many Americans who were free-thinking and critical of what was going on in the world. Keats' book was a best seller, as were Vance Packard's various studies of consumerism and modern marketing techniques. So clearly not everyone was thinking like The Organization Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. Even little kids were reading "Mad" magazine, which taught them over and over again that they were being lied to and exploited by an society which only valued them as consumers.

I think this is one of the reasons you see the rise of homesteading in the 1940s. If you read books like The Have More Plan it seems to be a reaction by those who wanted out of consumption and wanted to define life by means other than material.

We tend to think of a "counter-culture" movement like homesteading as being entirely of the sixties hippies. It wasn't.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think a lot of that came directly out of the consumer-awareness movement of the late thirties -- the period that produced Consumer's Union, an organization which is still very much alive and well today. People in the thirties were becoming very aware of how marketing was changing from simple advertising into something more sinister and manipulative, and very much in keeping with the communitarian values of the time, they were organizing to fight back. Their ethos was "you don't NEED all this stuff, and what you *do* need should be chosen for long-term value, not surface style or gimmickry." CU strongly promoted the co-op movement, which was another product of the thirties -- cooperative stores, cooperative buying clubs, and similar concepts designed to get the best value for the most people without regard for the highest profits.

It is no coincidence that the Boys went after CU hard -- the organization was investigated by the FBI, and some of the more fanatical McCarthyites of the postwar era branded it a Communist front, doing their level best to shut the whole consumer-awareness movement down. CU lost a lot of steam in the 1950s because of this, but it retained a strong core of support which kept it going. Not everyone bought into the Shiny Junk Will Make You Happy ethos, long before anyone ever heard of hippies.

 

[sheeplady]

That's interesting. I guess part of what amazes me is how quickly mainstream society bought into consumerism. I get that the WWII generation had been through the wringer. (I had two grandparents who ended up permanently damaged because of the absolute poverty they faced.) I am not making light of that.

I wonder if some of the consumerism played into depression and anxiety. There's a link between depression/anxiety and hoarding. Many men and women came out of the depression and the war psychologically and emotionally damaged (and often physically). There wasn't therapy available then like now and given the fact everyone went through it, it was tough it out, therapy was for really ill people, etc. (Heck, it's hard to get today and frowned on by some for our returning troops.)

I think when you are not on an even keel, you're more likely to turn to "stuff" to make you feel better. Whether it is alcohol or buying stuff, either provides a temporary relief. This I think counts for the drinking culture of the 1950s too.

Looking at my grandparents who were damaged more severely by the depression and WWII, they drank heavily in the 1950s and consumed. I think where it all went worse is consumerism is *learned* behavior. Their kids learned it, then their kids learned it. The marketers were keen to take advantage of a troubled generation.

Now we're at the point where some people throw out their clothes every season.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think that's very much a big part of it -- the behavior of the US in the years after the war looks for all the world like the result of unresolved trauma. It's like the woman who goes thru a breakup and immediately goes out and buys a pile of junk she doesn't need because it's ha ha ha "retail therapy."

Another key point is that suburbia was to a major extent filled with people from a working-class urban background who were thrust into an environment they didn't understand. They had lived their whole lives in city neighborhoods where there were certain ways of doing things and certain ways of relating to the other people who made up those neightborhoods -- and now, suddenly, the Boys told them they were "middle class," and that if you just look at these ads here, you'll see how "middle class" people are supposed to live. This is how you dress, this is the car you drive, this is the food you eat and this is how you serve it.

There was also an explosion of teach-yourself-etiquette, teach-yourself-culture self-help type books in the years just after the war, and all this stuff was playing on the insecurities of all these young families from Bensonhurst who'd moved out to subdivisions carved out of Long Island potato fields and had no idea how they were supposed to act in these synthetic communities.

 

[Stearmen]

Not to mention that the Cunningham's had another child that just disappeared after the first season. No word on whether or not Howard used a shovel from is hardware store to bury ol' Chuck in the back yard.

To confuse things even more, there were actually three Chuck's! The first in the Love American Style pilot, and the other two in the first season of Happy Days. Turns out, Howard was a mass murderer!

 

[Fading Fast]

To confuse things even more, there were actually three Chuck's! The first in the Love American Style pilot, and the other two in the first season of Happy Days. Turns out, Howard was a mass murderer!

That's why he owned the Hardware store - to get shovels at wholesale.

 

[scottyrocks]

To confuse things even more, there were actually three Chuck's! The first in the Love American Style pilot, and the other two in the first season of Happy Days. Turns out, Howard was a mass murderer!

They all just went to college. Mystery solved.

 

[Stearmen]

They all just went to college. Mystery solved.

They went to collage for a decade? They didn't even come home for Christmas!

 

[FedoraFan112390]

City bus and trolley systems faded badly in the 1950s, symbolized by the end of the Brooklyn trolley system in 1956. Trolleys had been emblematic of the borough since the 19th century, but the combination of suburbanization and economic decline, along with Robert Moses' pathological fetishization of private cars, put an end to them. Interurban passenger rail service also declined sharply in the 1950s -- by the end of the decade many small cities had already lost it, and few would retain it past the early 1960s.

I think 1956 marks a turning point for America, symbolized by Elvis and the end of the trolleys and such.
1933-1945: The Golden Era,
1945-1956: The Silver Era,
1957-1961: Rock N' Roll Era

 

[PeterB]

This thread wanders about, doesn't it? We started with pondering the origin of the mythical 50s, as represented by fashion and some films and TV series, and have now arrived at trolley systems. So another 2 cents worth here.

The Honeymooners is an interesting example, because it is much "rougher" than one might expect. The 50s was also the time of Life of Riley, with William Bendix, and I The Real McCoys, though that came later. All about lower middle class people, and good fun to watch, even today. One series that nobody has mentioned is Dragnet, which was popular viewing throughout the decade, and probably constituted a topic of conversation nationwide. I like Dragnet because of the dialogue -- very snappy and quite funny in many episodes.

Keep in mind, when discussing the mythologizing of the 50s, that a) no decade is as interesting, bad, good or as unique as one might wish; and at the same time, b) no decade is quite like any other.

What perhaps made the 50s unique at the time was that parents had in many cases lived through the depression as adults, and had experienced WW2. This may account for some of their attitudes, and the desire for calm and "business as usual". In addition, keep in mind that in America, at least, the 50s was unique in that America more or less ran the world, other countries still recovering or having been dismembered (e.g., UK, still recovering, Poland wrecked and under Russian domination). There were thus few threats to the positions of Americans, at least in contrast to things today. The missile crisis came later, as did Vietnam and other events that would shake the self-confidence of the nation as a whole. Now whether people felt secure and rather self-satisfied or merely that we think they did is another subject.

We need to distinguish between what people thought of themselves, in other words, what they valued, what we think they thought of themselves, and what the reality was. In Canada, where I grew up, if you asked someone in the early 60s whether or not Canada was a fair society, he or she would most likely have said "yes", emphatically. If you ask someone today whether he or she thinks that Canada in the early 60s was a fair society, he or she would probably say "no", or "not so much as nowadays". We have the benefit of hindsight.

It is instructive, as some of you have noted, to read what was written at the time to catch a flavour of what the decade was really like. I found William H White's book The Organization Man to be a real source of insights. He writes about suburbia and the kinds of attitudes that people had, all taken from conversations and field research. The book is not entirely optimistic, and he contrasts the 50s unfavourably with the much more individualistic 1890s and the early years of the 20th century.

It is worth noting that suburbia was an agglomeration of people from what had been, up to then, ethnic neighbourhoods (some of you may recall Allen's Alley). This is a phenomenon of American urban life that is now mostly gone (as it is gone in Canada), but up to WW2 most working people in cities lived in ethnic enclaves. Studies were done by sociologists during the war to investigate how ethnic loyalties in places such as Detroit and Philadelphia could be broken up, particularly to promote patriotism. The people from these neighbourhoods moved, their children, who had better educations than their parents, moved to suburbia. There is a funny piece in The Organization Man about how real estate companies would build houses with big picture windows for buyers with Polish backgrounds.

One feature of the 50s that has not been mentioned yet is Playboy magazine. If it is not inappropriate to discuss that magazine, I would suggest that it was emblematic of the decade. It was published by a mid westerner of German extraction, seeking to be a cosmopolitan type, and the magazine seems to have been addressed to a similar type of man. It had articles on subjects such as how to tie a bow-tie, assuming I suppose that the readers would need to know, but would not have learned from their parents. In other words, its audience was GI bill graduates, probably living in suburbia, lacking self-confidence. Its great success might tell us something about the decade. It was in its way as revolutionary as Dale Carnegie's self-help manuals had been, a generation earlier.

Some of you have written about Grease and Happy Days. Grease was a Broadway play from the early to mid 70s, completely unlike the film. It was a musical, with some good songs, but almost all of them spoofing the mythical 50s. Happy Days I believe was produced to capitalise on the interest in the late 50s generated by American Graffiti. In my view, neither presents anything like a realistic picture, which I have tried to obtain from looking at old photographs and reading publications of the decade. As I wrote earlier, because we take so much of our knowledge from television and film, it is natural to look to them for examples. But if you really want to understand the 50s as a fact, I think one would do better to look at old magazine articles, or listen to recordings of old radio broadcasts and commercials. By shutting out the visual invasion that is TV, one can think more clearly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Magazine articles and radio will tell you much -- but they'll only tell you what the editor of that magazine and the producer of that radio program wanted you to think, not what the people actually thought. The rise of "scientific marketing" in the postwar era was filled with psychological manipulation, and the mass media were on the cutting edge of that.

Those who go the magazine route need to keep certain things in mind. Most of the mainstream magazines were dominated by a very specific National Association of Manufacturers vision of what Americans ought to be and how they ought to think -- but not all Americans accepted this perspective. A great many Americans rejected it and fought bitterly against it. This was true in any decade -- it was especially true in the 1930s and prewar 1940s, leading the Boys to step up the pressure in the postwar era to suppress any kind of "un-American" thinking, "un-American" being defined as anything that didn't reflect the NAM view of what Americans ought to think.

Certain magazines, especially The Saturday Evening Post, the Readers Digest, Collier's, The American Magazine, Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, and to a slightly lesser extent the Luce publications, were little more than NAM propaganda organs, specifically used to shape and enforce mass opinion. Selling that public stuff they didn't need thru advertising was actually their *secondary* purpose -- the primary function was always promoting correct NAM-compliant social and political thinking. That being so, such publications are good for sussing out the NAM party line on any particularly topic, but that's about it. If you go solely by such publications, you'll come away with a profoundly distorted image of the period.

To understand the many currents in public thought in any period, you'd be better served reading the various "opinion" magazines -- The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's, and similar publications. These magazines are not colorful, and contain very little or no advertising. That being so, they had far more freedom to express views that might not have met with NAM approval, but which reflected a substantial thread in American thought.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Lizzie is right about the specificity of the magazines. Periodical publishers understood "niche marketing"before almost anyone else. Vanity Fair is a good example. It was a magazine of wit and sophistication, but you can read its entire run from 1930 to 1936, cover to cover, and never guess that there's a depression going on. You have to look to Life, for instance, for that. Ironically, Vanity Fair folded in 1936, a victim of the Great Depression, which it failed to acknowledge. The Vanity Fair you see on the newsstands now is a revival.

 

[Trenchfriend]

All about "suggestion".

 

[HudsonHawk]

They went to collage for a decade? They didn't even come home for Christmas!

Or for Joanie and Chachi's wedding!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Here in Germany, you don't hear someone from any special-presses speaking about the general "market saturation", since circa last year. The term appears not more. Seems again forbidden, in the permanent crisis of end-times market-economy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's the general-interest magazines, which died off for the most part by the sixties and early seventies in the US that were most often used as propaganda outlets by the NAM and similar organizations. Here's a field guide to identifying points of view you can expect from some of the most common.

Saturday Evening Post -- hard-line pro-NAM outlet. Pretty much the NAM's flagship publication into the 1960s, but it became a bit more independent toward the end of its life. The Post of today bears no resemblance to the magazine of the Era.

Colliers -- hard-line pro-NAM, but more subtle about it than the Post. Tried to conceal the propaganda under a sugar coating.

The American Magazine -- hard-line pro-NAM, but with a strongly sensationalist bent.

Life -- moderately pro-NAM on social and economic issues, but rejects NAM isolationism. Moves further to the right after the war.

Look -- moderately anti-NAM before WW2, with a sensationalist bent. Moved into the pro-NAM camp after the war, but remained generally to the left of "Life."

Ladies Home Journal -- often at odds with NAM positions on social issues and the role of women until after the war, when it for the most part fell in line with the NAM's back-to-the-kitchen movement.

McCall's -- basically a don't rock the boat publication. Didn't overtly advocate NAM positions, but didn't criticize them, even moderately, either. Policy was basically to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. During the 1950s its main agenda was the promotion of "togetherness," a nebulous concept which basically amounted to "don't make waves."

Good Housekeeping -- A Hearst publication. Always hard-line pro-NAM, complete with a fake "product testing" bureau that granted seals of approval to advertisers who played ball with the magazine.

Liberty -- fanatically pro-NAM under McCormick ownership, an outlet for Bernarr Macfadden's unique political views during Macfadden ownership. Highly sensationalist.

Woman's Home Companion -- Collier's in a housedress and apron. Far less open-minded on the evolving roles of women than the Ladies Home Journal.

Better Homes and Gardens -- Appeared on the surface to be apolitical, but never questioned the claims of or role of advertisers in shaping opinion. Began as a niche magazine for homeowners of both sexes, but drifted in the 1950s toward more of a practical women's magazine.

Reader's Digest -- Militantly pro-NAM, to the point of publishing pro-Fascist viewpoints before the war, and showed only surface moderation in the years after.

 

[sheeplady]

In Canada, where I grew up, if you asked someone in the early 60s whether or not Canada was a fair society, he or she would most likely have said "yes", emphatically.

I think it would depend on *who* you asked. The First Nations child ripped away from their parents to be "reeducated" (and often sexual abused) in a boarding school or by white foster parents would certainly say no.

One of the things I don't like about, "oh, let's think about it like they did back then" is that *they* always seem to be a white person. The average white person has always had it relatively and comparatively good. It is not a good jusegment of fairless to ask those with the most privilege how fair the world is.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Science fiction writers of the post-WWII era saw this coming and had a lot of fun with it. In Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants"(1952), set in a future America, government had disappeared and all was run by corporations, of which the advertising business was the most powerful. Possession of earplugs was a Class-A felony.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Which goes back to the whole matter of what the media was feeding people. I can't speak of Canada, but in the US, people believed "every American gets a square deal" because they were *told* that this was the case, over and over again by the propagandists in the mass media. "There's no way like the American Way, E Pluribus Unum." And yet you could approach any one of those people one-to-one and get them to tell you a story of how they felt that "the system" had cheated them in one way or another.

But if you surround your propaganda with enough flags and eagles and yankee-doodle-dandyism, as the NAM and its fronts did thruout the 1950s, you can induce a complete disassociation between belief and reality. White Americans could look at footage of Malcolm X on television telling them to their faces what was going on in the ghetto, and shrug their shoulders and say "but everybody gets a square deal in America" because they'd basically been brainwashed into believing that this was the case.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Science fiction writers of the post-WWII era saw this coming and had a lot of fun with it. In Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants"(1952), set in a future America, government had disappeared and all was run by corporations, of which the advertising business was the most powerful. Possession of earplugs was a Class-A felony.

To say nothing of "The Marching Morons." Science fiction in the 1950s was a trenchant critique of the whole decade, and helped frame a lot of the counterculture thought that cropped up in the following decade.