Why were the 70s such a tacky decade?

[LizzieMaine]

It's to distract attention from the giant pressed-aluminum chicken on the wall.

 

[dh66]

My grandmother had a room full of furniture like that in the 70s. It was all bought new in the 50s.

She even had a fairly large rooster shaped gelatin mold hanging on the wall of the kitchen, although she would occasionally take it down to make colorful fruit filled jell-o presentations.

 

[Zombie_61]

What my friends and I (all in their late teens/early 20s when AG came out) got about Lucas's film is that we'd all known people in school like the characters. We'd all known the hood who wasn't that bad when nobody else was around, the chunky fellow in short-sleeved shirts who got middling grades, the gum-chewing blonde, the cool guy that everybody wanted to be like, the goofy-looking guy who was the butt of all the jokes, and so on.

My friends and I had the same experience seeing Dazed and Confused (1993)--we knew every one of those characters. Though the movie is set in Texas, if you want to know what it was like to attend high school in southern California in 1976, this is the movie to watch. It's no wonder I hated it (high school, not the movie) and have maintained very few friendships from those days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

High school has always featured that particular cast of charcters. Have a look at a run of "Harold Teen" comic strips from the twenties -- all the old favorite teen stereotypes were there in person. They were even wearing ridiculous-looking pants. They were all there again in slightly different ridiculous pants when Skeezix of "Gasoline Alley" went to high school in the thirties. You can trace them all down thru "Archie" in the forties, "Our Miss Brooks" in the fifties, and so on down into the sixties. seventies, and eighties. Every generation feels like they were unique to their era, but they were always the same thing in different clothes.

What would be really revolutionary is a teen comedy in which none of the characters fit any of those stereotypes. Let's see someone make a teen movie about the kids who are involved in the truly cool activities -- yearbook club and the school paper.

 

[Stanley Doble]

To be fair the seventies weren't all bad. We still had stars like Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, Charlie Pride and Lucille Ball.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I used to get into arguments with kids at school about Bob Hope. They couldn't understand why anybody thought he was funny, because all they knew him from was his corny TV specials. I kept arguing they needed to see his movies to understand -- which wasn't hard to do at the time, one of the local stations had the pre-1948 Paramount film package, and Hope movies were often shown. You couldn't understand why Hope was still on TV in the '70s until you saw them.

 

[scottyrocks]

My friends and I had the same experience seeing Dazed and Confused (1993)--we knew every one of those characters. Though the movie is set in Texas, if you want to know what it was like to attend high school in southern California in 1976, this is the movie to watch. It's no wonder I hated it (high school, not the movie) and have maintained very few friendships from those days.

The Breakfast Club (1985) for that decade.

 

[Edward]

High school has always featured that particular cast of charcters. Have a look at a run of "Harold Teen" comic strips from the twenties -- all the old favorite teen stereotypes were there in person. They were even wearing ridiculous-looking pants. They were all there again in slightly different ridiculous pants when Skeezix of "Gasoline Alley" went to high school in the thirties. You can trace them all down thru "Archie" in the forties, "Our Miss Brooks" in the fifties, and so on down into the sixties. seventies, and eighties. Every generation feels like they were unique to their era, but they were always the same thing in different clothes.

What would be really revolutionary is a teen comedy in which none of the characters fit any of those stereotypes. Let's see someone make a teen movie about the kids who are involved in the truly cool activities -- yearbook club and the school paper.

Oui, bien sur: plus la change, plus la meme chose.

There was, in the eighties, a kid's TV show in the UK called Press Gang, about a group of kids who edited and ran a youth newspaper. Dealt with a lot of teen ishoos of the day, like glue sniffing, anorexia, bullying, and such. Still had the geeks, the clown, the lover, the fighter, the jock.... all working on a school paper. Still.... aren't there really only twelve stories or so, that get retold in different ays for each new generation?

 

[Stanley Doble]

To be fair the seventies weren't all bad. We still had stars like Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, Charlie Pride and Lucille Ball.

I was hoping someone would point out that now the country has no Cash, no Hope, no Pride and no Balls.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I was hoping someone would point out that now the country has no Cash, no Hope, no Pride and no Balls.

Disappointing ain't it? A big fat hanging curve, and everyone missed it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Oui, bien sur: plus la change, plus la meme chose.

There was, in the eighties, a kid's TV show in the UK called Press Gang, about a group of kids who edited and ran a youth newspaper. Dealt with a lot of teen ishoos of the day, like glue sniffing, anorexia, bullying, and such. Still had the geeks, the clown, the lover, the fighter, the jock.... all working on a school paper. Still.... aren't there really only twelve stories or so, that get retold in different ays for each new generation?

Rubber cement -- the hidden curse of the press club.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Oui, bien sur: plus la change, plus la meme chose.

There was, in the eighties, a kid's TV show in the UK called Press Gang, about a group of kids who edited and ran a youth newspaper. Dealt with a lot of teen ishoos of the day, like glue sniffing, anorexia, bullying, and such. Still had the geeks, the clown, the lover, the fighter, the jock.... all working on a school paper. Still.... aren't there really only twelve stories or so, that get retold in different ays for each new generation?

In a similar vein, we had "Head of the Class" (late 80's) in the US. The kids were all academically gifted types, but there was a range of characters: the nerd, the Bohemian intellectual, the grade obsessed neurotic, etc. I enjoyed it because it didn't rely on slackers for cheap laughs (That 70's Show, Welcome Back Kotter) and a lot of the smart kid stereotypes were challenged.

 

[HudsonHawk]

In a similar vein, we had "Head of the Class" (late 80's) in the US. The kids were all academically gifted types, but there was a range of characters: the nerd, the Bohemian intellectual, the grade obsessed neurotic, etc. I enjoyed it because it didn't rely on slackers for cheap laughs (That 70's Show, Welcome Back Kotter) and a lot of the smart kid stereotypes were challenged.

Saved By The Bell was the same show, only not academically gifted.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You'll find similar stereotypes in vaudeville a hundred years ago. The Marx Brothers did an act called "Fun In Hi Skule" which, with a bit of ethnic tweaking, would seem extremely familiar to modern audiences. The main difference was the presence of a country-hick stereotype, much more relevant a hundred years ago than today. But you could easily change his jokes to fit a nerdy white kid trying to act "fly."

 

[Stearmen]

All right I give, the 70s were tacky! [video=youtube;Orxqjw3o9cw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orxqjw3o9cw[/video]

 

[jamespowers]

It's to distract attention from the giant pressed-aluminum chicken on the wall.

:rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

To be fair the seventies weren't all bad. We still had stars like Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, Charlie Pride and Lucille Ball.

Who all came from a previous era and just happened to live though the 70s by accident.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Like I said before, one of the few good things about the '70s was country music which had reached its apogee during that time. But sadly, it degenerated into "country-pop" and now "bro country." :doh:

[video=youtube;ACyhlR-IfGo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACyhlR-IfGo[/video]

 

[jamespowers]

All right I give, the 70s were tacky! [video=youtube;Orxqjw3o9cw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orxqjw3o9cw[/video]

Finally!

 

[jamespowers]

Like I said before, one of the few good things about the '70s was country music which had reached its apogee during that time. But sadly, it degenerated into "country-pop" and now "bro country." :doh:

[video=youtube;ACyhlR-IfGo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACyhlR-IfGo[/video]

I think I need a better example than that. lol lol