*in
many ways, the 1950s
were much like the roaring twenties.
families had more money to spend and more ways to spend it. the average family income rose from $3,319 in
1950 to $5,417 in 1959.
*home loans were
easier to get, so more
people could buy a house, and many companies lent money again, too. instalment plans were popular once more, and
in 1957, diner’s club created the world’s first charge card (american
express
issued one in 1959). bank of american
created the credit card (later known as visa) in 1958.
*with so much money
to spend and so many
things to spend it on, new kinds of stores were created.
supermarkets (selling many different
products) and shopping centres (with many different stores in one
place) opened
up in the suburbs, so people would not have to drive into the city to
shop.
*as many families
could afford for wives to
stay at home, women became the main shoppers for their families, and
they
tended to buy products for the house:
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, and
especially
televisions. while only 6,000 television
sets were produced in the year 1946, by 1960, 90% of americans (over
161
million) owned televisions.
*television soon
became the centre of many
americans’ lives. businesses used it for
advertising, and fads and fashions could sweep the entire country in no
time. --read steven
spielberg’s account of not having a davy crockett hat from
page 560.
*political campaigns
were televised for the
first time in 1952, and by 1960 even the presidential debates were
being
televised (and both eisenhower and kennedy were elected in large part
because
they were better than adlai stevenson or richard nixon at presenting
themselves
on television). ever since then,
presidents have had to be more then leaders, they have had to be
celebrities.
*because
entertainment, politics, and
commercials were seen across the entire country, regional differences
began to
diminish. a mass culture, which had been
growing since the days of radio (if not before), continued to become
more
homogenous.
*television even told
people how to live
their lives. most shows revolved around
the nuclear family—a family centred in one home, with two parents, 2-3
children, and no nearby extended family.
in many ways this mirrored the lives of young families in the
suburbs,
but it also encouraged people to try to live up and idealised image of
family
life, which was not always possible. not
everyone could have as perfect a life as the folks in the
new adventures of ozzie and harriet, leave it to beaver,
the donna
reed show, or father knows best.
*nuclear families
were encouraged to make
things easy for the children of the baby boom.
not only did many teenagers get to work for spending money
rather than
to support the family, but even as infants and young children, they
were often
allowed to have their way and be given the things they wanted.
*this was partly due
to the influence of dr
benjamin spock’s common sense book of
baby and child care. it became
popular among young mothers who were raising children in suburbs away
from
their extended families. dr spock said
that because a child could never have too much love and comfort, it was
all
right to let children have their way and even to spoil them by buying
them all
the things they wanted (or that television told them that they wanted). many people said this was too permissive, led
to expectations of instant gratification, and got in the way of
developing work
ethics or a sense of responsibility, but common
sense book of baby and child care stayed in print for decades.
*another way in which
americans tried to
create an idea life was through religion.
whereas the decade after world war i had belonged to a cynical
lost
generation, the baby boomers (for all their fear of communism) were in
some
ways very optimistic about the future, and religious revivals spread
across the
country. billy graham began his career
as an evangelist in the 1940s, using public revivals, radio, and
television to
spread the word of god until leading his last crusade in 2006. bishop fulton sheen used television to preach
to 10 million catholics each week. the
government encouraged religiosity as a contrast to communism, which was
officially atheist.
*some things did rock
the seemingly quiet
1950s. although television was required
>
rhythm and blues music, previously seen as
‘race’ music became more wide-spread when record companies and radio
stations
began calling it rock and roll, and white singers like elvis presley
(who began
recording>
because his lyrics and his dancing were seen
as very suggestive (at the time), many parents, religious leaders, and
politicians
condemned rock and roll as being destructive to morality and society.
*other people were
style="font-family: "courier new";" lang="en-gb">*other people were
dissatisfied with the
culture of the 1950s. some people felt
that as young families abandoned the cities for the suburbs that cities
would
die, or just be left as impoverished inner cities where no-one would
bother
paying to keep the area safe, clean, or in good repair.
this simply encouraged more middle-class
people to move to the suburbs, however.
*suburbs and the
conformity expected by
society also struck some people as empty or shallow.
for some people, the artificial world
presented by television was the worst example of this.
*in 1961, newton
minnow, chairman of the fcc
gave a speech that described his fears:
"when television is
good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers —
nothing is
better.
but when television is bad,
nothing is worse. i invite you to sit down in front of your television
set when
your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book,
without
a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a
rating
book to distract you. keep your eyes glued to that set until the
station signs
off. i can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
you will see a procession
of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families,
blood and
thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western
good men,
private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. and endlessly
commercials
— many screaming, cajoling, and offending. and most of all, boredom.
true,
you'll see a few things you will enjoy. but they will be very, very
few. and if
you think i exaggerate, i only ask you to try it."
*others objected in other ways.
sloan wilson wrote the man in the
gray flannel suit about a wwii veteran who got an office job after
the war
and felt crushed by the need to fit in—the gray flannel suit was just a
new
uniform, but instead of fighting nazis and making the world safe for
democracy,
he was just pushing papers and doing nothing that felt fulfilling. j.d. salinger wrote the catcher in
the rye in which a teenager named holden caulfield
mocked adult society as phony.
*other people did not just write
about the shallowness of society, they
tried to reject it altogether. people
calling themselves ‘beats’ or ‘beatniks’ rejected society, dressed in
strange
clothes, spoke in their own slang, and criticized middle-class
materialism.
*on the other hand, while cities
were dying as people moved to the
suburbs, the rural areas were declining as well. many
farms
merged
into or were bought by
large companies (or agribusinesses) that could take advantage of
government
subsidies and of the ease of transporting goods long distances more
efficiently
than smaller farms, and many rural people moved to cities or into towns. even though american produced more food than
ever, fewer and fewer americans were actually farmers, and a
traditional way of
life was vanishing.