ZUR 589o: Cultural History of Advertising Edward P. Morgan,“The Sixties Experience” Bruce Shulman,“‘This Ain’t No Foolin’ Around’: Rebellion and Authority in Seventies Popular Culture” decades in review • 1950s: conformity (strict gender roles; family-oriented pursuit of the“American dream”) • 1960s: rebellion and social change (pursuit of democracy and justice) • 1970s: the ‘me” decade (narcissism and a focus on the individual) but “decades” don’t break in perfect 10-year intervals and exceptions exist within every time period “exceptions” to 1950s conformity Playboys • in early 1950s Playboy introduced a radical revision/redefinition of acceptable male heterosexual behavior • self-indulgence • hedonism • masculine attention to and desire for material goods as a source of pleasure Playboys Playboy promotes male rebellion: • a critique of marriage • a strategy for liberation (reclaiming the indoors for male pleasure) • a utopian vision (defined by the possession of commodity goods) "The real message of Playboy was not eroticism, but escape--literal escape from the bondage of breadwinning" (Ehrenreich 51) "The breasts and bottoms were necessary not just to sell the magazine, but to protect it" (51). "In every issue, every month, there was a playmate to prove that a playboy didn't have to be a husband to be a man" (51). beats • rejected both job and marriage • first all-out critique of American consumer culture • remain a small, marginalized minority 1950s viewed by some as a period of retreat • cultural dislocation of the 1920s exacerbated vs.“cured” • JF Kennedy’s call to “ask not what your country can do for you...” “hit on the posture of sacrifice, which was what young people wanted to hear, something to give meaning to an affluent society” (Paul Goodman, p. 16). 1960s: competing views of the decade LiberalView: social movements of 1960s paved the way for political reform; sweeping social programs instituted. competing views of the 1960s: a society that “demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.”” Lyndon Baines Johnson, U. of Michigan, 1964 America: ConservativeView: social movements taken to an excess, resulting in political policies that went too far. competing views of the 1960s: the 1960s Some themes carried over from 1950s in early part of the decade • self-sufficient nuclear family • suburban setting • distinct gender roles • focus on individualization in child-rearing 1960s: seeds of change • the sixties (youth culture) begins early in the decade with the civil rights, peace/anti-war, women’s, and environmental movements • comes to full fruition in late 60s • spurred by sharp personal awareness of social ills • feeling of confidence that something could be done • sixties movements began within the system and ended up struggling against that system • activists worked both with and against government in the early 1960s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhUuzBodQc 1960s democratic vision 1. equality, or the full inclusion of society’s disposed 2. personal empowerment, or the liberation of each person from psychological constraints as well as social oppression—a shift from masculine “power over” to the feminist “power to” 3. a moral politics grounded on the belief in individual growth, compassion for one’s fellow human beings—indeed for all life—and intolerance of injustice 4. the central importance of community as a locus for meaningful engagement in life and politics. • it all came apart • Tet Offensive • ML King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinated 1968 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1844842.stm https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YCtcD9CfMOI advertisers “co-opt” the message of the sexual revolution race/ethnicity 1970s: the “me decade” 1970s: the “me decade” • characterized by • narcissism • selfishness • personal rather than political awareness (Shulman, p. 145) Video: Saturday Night Fever (1977) “The ‘70s was the decade in which people put an emphasis on skin, on the surface, rather than on the root of things. It was the decade in which the image became preeminent because nothing deeper was going on.” (Norman Mailer, qtd. in Shulman, 145) Ehrenreich, Hearts of Men • popular psychology of the 1950s to 1970s • people’s impulses are basically good • potential for creativity is vast • spontaneity is preferable to stagnation • life is an ‘adventure,’ not a tragedy (p. 89) self-actualization (Maslow) • all trajectories are possible • old end-point of “maturity” replaced by emphasis on individual, unique growth and self-expression (Ehrenreich 91-92) FILM countercurrents • American film reveals darker side of pop culture • established sources of authority are assailed, mocked, undercut, and exposed MUSIC countercurrents • popular music illustrates the tension between iconoclasm and authority • rock music becomes “an ordinary social fact” and then corporatized • rise of punk music irony • quotation marks around everything • nothing taken at face value; nothing is serious • implies a knowingness, an ability to see things for what they were, without romantic illusions (Shulman) Seventies sensibility creates a double identity; works are both a parody (biting satire) and the thing itself. (Shulman, p. 157) two contradictory readings of the 1970s 1. the world in disarray; a betrayal of sixties passion and idealism; the culture passionless and clichéd; a trashy postscript to the sixties two contradictory readings of the 1970s 2. The seventies as an antidote to the melodrama of the sixties “Those who came of age in the 70s were less idealistic, more realistic; less wild and less authentic and less sincere, but also less melodramatic and less violent. Less courageous, but also less foolish. Less moralistic, but more ethical. They were a sweeter, sadder, sexier, funnier bunch than the kids of the sixties” (Shulman 158). “The wince gave way to a smirk, a sense of malaise.” (Shulman 158)