Oh the expressions on their faces ! I will never, ever get tired of posting this one. Sexy, sweet toons from Arthur de Pins.
The 1950s - a short series of posts
I’m more than slightly fascinated by 1950s America and if you’re not then I apologise for being boring but if I was writing a work of fiction I don’t think I could invent a more improbable time or place.
In the 1950s the country was enjoying a period of unprecedented affluence but had no real sense of security. The great depression was still in living memory, WW11 was even more recent, the atom bomb was casting a dark shadow over the nations psyche and then there was the over-hyped ‘communist menace’.
This was the decade when ‘teenagers’ were invented, when cars looked like spaceships and space-travel was becoming a possibility, and when rock ‘n’ roll changed the face of popular music forever.
This was a time when the FBI got into bed with the Mafia, the CIA secretly murdered people and subverted democracy abroad, and the super-rich like Howard Hughes pulled the strings of puppet politicians.
Racism was institutionalized, segregation was a reality for many, and society was rigid and intolerant of deviation from the ‘norm’. Under the shiny, plastic surface it was an age when dark forces were at work that the public simply weren’t aware of.
It was as though in the 1950s people inhabited an agreed fantasy and, while I suppose thats always true to some degree, then there seemed to be a much bigger disconnect between reality and the shared fantasy than usual.
It was a strange, bright, brutal, exciting, deeply corrupt, dark, exuberant, paranoid, optimistic time .. the 1950s. More posts on random 50s subjects to come ..
Ellie
The 1950s - The Bikini
The 1950s was fascinated (and terrified) by the Atom bomb and the fascination was reflected in the scandalous new swimsuit being called ‘the Bikini’ after the Bikini atoll where an Atom bomb test was carried out. What a weird connection, Sex and WMD !!
Of course then (as now) there were people who love to be outraged and always look for it diligently and they were duly scandalized and denounced the bikini as immoral and anti-christian. Some things never change, do they ?
The 1950s - The Invention of the ‘Teenager’
At the mid-point of the 20th century America was a conformist society, paranoid about threats to its newly expanding prosperity and deeply insecure beneath a brash exterior. The over-hyped ‘red-menace’ was scandalously exploited by corrupt politicians like Joe MCarthy for their own benefit and society generally was fearful of the rise of the ‘teenager’ as a force to be reckoned with.
Previously you had been a child until you were old enough to be a ‘grown-up’ and there was nothing in-between. Now, with the rising levels of affluence the young had purchasing power and the market, never slow to react, began to woo them.
Fashions in clothes, movies and music were hastily concocted and marketed to ‘teenagers’ thus confirming a sense of identity. The older generation, who felt control slipping out of their hands, took it all far too seriously and over-reacted. Those darn juvenile delinquents should know their place and behave !
Perhaps the most quintessentially ‘teenage’ movie of the 1950s was ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ starring James Dean as a confused teen railing against the hypocrisy of the older generation. He made it cool, indeed almost obligatory, to be ‘misunderstood’ and ‘rebellious’.
While ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ was encouraging American kids to embrace their inner angst movies like ‘I Was A Teenage Werewolf’, in which a hapless teenager gets furry-faced and menaces his town, reflected both teenage feelings of alienation and the older generations growing anxiety over the ‘teen menace’.
If only parents in the 1950s could have known what the 60’s would bring they’d have been grateful for what they had, but thats another story ..
The 1950s - Rock ‘n Roll
Causing almost as big an explosion as the Atom Bomb in the 1950s was the birth of Rock ‘n Roll. Until then young people had nothing to listen to but the same music as their parents, essentially bland ballads, a bit of jazz if they were daring, or novelty songs. Now they had their own music and their parents hated it, which made it all the more attractive.
The crossover of what was essentially black music, mixed up with a dash of country, to a wider white audience was enabled by this man, Elvis Presley, who was the total package of talent, looks and charisma. He didn’t invent rock ‘n roll but for millions he personified it. His importance to the history of music can’t be over-stated. John Lennon once famously said … “Before Elvis, there was nothing”.
The 1950s - Cuba and the Red Menace
Poor America. As if crazy rock music and rebellious teenagers weren’t enough to worry about in the 50s, there was the liberation of Cuba by Castro.
This deeply offended the American big business and mafia interests who had ruthlessly exploited the island and regarded it as their personal cash-machine. They conspired with the CIA and American politicians to overthrow Castro and replace him with a big-business and crime-friendly puppet.
The CIA undertook terrorist attacks on Cuba as well as many illegal and wacky assassination attempts and even mounted a comically botched invasion. Thankfully for the people of Cuba they all failed, as have the fifty years of vindictive and inhumane economic sanctions since.
As an historical footnote .. the ‘Red Menace’ scare of the ’50s served well as a tool for keeping the American public compliant and enabled their corporate rulers to plunder the resources of other countries until the ‘fall’ of communism several decades later. It was then hurriedly replaced by the ‘Terrorist’ scare which now fulfils exactly the same function. There must always be an external ‘menace’.
Looking back on Americas troubled relations with the tiny island of Cuba, Noam Chomsky wrote “Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted.”
The 1950s - Motorvatin’
I’m no expert on the history of cars (or anything else for that matter) but I do have a genuine fondness for the American cars of the 50s. With their exuberant colors, swooping lines and futuristic chrome fenders they expressed the extravangent vulgarity and optimism of the era.
Car-makers then weren’t afraid to take stylistic chances and cars had individuality, not like the little boxes designed by committee that have since replaced them. Its not surprising that some people have seen them as a visible manifestation of the American Dream.
Those dream-cars from the 50s now lying rusting in junkyards and you could almost see that as a metaphor for the American Dream itself. The one thing you can guarantee in life is change and history teaches us that no country or empire or system stays at the top forever.
Every society has a trajectory, a path of rise and fall. In a hundred years, or maybe less, some other country or political grouping will be the worlds superpower and not America. Thats as certain as anything can be. Everything passes. Nothing stays the same.
We have not come to the ‘end of history’ as some idiot academic suggested a while ago (and I really can’t be bothered to argue about Fukayama or his ‘ideas’ with anyone by the way). Understanding the historical perspective and the inevitability of change must, I think, be helpful in tempering arrogance and making wise choices in the present.
Still, getting back to the subject, the 1950s *was* a time of optimism when anything seemed possible and this was nowhere better refected than in the baroque automotive confections of chrome and pastel color with their spaceship-like chrome adornments and swooping tailfins.
Forget good taste, they had *personality*.
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