|
|
In
American culture, the decade looked on perhaps most nostalgically of any decade
in the past hundred years is that of the 1950s. It was thought of as a simple
time, when the American public was comfortable economically, and the “American
Dream” was a reality for many people. Television shows about the decade, such
as Happy Days, further drive home the
point that the 1950s was an almost magical era, where everything worked out
according to plan. In these types of nostalgic memories about the 1950s, rarely
are McCarthyism or the Cold War or the Civil Rights battle mentioned. Yet these
were very real and, in some cases, very scary events that deserve to be
mentioned. Events such as these not only helped to define the 1950s, but they
also helped to set up the turbulent events that occurred during the 1960s, and,
as such, cannot be ignored.
The
Cold War is an event that had a profound impact on America, and, although it
lasted through the 1980s, it probably had its greatest impact on Americans in
the 1950s. As the threat of nuclear war
became more intense, people constructed bomb shelters to shield themselves from
a possible attack. It is the children, though, who probably felt the most
danger from the looming threat of nuclear war. The “duck-and-cover” types of
drills that children were put through in schools during the decade were
doubtlessly very scary endeavors, and are something that is mostly ignored in
the typical 1950s nostalgia-fests such as Happy
Days.
There
were two things inherently wrong with the “duck-and-cover” drills of the 1950s.
First, the “duck-and-cover” training films showed children climbing under
desks, jumping behind walls, or, in some cases, throwing a picnic blanket over
their heads to protect themselves when a nuclear holocaust is afoot. The very
idea that doing something like this would spare your life was utter nonsense,
and it is impossible to believe that the members of the government during the
1950s were naïve enough to think that foolish measures such as those would
offer any protection at all.
Put
quite simply, the government deceived these children, and led them to believe
would be safe in the event of a nuclear attack when in reality they would be
anything but. Granted, if the government was straight forward with the children
(and with the rest of the American public, for that matter) and told them that,
in the event of nuclear war, they would surely perish, even if they employed
that inane “duck-and-cover” tactic, the results could have been disastrous. But
the government could have just not told children anything at all, or at least
concentrated on practical safeguards against nuclear war, such as lead bomb
shelters. They insisted on deceiving the children, though, and as these
children grew up to become young adults in the 1960s, they grew to recognize,
at least subconsciously, that the government had lied to them growing up. This
may very well have been the catalyst to the vehement distrust of the government
by young adults as the Vietnam mess unfolded. This distrust of the government
that developed in the 1960s never left us and is still around in the year 2000.
Another unfortunate effect of teaching the “duck-and-cover” method, and an effect that is almost never mentioned, is the element of fear that must have been engrained in all of these children. Nostalgia buffs may rave about the simplicity of the times then, but there was a sense of danger that loomed throughout the decade. Even if a child does feel the “duck-and-cover” method will keep him safe, the idea of a possible nuclear disaster must be a pretty heady thing for a ten-year-old to process.
Of course, there were more problems with the 1950s besides the Cold War. Look at McCarthyism. What is scary about McCarthyism isn’t so much that a nutty senator from Wisconsin classified all these people as Communists. What is scary is that people bought into the whole notion so eagerly. It was almost like they wanted to believe the people McCarthy classified as communists were really communists so that they could weed them out of society and continue with their happy, white bread, homogeneous lives.
Joseph McCarthy may have started the Red Scare, but the American public has to take at least some of the blame for allowing it to reach the fever pitch it did.
Why did the public seemingly, if, albeit, subconsciously, embrace McCarthyism? They wanted to protect themselves against any possible invasion, even if it was only an invasion of thought. After World War II, there was a noticeable need among Americans to conform. After all, from conformity would spring unity. Thus, united America would stand against all her enemies. Conformity did not allow for even a hint of communism to seep through. In fact, conformity was very much encouraged during the 1950s, even if nobody consciously knew that at the time. Even Hollywood encouraged it, through television shows such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best. And in the 1950s, conformity meant that you were a middle-class WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) with 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, and living in the suburbs. In short, you would be living the American Dream.
Yes, that was the definition of the American Dream, and there was very little room for variation. In fact, in his play The American Dream, Edward Albee spoofs the idea of such a dream by bestowing the title of “American Dream” on someone who fits the bill almost to a tee. Young, muscular, and almost certainly white, Grandma gives him said title almost as soon as meeting him: “Yup. Boy, you know what you are, don't you? You're the American Dream, that's what you are. All those other people, they don't know what they're talking about. You . . . you are the American Dream” (Albee 108).
Unfortunately, though nobody came out and said it, the American Dream in the 1950s was pretty much for whites only. Other races, most notably African Americans, had a difficult, if not impossible, time finding success in life. Lorraine Hansberry describes the situation pretty well in her play A Raisin in the Sun. The play deals with a lower middle class black family struggling to make ends meet. In the play, you get a feeling of how tough it would be to raise children under similar circumstances, much less make ends meet. In fact, Walter Younger is so frustrated at the lack of opportunities for black people that sometimes he sounds almost ashamed of his race, such as in his line, “The world’s most backward race of people, and that’s a fact” (Hansberry 38).
By and large, the popular thing to do in the 1950s was to ignore those less fortunate than you. Either ignore them or push them aside. This was the case with black people. For years, they had to sit in the back of city buses, use different public restrooms than white people, drink from different fountains than white people, and so on. Finally, one day in 1955, Rosa Parks had had enough, and her refusal to give up her seat on a bus one day led to a massive bus boycott. Later that year, the Civil Rights Movement began in Montgomery, Alabama, and it spread as the 1950s turned into the 1960s.
Slowly but surely, blacks began to get more rights and receive better treatment from other people. Race relations began improving, and Hollywood began reflecting this. In The Defiant Ones, for example, two escaped convicts—one black and the other white—are chained together by a pair of handcuffs. In order to evade capture, and, indeed, to even live, “Joker” Jacobson (Tony Curits) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) must learn to get along with each other. This is not an easy task at the beginning of movie, for Joker obviously harbors some racist feelings and takes it out on Cullen. But by the end of the movie, the two are almost best friends and, in the final shot of he movie, Cullen is seen comforting Joker, as Joker has taken ill.
Images like that became prevalent more and more in real life, as blacks and whites became friends in ways they never had before. Some of these new shows was reflected in the movies and on television; others were still stuck in the past. Such is the case with Pillow Talk. Though the movie came out a year after The Defiant Ones (1959 vs. 1958), it feels like it’s stuck in a different era, at least as far as race relations were concerned. Almost all of the characters in this movie are white, with the handful of blacks that do appear being relegated to mindless, empty parts in such places as piano bars. Pillow Talk represents a variation on the American Dream (with a rich, young, attractive socialite looking for another rich, young, attractive socialite to marry) and makes it clear that, in many arenas of pop culture, blacks still had no business going after the American Dream. This will change during the 1960s.
The black Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1950s will inspire another movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, in the 1960s. It was obvious that the movement wasn’t around yet in the 1950s. In all of the artifacts studied in class, women are overly needy and dependent on men. In short, they are not presented very positively. The movie that treats women the worst is The Defiant Ones. In the movie, there’s a part where Joker bursts into The Woman’s house (Cara Williams), holding a gun and demanding food for himself and Cullen. Now, for some strange reason, this turns The Woman on, and she begins flirting mercilessly with Joker. After a brief role in the hay that evening, The Woman is prepared to run away with Joker, even though she doesn’t even know his name, nor him her name. Still, she is so desperate for a man (“a woman gets lonely,” she says at one point) that she even sends Cullen off to die so that she and Joker can escape together. It’s shocking that the writers of The Defiant Ones thought so little of women to include this scene. The Woman is presented as so desperate and man-hungry that she’d gone crazy waiting for one.
In Rebel Without a Cause, Judy (Natalie Wood) is also presented as needing a man’s love to keep her happy. It’s understandable that she would want her father’s love. But she falls in love with Jim (James Dean) so suddenly, that you have to wonder just how boy-crazy she really is. It is tough to have too much of a problem with Judy in Rebel Without a Cause because her character is still a teenager; The Woman in The Defiant Ones is an adult, and, worse yet, has a child. Her character is one of the worst depictions of women to ever grace the silver screen.
Women get slightly better treatment in Pillow Talk. Here, Jan Morrow (Doris Day) enjoys a successful life without help from a man. She is independent and fairly strong-willed. However, she spends the movie looking for a man. The movie is filled with misogynistic (though still humorous) lines that suggest that, even though a woman may be financially independent, she still needs a man to hold her. Ultimately, though it may go about it in a better way than Rebel Without a Cause or The Defiant Ones, women are treated the same way in Pillow Talk: as utterly needing of a man in order to survive. Women will fare better, and will truly become independent, in the 1960s, with such television shows as Get Smart and That Girl. That will be the time that the women’s liberation movement will be in full swing. However, until then, the 1950s vision of women was none too beneficial.
Finally, one of the most important movements to develop in the 1950s, which would in turn impact the 1960s, was the notion of a generation gap. In eras before the 1950s, there really was no big deal made out of being a teenager. You were an older child than you were when you were, say, six, but there was no thought given to any sort of rebellion or anything like that. You did what you were told, and grew up either in your father or mother’s footsteps, or you did what they approved of.
This all changed in the 1950s. Teenagers began to develop an identity that was all their own. The establishment of rock and roll music was a crucial development, for it gave teenagers music of their own to listen to, instead of having to listen to their parents’ type of music. The increasing popularity of television also opened teenagers up to a new world that they didn’t know about. These new experiences that teenagers were having made them realize that they were their own person, and they could do their own thing if they wanted. They didn’t have to go along with their parents on everything. In fact, most times, they didn’t want to. They wanted to rebel, because they thought their way was the best way. Their parents, who didn’t have television or rock and roll music or any of these new experiences, were completely taken aback and didn’t know quite what to do. The generation gap was born.
Rebel Without a Cause was the first film to appeal specifically to a teenage audience. As such, it was also the first film to address the issue of a generation gap. Jim (James Dean) just could not stand living with his bickering parents anymore. He felt mother (Ann Doran) was too bossy, and felt his father (Jim Backus) was too weak to stand up for what he believed in or, for that matter, Jim. As Jim told his parents, “You’re tearing me apart!” The scene on the staircase in the Stark home between Jim and his parents is very memorable, for in it Jim argues with his parents and shows that, perhaps, he is more of an adult than his parents are. This was important, because, in the past, teenagers pretty much did what they told. They were never thought to know better than their parents did.
There’s another generation gap between Judy and her parents. Judy wants the affection of her father (William Hopper), but he doesn’t seem to want to give it to her. This probably dates back to his own childhood, when, once you reached a certain age, it was inappropriate to expect a kiss from your father. Things seem to be different for Judy’s generation, but her father doesn’t seem to understand that. Regardless, Judy feels hurt and confused by her father’s lack of affection for her, and it helps to inspire this great exchange between Jim and Judy: “Jim: Nobody talks to children. Judy: No, they just tell them.” That two-line bit of dialogue almost single-handedly sums up the slowly-widening generation gap in America. The gap will widen much further apart in the 1960s, when parents and children will have differing views on the Vietnam War.
Almost all of the turbulent events that defined the 1960s and made it such an important decade have their roots in the 1950s. Events such as the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Movement are not to be overlooked. They should be recognized for the important events that they were, even if it means admitting that life in the 1950s wasn’t all sock hops and malt shops. There were some unpleasant, stressful times mixed in with those happy days. In their own way, the years of the 1950s were almost just as important as the 1960s. You can’t have the 1960s without them.
