Why are the 1950s so idealized?
- Thread starter Cuāuhtemōc
- Start date
And thus, "Failure to Launch" is delayed 5 decades, and Matthew McConaughey is deprived a film role, which is only good for the human race.Delayed adulthood? More like strenuously avoided adulthood.
People only began to deveop a fondness for the 1950s during the 1970s; I think that you have to look back to what changed in the 1960s to understand why. Drug use among kids proliferated in the 1960s -- basically unheard of in the 1950s; same for sex and swearing in films and on television. The Third World mostly consisted of European colonies in the 1950s. The US was against this, but the colonies didn't have any affect on the typical US citizen. In the 1960s, the Third World intruded in unexpected and unpleasant ways, notably the Vietnam War and terrorism. Far from being grateful for the US's advocacy of independence for all, much of the Third World was hostile. All in all, many people began to think of the 50s as the good old days as a result.
Or maybe it's just people who were preteens in the 50s who are nostalgic, because their early childhoods were fun, and real life is harder.
Or maybe it's just people who were preteens in the 50s who are nostalgic, because their early childhoods were fun, and real life is harder.
Yes, for the first, the entire decolonization process left a bad taste in the European's mouth and an even worse taste in the former colonies' mouths.
And for the second, it's because of the baby boom.
Nebogipfel
Monthly Donor
Although post-war austerity seems to be idealized, too in a certain egalitartain way. Everyone had a hard time, sitting in the same boat etc.
And why not? You were (if you couldn't immediately afford college) guarranteed a stable wage right out of high school (now given, said job, being the military, was rather dangerous, but still, it paid decently for the day), and when you were done, if you chose, you could get ahead in life with a heavily-subsidized college education. And your wife would likely take care of the kids at home. It wasn't idiotic then, simply because the economy allowed it to. Today, you can't properly raise a child straight out of high school, simply because you need at least a few years punching the clock to get the requisite resources necessary.
Different generations idealize the fifties for different reasons.
Take somebody who was an adult in 1953. They spent much, if not most, their lives surrounded by shortages: shortages of jobs, housing, rationing during WWII, etc. When the economy went back to consumer goods in 1946, there was a pipeline to fill. Localized rent controls persisted into the fifties.
Enter 1953. The VHF television spectrum was suddenly filled across the United States. In 1954, the recording industry settled on a standard for high fidelity music, as 78 RPM records would give way to 45 RPM singles and 33 RPM LP albums. Tape recording slowly entered the market in the early fifties, allowing for special audio effects. The universal impact of new entertainment was immediate.
Automobiles would take on curved, wrap-around windshields, two-tone color patterns and 12 volt batteries. Consumers could see new appliances in the show rooms; they could be had for cash without a waiting list. It would be another 20 years before the average wage earner could fill the home with new items, but the fifties represented the beginning of prosperity.
It was perhaps the freest time for the American housewife, since one income supported a family and appliances had significantly reduced the drudgery of house work.
Those born in the fifties were reminded by their parents that they were very lucky to enjoy so many new conveniences that the past generation never envisioned.
For those impacted by civil rights, it was the beginning of a pursuit that put Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. into the headlines. For the white males who did not appreciate the sharing of their rights, it was the last stand for their own dominance.
For those who are generations too young to remember the fifties, the aura goes full circle back to entertainment. Notice that very few songs from before 1953 are still played in their original form, except for Christmas songs. The difference is as technological as it is cultural. The year 1954 represents the start of modern entertainment.
What we call "the fifties" is really the last half of the decade. There are stage shows and programs dedicated to this brief period, featuring the music and dress. Often time, the viewer forgets how short this period actually was.
Take somebody who was an adult in 1953. They spent much, if not most, their lives surrounded by shortages: shortages of jobs, housing, rationing during WWII, etc. When the economy went back to consumer goods in 1946, there was a pipeline to fill. Localized rent controls persisted into the fifties.
Enter 1953. The VHF television spectrum was suddenly filled across the United States. In 1954, the recording industry settled on a standard for high fidelity music, as 78 RPM records would give way to 45 RPM singles and 33 RPM LP albums. Tape recording slowly entered the market in the early fifties, allowing for special audio effects. The universal impact of new entertainment was immediate.
Automobiles would take on curved, wrap-around windshields, two-tone color patterns and 12 volt batteries. Consumers could see new appliances in the show rooms; they could be had for cash without a waiting list. It would be another 20 years before the average wage earner could fill the home with new items, but the fifties represented the beginning of prosperity.
It was perhaps the freest time for the American housewife, since one income supported a family and appliances had significantly reduced the drudgery of house work.
Those born in the fifties were reminded by their parents that they were very lucky to enjoy so many new conveniences that the past generation never envisioned.
For those impacted by civil rights, it was the beginning of a pursuit that put Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. into the headlines. For the white males who did not appreciate the sharing of their rights, it was the last stand for their own dominance.
For those who are generations too young to remember the fifties, the aura goes full circle back to entertainment. Notice that very few songs from before 1953 are still played in their original form, except for Christmas songs. The difference is as technological as it is cultural. The year 1954 represents the start of modern entertainment.
What we call "the fifties" is really the last half of the decade. There are stage shows and programs dedicated to this brief period, featuring the music and dress. Often time, the viewer forgets how short this period actually was.
The top bracket of personal income taxes was 90 percent in the USA.
Of course, the rich could then as now employ very creative accountants and great influence on Congress to legislate loopholes that went a long way toward nullifying that.
I agree with the trend of comments so far--the 50s weren't so great actually, but they were a big improvement on the previous decades, certainly for US citizens and I think also just about everyone in the world--considering that if Russians, Chinese, and even Western Europeans weren't enjoying American levels of prosperity, at least they also didn't have Hitler or World War II being fought right in their front yards either.
Also, along with fear of global nuclear war and a general right-wing repression (in the West, and ongoing (though actually somewhat moderated) left-wing repression in the Soviet sphere), there was also grounds for hope. The capitalist world economy was enjoying a boom, largely but not entirely to the benefit of Americans. The Soviet and Chinese spheres were being developed too. If only the various political police could back off somewhat and the great powers avoid nuking one another, prospects could be bright.
On the social sphere--the Leave it To Beaver lovers are clinging to a non-existent past to be sure. But insofar as Middle America was enjoying prosperity and security, it was largely due to acceptance of at least some of the New Deal reforms as established, and making them work well.
A lot of people like things like 50's rock and roll. Well, at the time these had their enemies just as pop music does today, for much the same reasons. (Personally I like 50s rock well enough, but 60s stuff even better.) If one was a liberal in those days, the present had some hopeful signs. In many respects, if one likes the 50s one ought to love the 60s when more of these trends had borne more fruit.
The thing is, a lot of American 50s nostalgia is trying to find a sweet spot between taking things they like (like American world dominance, prosperity, and rock) while denying the very trends that pretty much brought these good things about that they hate--the decline of racism as a respectable world-view to be voiced aloud, for instance, or improving gender relations and greater sexual freedom. These things were still in early phases in the 50s and can be more easily imagined away by reactionaries. Also, the dark consequences of a lot of dragon seeds sown in the 50s started coming home to roost more visibly in the 60s--the Vietnam War, the general imposition of dictatorships on the Third World (many of which have successors that we now bemoan).
To many of these people of course things I see as unqualified good things, like the decline of racism, sexism, a greater sense of community in the world as a whole, made definite and hopefully irrevocable changes in the 1960s, and they hate these things. For instance in the 1950s, indeed until the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v Virginia in the late 1960s, interracial marriage was illegal in more states of the Union than not. Ending that sort of thing seems good to me, but bad to them. Not to mention desegregation of schools, legalized birth control, gay rights, etc. For these people, clinging to the 50s over what came after is a vote for repression and bigotry as a way of life, and some of them are quite open about it. Nevermind that even from their reactionary viewpoint they wouldn't really like the real 50s, and if they ISOTed themselves there and crushed all opposition, they'd undercut a lot of what they do like.
Already in the past couple decades I've seen the more "visionary" reactionaries like Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich give up on pining for the 1950s and start praising 1900 instead. Soon they'll be longing for the 1850s. Actually your pro-Confederacy types are already there...
A) The growth in living standards by a large segment of the population (but not all...check the northern urban and southern rural poverty stats)
B) It was a rather stable, conformist era, after the chaos of the Depression and WWII
C) The lack of civil rights for most of the nation's population (this is mainly from older generations-the one that has the most nostalgia for the era)
B) It was a rather stable, conformist era, after the chaos of the Depression and WWII
C) The lack of civil rights for most of the nation's population (this is mainly from older generations-the one that has the most nostalgia for the era)
Just in the USA, I think that there are different reasons for different people.
Economic prosperity for a pretty large percentage of the population is a big part of it. Even though that prosperity left a lot of people out, it was still pretty widespread. Unprecedented numbers of lower middle and working class people in the USA had access to better education, decent paying and fairly secure jobs, and the opportunity to purchase their own homes. That was a huge deal, especially for the generation whose first memories as children were of the Great Depression.
I think that this economic prosperity fed into a pretty widespread feeling of optimism for many in the USA - if the country could get through the Depression and WWII and come out more prosperous than ever, then there was no problem, no matter how difficult, that the country couldn't solve.
What very few people at the time, even experts, really appreciated, I think, was how much of the USA's prosperity of the time resulted from being the only major industrial and economic power that had come through WWII undamaged. This is my own personal opinion, and feel free to tell me why I'm totally wrong if I am totally wrong, but I think that US companies of the time were able to provide lots of pretty secure, decently paid jobs, pay high taxes, and still make huge profits, largely because there was less competition than there would normally have been because of the effects of WWII. As established industrial powers revived and new powers began to emerge, US companies could only remain profitable by cutting expenses by beginning to move jobs overseas, where there were an increasing number of countries that had the basic infrastructure and economy to provide lots of low-paid unskilled, and later skilled, labor.
Apart from economics, the reason that I think some other people idealize the 1950s is that they believe, rightly or wrongly, that a lot of what they perceive as being bad and destructive about the modern USA either started in the 1960s, or got a lot worse. Cultural conservatives see the 1950s as the last decade when the nuclear family with the man as the breadwinner and the woman as the homemaker was the dominant cultural ideal. They also see it as the last decade when a variety of practices that they consider destructive, such as divorce, delayed marriage, extended dependence on parents well into adulthood, and frequent premarital sex, were strongly discouraged and carried a social stigma. The 50s are also seen as the last decade when violent crime and widespread drug abuse were not very widespread.
Whether these perceptions reflect reality is a whole different question. Just speaking for myself, I tend to think that a lot of the family and social problems that were allegedly rare in the 1950s, such as alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence and abuse, teenage pregnancy, and violent crime, were actually quite a bit more common than people often think, but they were less well known because people either actively concealed them or at least did not publicize them to the extent that became normal in later periods. Other things, like divorce and delayed (or no) marriage, definitely were much less common in the 1950s, but this is not always a good thing. While easy divorce is undoubtedly destructive in many cases, I suspect that there are also quite a few cases where the stigma against divorce pressured couples with a very hostile and dysfunctional relationship into staying together, resulting in a hostile and abusive environment for their children which was even worse for them than a divorce would have been.
I apologize if I turned my commentary on the 1950s into a soapbox speech about the possible risks of over-idealizing the past.
Economic prosperity for a pretty large percentage of the population is a big part of it. Even though that prosperity left a lot of people out, it was still pretty widespread. Unprecedented numbers of lower middle and working class people in the USA had access to better education, decent paying and fairly secure jobs, and the opportunity to purchase their own homes. That was a huge deal, especially for the generation whose first memories as children were of the Great Depression.
I think that this economic prosperity fed into a pretty widespread feeling of optimism for many in the USA - if the country could get through the Depression and WWII and come out more prosperous than ever, then there was no problem, no matter how difficult, that the country couldn't solve.
What very few people at the time, even experts, really appreciated, I think, was how much of the USA's prosperity of the time resulted from being the only major industrial and economic power that had come through WWII undamaged. This is my own personal opinion, and feel free to tell me why I'm totally wrong if I am totally wrong, but I think that US companies of the time were able to provide lots of pretty secure, decently paid jobs, pay high taxes, and still make huge profits, largely because there was less competition than there would normally have been because of the effects of WWII. As established industrial powers revived and new powers began to emerge, US companies could only remain profitable by cutting expenses by beginning to move jobs overseas, where there were an increasing number of countries that had the basic infrastructure and economy to provide lots of low-paid unskilled, and later skilled, labor.
Apart from economics, the reason that I think some other people idealize the 1950s is that they believe, rightly or wrongly, that a lot of what they perceive as being bad and destructive about the modern USA either started in the 1960s, or got a lot worse. Cultural conservatives see the 1950s as the last decade when the nuclear family with the man as the breadwinner and the woman as the homemaker was the dominant cultural ideal. They also see it as the last decade when a variety of practices that they consider destructive, such as divorce, delayed marriage, extended dependence on parents well into adulthood, and frequent premarital sex, were strongly discouraged and carried a social stigma. The 50s are also seen as the last decade when violent crime and widespread drug abuse were not very widespread.
Whether these perceptions reflect reality is a whole different question. Just speaking for myself, I tend to think that a lot of the family and social problems that were allegedly rare in the 1950s, such as alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence and abuse, teenage pregnancy, and violent crime, were actually quite a bit more common than people often think, but they were less well known because people either actively concealed them or at least did not publicize them to the extent that became normal in later periods. Other things, like divorce and delayed (or no) marriage, definitely were much less common in the 1950s, but this is not always a good thing. While easy divorce is undoubtedly destructive in many cases, I suspect that there are also quite a few cases where the stigma against divorce pressured couples with a very hostile and dysfunctional relationship into staying together, resulting in a hostile and abusive environment for their children which was even worse for them than a divorce would have been.
I apologize if I turned my commentary on the 1950s into a soapbox speech about the possible risks of over-idealizing the past.
archaeogeek
Banned
C - Ah yes "Do you remember when women didn't have the vote and certain folks weren't allowed on golf courses? Pettridge Farms remembers."
The True Fifties
Actually the true "Good Old Days" of the Fifties ran from the end of the Korean War to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, twelve or thirteen years of relative prosperity and an apparently improving situation for everyone in the United States. It was best to be white, of course, but things were already improving quite a lot if you weren't, and, if you were white and liberal, you could feel good that things were getting better for people who weren't white and liberal. And it was best to be young, from rugrat to college kids. It is always possible to set other start- and end-points; for instance, the censure of Joe McCarthy to the assassination of JFK. But I'll hold for mine because before 1953 you still had Stalin around, and with the Watts riots and the first big deployment of American troops to Vietnam, both in 1965, the basic liberal-civil-rights coalition that had accomplished so much began to fall apart.
It wasn't until the end of this era that having divorced parents or an unmarried mother became a more common childhood experience than an intact family. As a child from a broken home, I was very much an odd-boy-out in elementary school. I was about the only one until Mrs. Gammet from across the street actually had an affair with a married man that there were four more children from broken homes in the county. (Mr. Gammet re-married and had ten more kids.)
Science and Technology had delivered miracles and promised more. Polio was conquered. Tuberculosis nearly became extinct. Pneumonia went from being a death sentence to a shot of penicillin. Electricity was cheap and available even in isolated farm homes. The Atomic Age melded into the Space Age, and we actually knew we'd be going to the moon. Labor and management had reached compromise; wages were good; anyone could find a job if they really wanted to work. Women could work, but more and more of them didn't have to work outside the home.
Other people have noticed that the Fifties were basically wonderful for the USA because World War II had hammered everyone else. Exports were one reason there was high employment over the period: There was more than the American market to sell to. However, the USA also exported its culture. American popular music and American movies had already been busily eroding traditional values around the world since the turn of the century, but now as a style model, the USA had no real rivals.
The USA retains its lead over the rest of the world in style. Why? We're further into the future than everyone else. We got our head start in the Fifties and kept it. But at the end of the Fifties, our leadership stopped being so much fun; it lost its last trace of innocence.
How can I be so sure we'll keep that lead? Because the smartest people in the rest of the world keep coming here to work, and most of them stay.
Actually the true "Good Old Days" of the Fifties ran from the end of the Korean War to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, twelve or thirteen years of relative prosperity and an apparently improving situation for everyone in the United States. It was best to be white, of course, but things were already improving quite a lot if you weren't, and, if you were white and liberal, you could feel good that things were getting better for people who weren't white and liberal. And it was best to be young, from rugrat to college kids. It is always possible to set other start- and end-points; for instance, the censure of Joe McCarthy to the assassination of JFK. But I'll hold for mine because before 1953 you still had Stalin around, and with the Watts riots and the first big deployment of American troops to Vietnam, both in 1965, the basic liberal-civil-rights coalition that had accomplished so much began to fall apart.
It wasn't until the end of this era that having divorced parents or an unmarried mother became a more common childhood experience than an intact family. As a child from a broken home, I was very much an odd-boy-out in elementary school. I was about the only one until Mrs. Gammet from across the street actually had an affair with a married man that there were four more children from broken homes in the county. (Mr. Gammet re-married and had ten more kids.)
Science and Technology had delivered miracles and promised more. Polio was conquered. Tuberculosis nearly became extinct. Pneumonia went from being a death sentence to a shot of penicillin. Electricity was cheap and available even in isolated farm homes. The Atomic Age melded into the Space Age, and we actually knew we'd be going to the moon. Labor and management had reached compromise; wages were good; anyone could find a job if they really wanted to work. Women could work, but more and more of them didn't have to work outside the home.
Other people have noticed that the Fifties were basically wonderful for the USA because World War II had hammered everyone else. Exports were one reason there was high employment over the period: There was more than the American market to sell to. However, the USA also exported its culture. American popular music and American movies had already been busily eroding traditional values around the world since the turn of the century, but now as a style model, the USA had no real rivals.
The USA retains its lead over the rest of the world in style. Why? We're further into the future than everyone else. We got our head start in the Fifties and kept it. But at the end of the Fifties, our leadership stopped being so much fun; it lost its last trace of innocence.
How can I be so sure we'll keep that lead? Because the smartest people in the rest of the world keep coming here to work, and most of them stay.
The definition of the cultural Fifties varies (as opposed to the calendrical Fifties, which were of course 1/1/50-12/31/59), but I've always thought of it as being the Eisenhower-Kennedy years (1953-1963), or more generally the end of the Korean War (which more or less felt like an extension of the Forties) to the Kennedy assassination (which I believe ushered in the Sixties).
Basically (in America):
I. If you were white and born before about 1924, you remember the horrors of the Depression and (if male) probably fought in WWII (unless you were too old, in which case you probably fought in WWI). You might be an immigrant seeing the American Dream realized, and understanding that the risks you took immigrating to America are paying off.
II. If you were white and born in the mid-to-late '20s or early-to-mid '30s, you feel pretty lucky. You don't remember the Depression very well (and especially not the Hoover years, which were the worst), but were old enough to understand WWII and to appreciate the availability of plenty now (in the Fifties) compared to the rationing during WWII. You're starting out your life in a good time to do so - the suburbs are a great place to raise kids, you can get a decent job straight out of high school whether blue-collar or white-collar, and if you were drafted into or enlisted in the military the GI Bill ensures you can go to college if you so desire. Times are good. (It should be pointed out that people born in this time period were starting to control the higher echelons of media during the '70s, when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
III. If you were white and born in the late '30s or during WWII, your adolescence occurred during the cultural Fifties, when the whole idea of teen culture was starting to pick up. If you were of a musical bent, rock and roll was new and exciting and had yet to permeate everything. Entertainment was affordable, and you could work at McDonalds or any of those other fast-food places that were just now being founded to save up to buy YOUR VERY OWN CAR. Once you turned 18, the same principles as in (II) applied, except that if you entered the military (either by draft or enlistment), you were comparatively lucky: you'd skipped Korea and we hadn't really gotten into Vietnam yet. (People born here were starting to control the middle echelons of media when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
IV. If you were white and born during the Truman presidency, you were a child during the cultural Fifties, and what with the rise of suburbia and the permissive parenting practices of the late '50s, it was a rather good time to be a kid. You could have awesome-tasting food at these new fast food places ("nutrition"? What's that?), and all sorts of new toys had come out. Slinkies! Silly Putty! These are the first wave of Baby Boomers, and because they are Baby Boomers, there are a lot of them. (People born here were starting to control the lower echelons of media when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
V. It's worth noting that for children (by which I really do mean minors) - i.e. those born during the Eisenhower years, who are also Baby Boomers - even the late '60s really felt like a continuation of the '50s - things really weren't that different. This coupled with the promotions of echelons (III) and (IV) higher in media kind of helped push '50s nostalgia along even into the '80s (e.g. Back to the Future), while also bringing '60s nostalgia in.
VI. If you were black, things were still pretty bad, but even for you things were getting better. The KKK was not as active as it was during the '20s, and the Civil Rights Movement was getting started around this time. You heard about Rosa Parks. You heard about Brown v. Board of Education. The military formally integrated in '48, etc.
VII. If you were neither white nor black, things were probably pretty bad - but "minority" really did mean minority; there just weren't that many people in group VII, so for the vast majority of people, things were looking pretty good.
VIII. If you're a social liberal born at any time (even well after the '50s), the '50s are seen as a time in which the seeds of change were being sown (in the form of the Civil Rights movement, the beatnik proto-counterculture, rock and roll, etc.), to sprout during the '60s.
IX. If you're a social conservative born at any time (even well after the '50s), the '50s are seen as the period exemplifying "the way it should be", the last time period of normality before the '60s turned everything upside-down.
X. If you're a unionist, unions were near their peak power in America in the '50s.
XI. Conversely, if you're a corporate capitalist, business was booming in the '50s. The stock market was higher than it had ever been, even during the 1957-58 recession, and starting up a new small business - or even a big business, really - was relatively easy.
Basically (in America):
I. If you were white and born before about 1924, you remember the horrors of the Depression and (if male) probably fought in WWII (unless you were too old, in which case you probably fought in WWI). You might be an immigrant seeing the American Dream realized, and understanding that the risks you took immigrating to America are paying off.
II. If you were white and born in the mid-to-late '20s or early-to-mid '30s, you feel pretty lucky. You don't remember the Depression very well (and especially not the Hoover years, which were the worst), but were old enough to understand WWII and to appreciate the availability of plenty now (in the Fifties) compared to the rationing during WWII. You're starting out your life in a good time to do so - the suburbs are a great place to raise kids, you can get a decent job straight out of high school whether blue-collar or white-collar, and if you were drafted into or enlisted in the military the GI Bill ensures you can go to college if you so desire. Times are good. (It should be pointed out that people born in this time period were starting to control the higher echelons of media during the '70s, when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
III. If you were white and born in the late '30s or during WWII, your adolescence occurred during the cultural Fifties, when the whole idea of teen culture was starting to pick up. If you were of a musical bent, rock and roll was new and exciting and had yet to permeate everything. Entertainment was affordable, and you could work at McDonalds or any of those other fast-food places that were just now being founded to save up to buy YOUR VERY OWN CAR. Once you turned 18, the same principles as in (II) applied, except that if you entered the military (either by draft or enlistment), you were comparatively lucky: you'd skipped Korea and we hadn't really gotten into Vietnam yet. (People born here were starting to control the middle echelons of media when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
IV. If you were white and born during the Truman presidency, you were a child during the cultural Fifties, and what with the rise of suburbia and the permissive parenting practices of the late '50s, it was a rather good time to be a kid. You could have awesome-tasting food at these new fast food places ("nutrition"? What's that?), and all sorts of new toys had come out. Slinkies! Silly Putty! These are the first wave of Baby Boomers, and because they are Baby Boomers, there are a lot of them. (People born here were starting to control the lower echelons of media when '50s nostalgia started to kick in.)
V. It's worth noting that for children (by which I really do mean minors) - i.e. those born during the Eisenhower years, who are also Baby Boomers - even the late '60s really felt like a continuation of the '50s - things really weren't that different. This coupled with the promotions of echelons (III) and (IV) higher in media kind of helped push '50s nostalgia along even into the '80s (e.g. Back to the Future), while also bringing '60s nostalgia in.
VI. If you were black, things were still pretty bad, but even for you things were getting better. The KKK was not as active as it was during the '20s, and the Civil Rights Movement was getting started around this time. You heard about Rosa Parks. You heard about Brown v. Board of Education. The military formally integrated in '48, etc.
VII. If you were neither white nor black, things were probably pretty bad - but "minority" really did mean minority; there just weren't that many people in group VII, so for the vast majority of people, things were looking pretty good.
VIII. If you're a social liberal born at any time (even well after the '50s), the '50s are seen as a time in which the seeds of change were being sown (in the form of the Civil Rights movement, the beatnik proto-counterculture, rock and roll, etc.), to sprout during the '60s.
IX. If you're a social conservative born at any time (even well after the '50s), the '50s are seen as the period exemplifying "the way it should be", the last time period of normality before the '60s turned everything upside-down.
X. If you're a unionist, unions were near their peak power in America in the '50s.
XI. Conversely, if you're a corporate capitalist, business was booming in the '50s. The stock market was higher than it had ever been, even during the 1957-58 recession, and starting up a new small business - or even a big business, really - was relatively easy.
Hendryk
Banned
I take issue with this kind of statement, which comes up every damn time the 1950s are discussed. In the 1950s the state decided on your behalf which race your spouse was supposed to be, it decided which movies you were allowed to watch, which books you were allowed to read, and which prophylactics you were allowed to use, among a long list of various invasive decisions. Nanny state? More like straight-laced spinster aunt state.