The Fifties: Tranquility in Turmoil PDF

! The fifties: tranquillity in turmoil The long sixties arguably started around 1955 Period generally centered on the Dwight Eisenhower presidency Elected in Nov 1952, until he left the white house in Jan 1961 to John F Kennedy But the historians think it started after WW2 Consen...

! The fifties: tranquillity in turmoil The long sixties arguably started around 1955 Period generally centered on the Dwight Eisenhower presidency Elected in Nov 1952, until he left the white house in Jan 1961 to John F Kennedy But the historians think it started after WW2 Consensus historians’ view: US society after WW2 was shaped by the emergence of a social consensus in the American society View critiqued in 1959 by John Higham in his commentary article “The cult of the “American consensus”: homogenizing our history” (pointed out the weakness of this decade being completely shaped by the consensus), and challenged also later 1. The surface of US society in the 1950’s The US after wold war 2: first world power, uninterrupted economic growth thoughout the decade, baby boom (4 million babies each year) 1945 → 1960: over 75 million people born, single largest generation in the nation’s history whose impact on the country would be very strong in the second half of the 60s because e kids born then would be adults by the then Domination of a social model: Postwar white suburbia (bedroom community) 83% of the baby boom took place in middle class suburbs (quite the contrary of our banlieux) Nice houses, cars, stable jobs, la Vida loca des white nuclear families Nuclear family: a nucleus formed by the parents and 3 to 4 children gravitating around Symbol of the sexual division of labour: father working in the city during the day, the one who provided money for the household (breadwinners) // the wives stayed at home (homemaker), provided stability Those people saw themself as consumers, people who made enough money to be able to acquire consumer goods, able to live the good life " Symbol of this lifestyle : television set (marketed only at the end of the 40s with blurry black and white pictures in a small screen, very few tv programs until 1948) The tv networks accelerated their development from 1948 → Tv broadcasting became a huge cultural phenomenon throughout the 1960’s 2. A decade of anxiety: the impact of the Cold War on US society Americans tried very hard to be happy consumers BUT society agitated by many things Major collective anxieties but nuclear anxiety #1 Communist block (Soviet union, China) → undeclared war (Cold War) Containment policy: what became the principle policy under Truman The US and the “free world” should prevent the expansion of communism in the rest of the world, People were told about the communist threat everyday Nuclear anxiety: fear of atomic war # America in a privileged country bcz they were the only one to have the atomic bomb until the summer of 1949 when the soviets managed to create their own nuclear bomb → end of nuclear monopoly → permanent nuclear anxiety where the enemy (soviets) would drop atomic bombs on the US that kind of declined at the very end of the 20th cebtury (end of Cold War) but nowadays with Russia and the impredictibility of Putin Gave birth to an interesting cultural phenomenon, the UFOs Happens only in America ofc cause they’re the center of the world Conditioned American foreign policies Cf Cuba in 1962 and the Korean War: began in June 1950, communist dictator invaded South Korea that was a pro American dictator, the whole things was organised so that the US could send his troops under the UN and soon China sent “volunteers”. By 1951, the American leader there General MacArthur told Truman to use the nuclear bomb which he refusded because china would participate in the war more officially and he dismissed him but Truman became the “head of redbaiters” and didn’t candidate at the next election → armisitce in July 1953 but no peace treaty was signed and still haven’t Red baiting: persecution and victimization of alleged communists and subversives of all sorts → another pervasive element of the period’s social and political history, paranoia shared by a number of politician about a possible infiltration of communists in US politics, used to discredit some people; also called the witch hunt “20 years of treason”: democrats who had been in the White House had also facilitated communist infiltration in the US Most of them were republicans and some conservatives democrats and worked in two congressional committees “HUAC: house Comite on un American activities (political subversion) in the House of Representatives and in the senate there was “SISS: senate’s internal security subcommittee” and Joe McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin and gave his name to McCarthyism (synonym of redbaiting) bcz he tried very hard to have paper in the press everyday about him so he would lie about his colleagues Various collective anxieties experienced by Americans were so many currents running under the surface of the 1950’s US Society, still this society was in itself fragmented along lines that were variously visible to outside observers 3. A fragmented society Race relations: the weight of Jim Crow Jim Crow was not a person but a nickname to talk about racial segreagation, referred to old cartoons in which black people were resented as crows Racial segregation present in all of the country but it was stronger in the southern states where social and political violence were tremendous, they were second tier citizens In the southern states, African American were denied access to voting cause of regulations that targeted the majority of black peoples that couldn’t read and write → in order to register to vote they had to take the literacy test to prove that they could read and write which they couldn’t In other places you had to pay the poll taxes or there was the grandfather clause: you could be a registered voter if your grandfather had been a voter before 1860 Youth culture: Emerged after the WW1 in the 20s, early forms of emancipation, more access to cars if you had money but grew bigger after WW2 Growing autonomy of youngsters in the postwar consumer society Because of the economic prosperity and the money they saved during the war because you couldn’t buy so much things Key element experienced by a much larger segment of the population than in the 20s Obsession of authorities and experts with “juvenile delinquency” Came from the war years where mothers had to raise their children without the father and the fact that young people risked to become juvenile delinquents became more and more popular → blame on women ofc bcz they were not doing enough In reality real juvenile delinquency started shooting up in the 1960s Popular culture promoted this idea buy creating this image of the rebel (Elvis Presley, James Dean) Rise of new popular musical forms: bop and jazz (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis), rock’n’roll and Elvis Presley in 1955 The beat generation: young adults born before WW2 choosing a bohemian lifestyle to reject postwar conformity and materialism New music that was not new, common in the south, but commercialised as rock n roll in 1955 All young people were not as young, there was a generation that was older: the beat generation born before the baby boom Chose to reject the materialism and conformity of the middle class to live a Bohemian lifestyle based on the lifestyle of Paris, users of alcohol and marijuana Greenwich village in NYC and north beach in SF Represented by the poet Allen Ginsberg and the Quebecois Jack Kerouac Conclusion American society enjoyed economic prosperity and nurtured a self-image that did not own up to a number of pervasive anxieties and socio-cultural contradictions in the 1950s. They liked to think that the image of the white suburban families represented the US but the issues were still proheminent Forces boiling under the surface were to loom increasingly larger and become essential actors of social change in the following decade African American, young people, non-conformists individuals