Was the Vietnam war what ulitimately brought down the values and culture of the 1950’s?
I’m referring to the disilussionment that people felt with what was perceived with the hippocracy towards the handling of the war that caused society to break out of the once established social bonds. If that’s the case would the 50s as we know them have survived past the 60s if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War?
and the hyppocritical political atmosphere that it created and
Are you talking about the values that said a woman’s place was in (her new, modern) kitchen? Wearing a pretty dress and makeup cuz that’s what a good wife did? The breadwinner was right and that was good enough for her little brain…
Or the values that said that anyone, remotely, by the word of one citizen, or by assembling together with certain groups, was labled anti-American, and shunned, outcast, and even arrested?
Or how about the values that said n-words should know their place and shut the hell up?
Damn those '60’s!
:rolleyes:
Or the values that allowed separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, and schools for blacks, that ignored lynching, and that let people be blacklisted if they were suspected of communism. Today’s values are much better than the 50s.
Remember when women couldn’t vote, and certain folk weren’t allowed on golf courses? Pepperidge Farm remembers…
I’d say the OP is nostalgic for a time that never was, but beyond “once established social bonds”, he hasn’t described what cultures and values he thinks the fifties had, or how they were lost, or what replaced them, or anything, really. It’s not clear to me just who or what he’s accusing of hypocrisy, and such accusations are a dime a dozen, anyway.
And what do you mean by the hypocritical political atmosphere they 60s created? The 60s was about exposing hypocrisy. Reciting the pledge of allegiance which said “liberty and justice for all” while blacks and women did not have equal rights, fighting the tyranny of communism by employing some of the same tactics, and sending soldiers half way around the world to fight people who had done us no wrong.
I think that’s common rhetoric, to note the 50’s as not being perfect, ergo, it is unconscionable to even think, much less mention, the 50’s as being “better” in any way, which is of course just silly.
In the '60s and '70s, a lot of social revolutions happened in roughly the same period – the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the sexual revolution, etc. The Vietnam War was only one of several factors fanning the flames. Another was the emergence of the hippie counterculture. Another was the generation gap caused by the demographic bulge of the Baby Boom coupled with the postwar educational enfranchisement of the American masses – i.e., higher education was no longer an elite privilege but could be had by the children of the middle and working classes at inexpensive state universities, with the result that much larger number of young people than ever before in American (or world) history now were mentally equipped to start questioning what their elders told them.
The 1991 PBS documentary miniseries Making Sense of the Sixties is worth viewing if you can find it. So is Berkeley in the Sixties.
William Strauss and Neil Howe have a theory that generations follow a cycle of four cultural types and the Boomers were a “Prophet” generation.
Read Halberstams The Fifties for an interesting take on your question. He argues that “the sixties” weren’t such a disruption from “the fifties” as is commonly believed, that “the sixties” was the culmination of many things that were present in American society in the decade prior.
If I had to give a “one cause fits all”, I’ll go with either the birth control pill or the Civil Rights movement.
All the OP asked was whether the Vietnam War killed 50s culture. Everyone jumping on him about it is projecting and should think about their reasons for doing so.
To answer the question I’d say that, while there was significant change (those less than many would have you believe), it wasn’t the war that brought it about. Societal change doesn’t happen through single events but in a million small, isolated incidents that fall on each other like coral building a reef.
And that building happened because, in my estimation, better education (as mentioned above) and communications developed. The 1950s and 1960s gave the United States the beginning of true mass communication. There had been periodicals and radio beforehand but with the advent of network television things hit overdrive.
The Vietnam War was a flashpoint because people could see it.
The hippies tended to appear louder and larger than the were because they made great television.
The '68 riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago work so well in history because it was captured on tape.
Woodstock, without the movie and soundtrack, would be one more festival…well thought of by many but not this huge icon.
Etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
The 1950s were the transition of local cultures to national culture. The 1960s were the downstream effect of mass media and shared experiences before the age of irony and cynicism.
Is it any surprise that the 1970s are seen as the ‘me’ decade when cynicism and self-centeredness were prevalent in light of this?
ntcrawler
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I don’t see how the “me decade” follows naturally from what came before as you describe it.
In terms of exposing and breaking hypocritical attitudes, the War played a part, but a much larger part was played by the Nixon administration. The revelation that the stupid break-in at the Watergate had been engineered by people with direct access to the Oval Office, that the administration had compiled an “enemies list” and had used both the FBI and CIA to spy on U.S. citizens for purely political purposes, that the IRS had allowed itself to be used to persecute members of the opposition, and the eventual resignation of Nixon, in disgrace, had a whole lot to do with “middle America” deciding that there was no way they could any longer trust the government.
Covert bombings of and incursions into Cambodia and the joke of “body counts” certainly helped promote cynicism, but they were a part and parcel of other actions undertaken by the Nixon administration that sowed the seeds of distrust. (Not that anyone really felt that Johnson was a paragon of virtue, but under Johnson it was considered a flaw in his character, not a trait displayed by the government as a whole–we did not have McNamara’s open admissions of his actions in 1968.)
Vietnam was televised. This is more immediate and less subject to censorship than still photos or news reels. That made a huge difference in how the war was seen by the general populace, and highlighted the differences between what we saw and what we were being told about the war. This eroded confidence in leadership’s truthfulness.
Nope, it was us, the filthy hippies. You’re welcome.
The '60s were the We Decade. The '50s were the Them Decade.
And the '90s?
And the . . . come to think of it, we haven’t come up with a consensus name for the current decade yet, have we? The oughts? The naughts? The naughties?
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
You have built a straw man by saying I think the 50s were not better “in any way”. The 50s had much less of a drug problem than the 60s for just one example. But IMHO, the values of the 60s were much better than the 50s in the most important ways. It’s great to have a low divorce rate, but I don’t see that as a good thing if women are staying in an abusive marriage because they have no career prospects and are unable to establish credit on their own.
I’m still waiting for the OP to say why he thought the 50s were better and in what ways the 60s were hypocritical.
Fair enough, but it’s just so commonly done… Anytime anyone brings up the 50’s, it’s as if guilt by association is supposed to stifle any debate. What ways do you think the 50’s were better?
I don’t actually see where the OP contains any assertion that the '50s were better - except perhaps that unspecified “social bonds” prevailed.
Anyway, I’m convinced that with the socio-economic leveling effect of post WW2 prosperity, the '50s society (or more accurately the pre '50s society) wasn’t going to survive intact, 'Nam or no 'Nam.
Shoutout to the OP’er from a former Ames resident, BTW. Go Clones!
Anyone else hearing Billy Joel in their head while reading this?