With Mad Men getting a lot of hype and popularity, there has been a resurgence in 190’s retro. For example, last year saw these movies, taking place in the 1960’s, that I know of: The Boat That Rocked, An Education, A Single Man.
But other than the 1960’s being very popular at the moment, it really is a very thankful decade to portray, as long as you don’t need characters with modern technology. Everything else is there: the highest quality rock music of the 20th century, the style, the political events, the attitude. It’s a decade that older people get sentimental over and that younger people wish they could have experienced. Add to that, the consumers born in the 1950’s are now a really strong customer demographic.
Obviously, you can only have so much 60’s nostalgia before it gets really tiresome. But aren’t the 1960’s really everybody’s favorite decade?
True. the period from January 1, 1960 to November 22, 1963 was really an extension of the Fifties. Once JFK was killed and up until Nixon’s resignation (or the Fall of Vietnam if you choose) the changes came hard, fast, and sudden and affected every aspect of Amertican society.
This. Current 60’s nostalgia is diminished from what it was in the 90’s. The difference is that things are now more focused on the early 60’s rather than the hippie portions of the decade.
Anyway I disagree with the OP’s premise in the first place. People aren’t that obsessed with the decade, and in terms of pop culture relevance, the 80’s have far eclipsed the 60’s.
Right, but I’d say the 60s really began when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, a few months after the assassination. After that night, everything changed.
This began years ago with that Gladiator movie, though I find it hard to understand why people should be nostalgic for the reign of Commodus. Septimius Severus maybe I can see, just about.
Actually, the best decade was from the mid-1950’s to the mid-1960’s.
The best music, the coolest cars, low population, low unemployment, highest standard of living, low immigration, no traffic, no road rage, women did not work, college was cheap, taxes were low, crime was low, it was before Vietnam got ridiculous, back when America still actually made “stuff”…we made the best American-made tools, guns, tvs, computers, appliances, etc. in the world.
The early 1950’s were kinda dull, and the late 1960’s were kinda nasty. 1955 to 1966, in America was a great time to live.
With an understanding that women as people didn’t exist.
With an understanding that blacks didn’t count. Or latinos. Or asians.
With an understanding that non-heterosexuals could be arrested or beaten or both simply for existing.
With an understanding that only christians counted. Jews could be tolerated for their usefulness but if they get out of hand they could be beaten, ostracized or even killed.
With an understanding that drinking while driving was a minor offense.
Or that cheating on your spouse (who lacked other options) was just ‘boys being boys’. And that your kids were property and could be beaten severely without much consequence. It was ‘good for them’.
I think you meant to say that it was the greatest time to be male, white, straight, and adult. And as long as your politics didn’t get you in trouble. Or the art you liked. Or the music you listened to. Or the friends you had.
Yeah, I love how people always gloss over little things like the utterly inhuman treatment of the “wrong” kind of people when taking little nostalgia-fests like this.
Darn you, JC. You said exactly what I was going to say better than I would.
Not to mention two channels of black and white tv (yes, two: we didn’t get a third channel until the late 50s.)
Medicine was limited, drugs weren’t available for almost anything, and dentistry was a horror show.
Unbelievably crappy restaurants with no variety. (I didn’t taste Chinese food or pizza until I was in college.)
The music was good but you couldn’t listen to it. (My first radio was a crystal kit from Heathcraft. It didn’t have a speaker, just an earpiece. It got one station.) And my poor parents didn’t get anything from rock and roll. It just displaced music that they actually liked.
I could go on like this for a long time. What this says mostly is that my family was extremely poor. We didn’t live in Ossining and my father didn’t drive a Cadillac. My mother didn’t drive at all. We lived literally on the wrong side of the tracks, in and out of the literal ghetto, surrounded by horrors immigrants, as well as displaced persons and refugees from WWII, many of whom had PTSD from the war. As my father did, except that nobody called it that and he never got treatment.
The 50s sucked, big-time, except for the favored few. The 60s are my favorite decade precisely because it was then that the U.S. began to overthrow Susanann and her ilk’s notion of what the favorite few constituted.
And that notion will never return. I know she hates that, but I celebrate it every day.
Which, of course, is one of the big points of Mad Men in the first place: we remember what we want to remember and we conveniently forget about the bad things. Nostalgia in the Mad Men sense is a form of self-delusion.
However, there is another side to it. And that is that if you argue that there are bad things in the past, then you might as well acknowledge that some things that used to be good have turned bad. Further, whatever decade you happen to be in, some things are good and some are bad, only that those things change. What I think the 60’s nostalgia means, is that people think the good things about the 60’s are so good they don’t mind the bad.
No, it means what nostalgia always means. You selectively filter what you want to remember. It’s not supposed to be balanced or considered or logical or sensible. And it’s personal, rather than societal. I’m sure the WWII era has a nostalgic glaze to many people. That’s fine, as long as they recognize the limitations.
In my previous post I meant to write Heathkit, a craft catalog of electronics, not Heathcraft.
Well, for Cactus Waltz it was evidently the high quality music, the style, the politics, and the attitude. Evidently some folks miss the orgies and toga parties they had up in the capital.
With the understanding that big cars with engines that got 7 miles to the gallon with no pollution filters, tossing out glass bottles, not reusing anything, not even knowing the word "recycling"were not affecting the environment whatsoever.
If the 1950’s/early 1960’s had continued as they were, our environment migh tnot even be able to support life as we know it right now. For all the hippies did wrong, one thing they got right was environmentalism.
And this being Cafe Society, let’s not forget that in the 1950’s/early 60’s radio stations would not play “colored” music. not would white venuses book them. And since rock is a blend of *R&B & C&W," it’s no wonder it had to come out of England. I had a good talk with Rudy Isley once about his having to go oversees to get booked where white people could hear his music.
That song has made me kind of angry. I think it’s because, as you said, of the ignorance. I remember of having an overall sunny view of the hippie era for a few years…but that was when I was a preteen, and didn’t know any better.
I used to be nostalgic for the '90s too, since a few years ago, when I realized it’s pointless playing the “Which Decade (or Century) Was the Best?” game.
