nm
If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain
For lack of a better term, the casualization of society. Everyone dresses like a bum, curses like sailors, jokes about sex without euphemisms, children are disrespectful to their parents, tons of sarcasm, the carney era (shaved heads, tattoos, piercings), unkempt facial hair and long hair on men, women dressing like street walkers, etc.
The variety of food would blow them away. Anything spicier than ketchup might kill them.
[QUOTE=bob++;16868681
while on the other, a small black and white television cost almost as much as a house, [/QUOTE]
I don’t know about that,in 1954 my parents bought a 9" TV for 80 UK pounds and our house was worth 900 UK pounds. My Father’s weekly wage was around 10 UK pounds.
Not here in Alabama.
Alabama. Well now, that belongs in the thread ‘What’s the easiest thing to explain to someone from the 1950s’.
Sure, because everything here in Alabama is exactly like it was in 1950.
You mean “except two,” right?
Oakminister? 
According to a CNN special on the JFK assassination, President Kennedy was apparently enough of a mover and shaker on this topic that hat makers complained to him.
I don’t see why this would be difficult to explain. I mean, before Solitaire was an app, it was a card game, played for pretty much exactly the same reasons as we play it on a computer or phone.
You guys might enjoy watching this clip about Alabama and Mississippi:
"Al Madrigal travels to Alabama and Mississippi to see which one of these backwoods, inbred, homophobic states will swim longest against the tide of history. (05:44) "
It’s surprising and not what you would actually expect.
Warnings/disclaimers on even the simplest of things, put there by companies afraid
of being sued. For example: coffee sold in cups printed with a warning that the coffee is hot
and may cause burns, knifes sold with warning that they are sharp and may cause
injury.
Heck I remember WWII vets being shocked at the rise of Germany and Japan as major economic powers in the 1960’s, I could imagine that shock being much greater in the 1950’s.
The massive demolition of most cities being turned into concrete monstrosities - in the UK the change is utterly stark. I think they would wonder why we allowed it to happen, but they would probably be pleased to see the end of the many slums still in existence in the 1950’s
The ease of travel, especially international travel and the relatively low cost of it - that would be hard for many folk to get their heads around.
The social changes would probably be most difficult to address, especially those related to LGBT communities.
Perhaps the idea that a job is not something you work at for 30 years or more; in the UK job insecurity has been steadily increasing.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the “Hispanicization”, if you will, of a lot of American cities and culture. Mexican food was exotic thirty years ago, let alone 60; now it is the default. There have always been Mexican/Hispanic immigrants, of course (or, in some cases, Hispanic inhabitants prior to American expansion), but it’s not a matter of Hispanic ghettos anymore: at least here in Texas, I can’t imagine going anywhere in public and not having a significant number of the people around me be Hispanic. Well over half the kids I teach are Hispanic, and half the people I work with are Hispanic. The expectation is that everyone knows at least a little Spanish–not enough to converse, certainly, but common words. None of that was true in the 1950s, and I think would have been startling.
:smack:
IIRC, there was originally a gay joke in Back To The Future for the trifecta.
And NJ, last time I was there.
As a Sci-Fi reader (started in 1950, in fact) a lot of the technology wouldn’t impress me. Home computers, a bit, but ubiquitous computing not at all. Gay rights, absolutely. From something that could put you in jail, to having gays marry and adopt kids. Civil rights, a bit, but a lot hasn’t changed. Southern states and some northern ones still trying to figure out how to stop blacks from voting and that’s just fine with the Supreme Court.
But where are the flying cars? The moving sidewalks? The colonies on Mars? When did air travel become so unpleasant? How did traffic get so bad? How did they let the economy go down the tubes? Didn’t they learn anything from the 30s? (After a couple generations, they forgot.)
As I look around my house, only the home computer represents a radical change from the 50s. Sure, my TV is in color, flat and 25 inches but that is just expected development. Ditto my self-cleaning oven and auto-defrost fridge. Yes, my phono records are small and don’t use a needle. But, except for the computer, my house is hardly different from what it would have been in 1950. That would have been a big surprise, especially compared to all the changes between 1887 (63 years before 1950) and then. No house had a phone. There were no vacuum cleaners, auto washers (or even wringer washers as we had in 1950), no electric irons, no autos, not even, in most homes, electric lights. Daily life had changed completely in that 63 year period. In the recent one, not so much.
Loach:
Yeah…where you can sit in your car waiting for the attendant to notice you (don’t you dare honk for attention, then you’ll piss him off and he’ll intentionally make you wait longer), when in any other state (aside from Oregon), you might have been totally filled up and gone by then.
Mind you, if the “no-self-service” thing is in some way directly connected to why I can get gas for 40 cents cheaper per gallon than in New York, I’m happy to put up with the wait. I certainly take advantage of that every time I’m in New Jersey. Can’t really imagine how one leads to the other, though.
Some aspects of the John Birch Society’s beliefs are a standard factor of GOP politics & even popular culture (heck, in the 1980s, the Illuminati was far from common knowledge!)
That Ayn Rand is still a force to be reckoned with. (Also, that there hasn’t been a big-budget star-studded movie of Atlas Shrugged).
For all else, including much discussed already, see the movie Blast From The Past.
I think his first question will be “why is everyone so fat?”
All right, now this cracked me up.
… So much stuff!
… And it’s all made of plastic or something like it!
… What happened to jazz? Why doesn’t today’s music incorporate horns, like real music?
… I’m only having one martini before going back to the office - don’t want to be too blitzed for my big meeting. Wait… why are y’all staring at me like that?
… The prices. Yeah, everything is more expensive, but I don’t have to work as long to get it.
… Where are all the kids and large families? Even the Catholics just have 1 or 2 kids.
… “Naw, it’s an easy fix. I worked on my dad’s truck back on the farm after the war!” Opens hood… “Uhhhhhh, wtf?”
Nope, I meant plastic bags. They were in common use by the mid fifties and many a Depression-era mom forced their kids to wash and dry them like Tupperware.
That can’t be true. I’m a person from the 1950s and I feel like I’m holding my own.