I believe that Rush Limbaugh would say that the Reagan era ended, and the Clinton era began, when Bush I went back on his “no new taxes” promise. Just throwing that out there.
Okay, so what elements would you have in a movie set in the 50’s to caqpture the feel?
True Blue Jack
Let me try to answer by asking what I feel is a relevant question to you.
Imagine 20 years in the future. Imagine some 20-30-something film maker is trying to capture the “spirit” of today in some semi-documentary way. Instead of using actual footage from this era, that film maker decides to assume that having the actors wear the clothes, play the video games, use the cell phones, spout the latest jingles from the fad commercials, engage in the street talk and leet talk and other words of the day, that by this technique he or she can capture the mood of the day.
First, would that 20-years-from-now audience relate to the actual details of the day today?
Second, would the issues facing the people of 20 years from now really need the validation or comparison with what’s going on today?
If you feel there’s a good chance that either of those two questions could be answered with a convincing Yes then I could see how one would go about capturing the mood or spirit of the 50’s. I contend the answer is No and thus even if there were ways to recapture the spirit of the 50’s that it would either be inaccurate or heavily tainted by the need to appeal to a “current day” audience.
I suspect this is not a good answer. If not, maybe it has no decent answer. Or else, some other person from that era can give it a better shot.
As a matter of fact, True Blue Jack, I challenge you to visit (and maybe participate in) Emo, Hipster, Indie, Goth - give me a primer. started today by **WhyNot ** and dealing with a much more “current” example of how it’s hard to capture the spirit of a time period where either you weren’t present, or were present and just not part of that spirit.
In short, it takes having been there to feel all that was involved. Accoutrements only hint at that feeling but they’re not the story.
I will keep watching the growth of ideas in that thread to see if a better answer to your question is available.
December 30, 1953 the release date for “The Wild One” starring Marlon Brando
Exactly! And some four or five years ago, bling killed the nineties.
And the sixties were probably the shortest decade ever, from 1966 (Eight Miles High) to 1973 (Dark Side of the Moon). My vote for Rock Around the Clock starting the fifties, too, which leaves only the dividing line between the seventies and eighties to be decided… death of disco?
Without debating the influence of Brando on the metaphorical 50’s, I would personally move the start of that era to the opening in late 1947 of A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. True, it took the movie version (1951) before its impact could spread to America and the world, but the seismic shift that Brando brought to acting was a keynote of the 50’s. Slightly less earthshaking was Montgomery Clift’s spectacular performance in 1951’s A Place In The Sun but by the time I had gotten around to seeing either (later in the 50’s at the earliest) these guys had already caused the birth of James Dean as the icon of The Fifties that many equate with Marilyn Monroe in terms of importance.
Compare the 1947 date of Streetcar with Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier, and I propose that year may be even more of a standout break from The 40’s and earlier times.
To me, the 1950’s ended in 1961, when men stopped wearing hats (blame it on John F. Kennedy). There was an interim period, till 1964 , when the Vietnam War started up in a big way. The 60’s ended around 1973…and the 70’s began and ended quickly (the 70’s ended when STUDIO 54 closed its doors). The 80’s-what a long, boring decade! I’d say the 80’s are still with us. I’m waiting for the "Roaring 20’s) (2020’s) to begin!
Ludovic has pointed out that Kent State (May 4, 1970) was the beginning of the 70’s. I agree that this was a devastating body blow to the political and social idealism of the 60’s.
I would also suggest that the infamous Altamont Free Concert (December 6, 1969) was the end of the 60’s. It was made apparent at this time that even the music and drugs of the hippie generation had been subverted to the brutality of organized crime and petty thugs through the influence of Big Money.
My reference to the movie was because of the rebelliousness and defiance that the youthful characters presented, not because it was Brando. If Rebel Without A Cause had appeared first I would have cited that date.
Brando, who responded “whattaya got” to the girl who aked him what he was rebelling against, exemplified the rebellious 50’s of Elvis et al. in this film.
At the risk of being whooshed, Snopes on whether JFK killed the hat.
“It is true that Kennedy almost never wore a hat after becoming president, but his hatlessness was much more likely the continuation of a trend that had long since begun, not its origin.”
Well, okay. What you had said earlier wasn’t clear to me. I had the impression that you were saying that the usual techniques to evoke the Fifties (in particular) were deficient. That a different tack was needed. You seem to be saying now that there is no really good way to try to capture it or any other past era. I suppose that you would still say that there are less-bad ways, however.
It was an interesting point about semi-documentary movies needing to connect with current audiences with validation and comparison. Also about using actors instead of actulal footage. I would add that it seems to me that using actual footage has problems, too. Should one show, for example, college students in the Late Fifties and Early Sixties swallowing goldfish – or cramming into old-style phone booths? These things happened, of course, but only a prominent, flambouyant minority actually participated directly.
(I was going to say “flashy.” But I would have been getting way ahead of myself. Streaking didn’t start until after the Watergate hearings started.) 
If you do show such fads you may mislead by implying that the typical college student did such things. Showing only more universal behavior of the times would mislead as well, making the times much more “conformist” and authority-respecting in flavor than they actually were.
And, BTW, I’m only a handful of years younger than you. My memories of even the last few years of the Fifties are pretty weak (although I do remember Sputnik, even comedian jokes about it) but by about the mid-Sixties I certainly was aware of cultural change-- and just how unthinkable the manners and mores would have seemed only a few years earlier. So while its hard to remember the even the Late Fifties “positively” (that is, give specific examples from memory) I certainly have a sense of what the Fifties were not!
True Blue Jack
Can you explain this? What happened on that day?
I tend to agree with the person who said the Fifties began when Russia exploded its first nuclear weapon. Fear of nuclear attack was a major undercurrent of life and culture of the decade–bomb shelters, movies about nuclear war (often with comedic overtones), novels and so on.
One might even argue that the Fifties never ended until they finally stopped setting off those air-raid sirens on the third Friday of every month, or whatever it was.
The Watergate burglars were arrested.
Here are a few other dates that are as worthy of consideration as those already mentioned.
March 4, 1946 - Churchill delivers his “Iron Curtain” speech, considered by some to begin the Cold War era.
June 27, 1947 - NBC begins regular programming on a three-station television network.
August 15, 1947 - India and Pakistan receive full independence from Great Britain.
June 25, 1950 - North Korea invades South Korea.
IMHO, throw in Jackie Robinson and Chuck Yeager and I think a pretty good argument can be made that the 1950s actually began in 1947.
My own thought on all these “metaphorical decades…”
They are came into conceptual existence after they were over, and people started looking back at them. That’s why we all have a slightly different sense of them.
The “Fifties,” as they are seen NOW, came into being sometime in the eighties, when a number of entrepreneurial people started SELLING the fifties to the rest of us, as I recall.
I was born here in the early fifties, but don’t remember much of them in American terms, because I didn’t start interacting with the rest of the world very much until I was living in England near their end. So I never really experienced the AMERICAN fifties.
I suspect myself, that if it weren’t for us using a base ten system to count years, we would see our past eras entirely differently.
A very VERY long time ago, he past wasn’t seen as a series of decades, but of generations. I suspect that a lot of the difference in concept, was due to a slower pace of technological change back then. We may change to a new conceptualization soon, since things change must faster now than ever before.
It's probably most true that the general sense of a decade, or an age has passed, since it is a point-of-view sort of thing, comes when an event occurs that makes a lot of people realize that their previous understanding of what life consists of, was wrong.
Thus, as someone suggested, the Fifties began when a lot of people realized that the defeat of Japan and Germany had NOT, after all, made the world at all safe. And they ended when enough people began to rebel against the “it’s all about defending ourselves from Communism” was sufficiently challenged, especially by the entertainment industry, as it gradually ceased knuckling under to the “paranoia solution” that politicians cooked up in the late forties, to deal with the USSR. That happened as the Hollywood Blacklist "system"was ground away, in late 1957 through the early 1960’s.
By the way, I think we are entering what will soon be seen as another “decade,” or “age.” We’ve been in the “Everyone thinks they know everything, because THE INTERNET” for a long while now.
We may have finally begun to enter the age of “Wait A Minute, Maybe the Internet is Lying” era. Only just begun, though. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of the Fifties, since it’s about leaving behind a time when a lot of us thought we had everything under control, and entering a time of paranoid finger-pointing.
The TV show “Happy Days” began in 1974. If there ever was a show that sold the fifties like cornflakes, it was “Happy Days”.
It really shows how things have changed, because America in 1974 was radically different enough that 1954 seemed like another country.
Try setting a show in 1997 and the only thing different is that people wouldn’t be glued to their phones. If you want to see a slice of life from 1997 you can just watch Buffy, or Seinfeld or Friends or the X Files. These shows are modern shows, they aren’t dusty artifacts from the Before Times.
[bolding mine]
(Yes, I know it’s a zombie thread)
Saturday, August 1, 1981 at 12:01 AM
Some interesting ideas floated here … all seem valid in specific contexts … but if we’re voting I’m voting for The Fifties starting when the Soviets detonated their first A-bomb on Aug 29th, 1949 … that one event had a profound impact not just on The Fifties but pretty much to this very day …
… but let’s not waste a perfectly good zombie thread … when did the 2010’s begin?
I’ll start the bidding at Nov 2nd, 2010 … Republicans sweep into power all across the United States and to date they haven’t let go … I’m not sure how much this has effected the rest of the world … but for the USA, this is a good start …
Arab Spring, early 2011