US History: the Fabulous 50s

This week we've been cruising through the 50s in our big cars and rock and roll music.

Sure, we've talked about the Cold War and the Korean War and the Space Race and the Cold War and the H-bomb and television and the Cold War and the Baby Boom and McCarthyism and, well, the Cold War... but really, it's all been about the music.  And the Cold War.

Have you noticed how much of the 50's seems to be directly related to either the Cold War or music?

It kinda makes you want to shout!


One surprisingly helpful cultural artifact: Leave it to Beaver.  That show speaks volumes about cultural differences between then and now.  Do you ever see a woman wearing pants in that show?  How about a man without a hat?  Actually, watching what people are wearing in the  music videos is a similar experience.

Listening to all the 20s, then 30s, then 40s music and then the 50s music has been a a bit of a revelation.  It seems to me that the culture, and the music, get progressively less complex and more direct.  Things scarcely hinted at in the 30s are alluded to in the 40s and suggested in the 50s (nowadays, of course there's TMI!).  This is not just in music, but in everything from clothing to greetings.  I used to think we'd just gotten less formal, but there's more to it than that.

In the 50s, there were specific patterns to interactions with people, and to not use them was considered rude.  I recently heard an interview with parents who text their kids and one of the benefits they cited was that they didn't have to bother with "hello, how are you" type interactions with their kids.  Um, really?  I can see why many of the social conventions were dropped, but, you don't want to have to say hello to your child?

I always thought of our culture as getting more and more complicated, but it seems to me now the opposite is true.  Our lives are more complicated because we are busier, but our culture is getting simpler, and perhaps the one is driving the other.