Life in the 50s better?

RDKirk · Nov 16, 2021

timothyu said:
You made a point often overlooked. This was the first real decade of TV and most people remember the 50's based upon the shows they watched, the fantasy lifestyle presented, and of course the entertainment of the arts... all distractions from real life. Might very well have been the birth of delusion that mutated into divisiveness.

In my view, up until the advent of mass electronic media, culture was transferred by grandparents. But beginning with radio, and then exponentially with television, culture transfer has been done by electronic mass media. If not for television, I suspect the memory of the 50s would be very different. People would be more likely to remember how they actually lived.

timothyu · Nov 16, 2021

RDKirk said:
People would be more likely to remember how they actually lived.

And posters today would have to be 95 to give an adult view of life then. Kids of course still had a free ride so things always looked better.

RDKirk · Nov 16, 2021

timothyu said:
And posters today would have to be 95 to give an adult view of life then. Kids of course still had a free ride so things always looked better.

I was a great fan of the 80s television show "The Wonder Years." I could easily identify with the 60s middle-class white kid Kevin because I was a 60s middle-class kid myself--but black. There is currently a new reboot of The Wonder Years, but of a black middle class family in Alabama.

The problem is that even in the television show, the life of that 60s middle-class black kid Dean isn't significantly different from the 60s middle-class white kid. The live of an American middle-class 12-year-old boy is just about the same because they're both shielded from the adult world where differences make a difference that would notably impact them. A middle-class 12-year-old is concerned with his television programs, his comic books, that girl he has a crush on, and getting through schoolwork.

timothyu · Nov 16, 2021

RDKirk said:
A middle-class 12-year-old is concerned with his television programs, his comic books, that girl he has a crush on, and getting through schoolwork.

Middle class being the key word.

d taylor · Nov 17, 2021

To much plastic and cheaply made products now, that when they break or stop working they are just thrown away. I prefer the quality of produced good from past times.

GUEST_5b39bf73-c096-410b-8753-f005cbfb8e57

jayem · Nov 17, 2021

cow451 said:
57 Chevy

Not bad. But the all-time winner is the ‘59 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. The most over-the-top, finned monster of the century.

Neostarwcc · Nov 17, 2021

cow451 said:
Working the *cough* furnaces is your idea of fun? And there was that Korea thingy….. and polio…

Pretty good time for White folk. Good public schools. Good covers of Negro music. Smoking was *cough* allowed everywhere.

Not fun per se but he earned a good honest wage he had 9 kids to take care of after all. He did some farmuig work in the 60s but his barn broke down.

He might not been the most interesting of men but he took care of his own. He's been dead since 2011 so I can't quite talk to him, the only things o know about my grandfather were told to me. I didn't start overly bonding wit u my gr!ndfathee till he to quit drinkiing. Hmmj.....

Paidiske · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
In my view, up until the advent of mass electronic media, culture was transferred by grandparents.

I didn't know any of my grandparents, so that might be my personal bias skewing my take on this. But... what place do you think schooling had? I'm not sure at what point pretty much everyone started to get some schooling - a quick google suggests that a parish school system open to everyone was a product of the Reformation, and that efforts intensified through the industrial revolution - but once everyone's in the classroom, that's got to be a pretty powerful mediator of culture, no?

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

Paidiske said:
I didn't know any of my grandparents, so that might be my personal bias skewing my take on this. But... what place do you think schooling had? I'm not sure at what point pretty much everyone started to get some schooling - a quick google suggests that a parish school system open to everyone was a product of the Reformation, and that efforts intensified through the industrial revolution - but once everyone's in the classroom, that's got to be a pretty powerful mediator of culture, no?

Culture was inculcated at mom's or grandmom's knee before the kids started school. That's why first-grade kids were well-behaved then...and not so much now. You may not have had grandparents, but someone taught you how to talk before you started school, and basic culture is embedded in language itself.

Even back in the 50s, I had probably watched a couple of hundred hours of television before I started school, but the variety was small.

jayem · Nov 17, 2021

Neostarwcc said:
From what my Grandparents told me of the 1950s, I imagine it was a pretty cool time. In the 50s my mom's dad worked furnaces and my dad's father worked on the St Lawrence seaway. (A bridge allowing travel from the US to Canada in our area. It no longer exists) moms dad helped with the seaway too but he didn't play as big of a role. My grandfather was a draftsman.

Dont forget in the 50s too the war was over and everybody had elevated morales. Or am I wrong and we fought a war in the 50s after wwII?

Yes, back in the 50s, even factory workers without specialized training or skills could buy homes and cars, and enjoy a middle class life. But a big reason for that was because the 50s was the heyday of labor unions. Who—despite some racketeering—made it possible for blue collar workers without college educations to earn a good living. Not to mention that the US was the world’s manufacturing giant. Our industry and factories came through WW2 unscathed. Back then, Made in Japan meant cheap and flimsy.

But politically, things weren’t all rosy. The 50s also gave us Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, the HUAC communist witch hunts, and ugly school desegregation nastiness. To name a few.

Pommer · Nov 17, 2021

NVM…

keith99 · Nov 17, 2021

jayem said:
Yes, back in the 50s, even factory workers without specialized training or skills could buy homes and cars, and enjoy a middle class life. But a big reason for that was because the 50s was the heyday of labor unions. Who—despite some racketeering—made it possible for blue collar workers without college educations to earn a good living. Not to mention that the US was the world’s manufacturing giant. Our industry and factories came through WW2 unscathed. Back then, Made in Japan meant cheap and flimsy.

But politically, things weren’t all rosy. The 50s also gave us Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, the HUAC communist witch hunts, and ugly school desegregation nastiness. To name a few.

I'm pretty sure two of my college professors were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. I do not think it was coincidence that about the time they retired was when the version of Political Correctness that leads to people not being allowed to give lectures because of their unrelated political statements started to gain traction.

keith99 · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
I was a great fan of the 80s television show "The Wonder Years." I could easily identify with the 60s middle-class white kid Kevin because I was a 60s middle-class kid myself--but black. There is currently a new reboot of The Wonder Years, but of a black middle class family in Alabama.

The problem is that even in the television show, the life of that 60s middle-class black kid Dean isn't significantly different from the 60s middle-class white kid. The live of an American middle-class 12-year-old boy is just about the same because they're both shielded from the adult world where differences make a difference that would notably impact them. A middle-class 12-year-old is concerned with his television programs, his comic books, that girl he has a crush on, and getting through schoolwork.

I think that would depend a lot on where you lived.

The Fraternity I joined in college affiliated with a National in 1926. Their petition to the National included this line "No person not of Aryan blood has ever been initiated.". In 1965 that had changed, but only so much. My college was one of 3 in Southern California for the National. At my school it was the jock, mainly football house. They went to a provence meeting, pretty much anyone who wanted to go went. That included black football players. 2 or 3 days later we were suspended. One of the other 2 schools did not care, the other reported we had black members to the national. When I joined in 1971 it was a local fraternity. And we still pledged and initiated whoever we wanted, which pretty much included any football player who wanted in who was not a jerk of jerks.

But even here in Los Angeles there was only one black kid in my High School. My area was probably rather safe, a black kid would only have the problem of being different. Some other areas they could ahve had more serious problems.

A 12 year old black kid who liven near the frat house where I lived would have been pretty much treated teh same as a white kid of teh same socio-economic class. One living near a house of the same National fraternity in the South, no.

durangodawood · Nov 17, 2021

The 50's was definitely a better time for the plants and animals on average.

Nithavela · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
I had an uncle who was one of them. He was my first experience with severe PTSD when I visited them as a kid in 1965.

The Chinese have a super-hit movie out right now about that battle: They win big, and Americans suck. It's heading towards being the top-grossing movie in the world of all time based on Chinese ticket sales alone, which shows what they really think of Americans.

Just like all those cold war movies of tough americans shooting faceless russians or southeast asians show what the USA thinks about various groups of people.

Paidiske · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
You may not have had grandparents, but someone taught you how to talk before you started school, and basic culture is embedded in language itself.

True... but it makes the migrant trans-cultural experience complex. I grew up in a house where my parents spoke four languages, and English wasn't a first language for either of them. School was where I learned the culture of the country I lived in (and learned to think critically about which parts of it I chose to conform to, or not).

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

keith99 said:
I think that would depend a lot on where you lived.

The Fraternity I joined in college affiliated with a National in 1926. Their petition to the National included this line "No person not of Aryan blood has ever been initiated.". In 1965 that had changed, but only so much. My college was one of 3 in Southern California for the National. At my school it was the jock, mainly football house. They went to a provence meeting, pretty much anyone who wanted to go went. That included black football players. 2 or 3 days later we were suspended. One of the other 2 schools did not care, the other reported we had black members to the national. When I joined in 1971 it was a local fraternity. And we still pledged and initiated whoever we wanted, which pretty much included any football player who wanted in who was not a jerk of jerks.

But even here in Los Angeles there was only one black kid in my High School. My area was probably rather safe, a black kid would only have the problem of being different. Some other areas they could ahve had more serious problems.

A 12 year old black kid who liven near the frat house where I lived would have been pretty much treated teh same as a white kid of teh same socio-economic class. One living near a house of the same National fraternity in the South, no.

A 12-year-old kid doesn't come into contact with frat houses. A 12-year-old middle-class kid is still sheltered, which is my point.

In the case of the new Wonder Years, although this kids has just begun attending an integrated school, he has the great fortune of attended a school where the white teachers are striving to be accommodating.

In fact, the second episode is largely about how the kid abuses the sympathies of his white teachers over the assassination the day before of Martin Luther King.

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

Nithavela said:
Just like all those cold war movies of tough americans shooting faceless russians or southeast asians show what the USA thinks about various groups of people.

"All those?" Really? There are some Cold War spy movies like that...a few. But seriously...count them off, if there are "all those."

Americans were still mostly killing Nazis during the Cold War.

But the Chinese government isn't the same. American motion pictures catered to the whims of the public, not to the dictates of the government. Not since WWII has an American motion picture company produced a movie at the behest of the US government.

About two years ago, the Chinese government decided they wanted a big-budget propaganda film. They don't do anything for nothing, they plan ahead. The question is what were they preparing for that would require a surge in patriotic fervor right at this point in time?

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

Paidiske said:
True... but it makes the migrant trans-cultural experience complex. I grew up in a house where my parents spoke four languages, and English wasn't a first language for either of them. School was where I learned the culture of the country I lived in (and learned to think critically about which parts of it I chose to conform to, or not).

How true was that of your entire generation? Does being an outlier disprove the point?

Paidiske · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
How true was that of your entire generation? Does being an outlier disprove the point?

My point, I think, is that households differ greatly, but if we're looking for something that gave a generation a more uniform formative experience, school looks to me like a stronger candidate.

Life in the 50s better?

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