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The Sixties

As some of you might have observed from my recent blog entries, I’ve been doing some odd-ball reading of late—and lest you think my odd-ball reading is coming to an end, it has not, nor will it for a few days.

Today I read the first chapter of Todd Gitlin’s book, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (©1987; 1993). This was not my first encounter with this book—I read it back in the summer of 1996 when I was taking a summer class at the University of Colorado at Denver for fun, and the professor was one of these aging hippies* types—the type that I had never actually encountered before, so I sought out some books to read in order to understand the professor better, and this book came highly recommended.

The author, Todd Gitlin, for the record, is not an insignificant historical figure. Gitlin was one of the first presidents of the Students for a Democratic Society, SDS. Were this organization to exist today, it would be under constant FBI surveillance and suspected of being anti-American. Funny enough, SDS was actually under constant FBI surveillance and suspected of being anti-American in the 1960s, so not much in American society has changed—only this time the president is an ineffective asshole warmongering Republican instead of an effective warmongering Democrat. (LBJ was not an asshole, even if he was a warmonger.) (Oh yes, some of my history might be messed up.)

Since the book is about the 1960s, the first chapter starts out with a review of the 1950s. Echoing yesterday’s Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Gitlin claims that the 1950s were a bland and boring decade observing that “Painting by the numbers was one fad that all by itself contained the contradictory aspirations of the middle-class Fifties: creativity and security at the same time.”

I have to say that there was immediately a bizarre image implanted in my mind: how can one be creative if one is painting within the lines and choosing the colors the chart tells you to choose.

(Childhood Memory: I suddenly remember not painting by number, but painting in books where I only had to have a wet brush—there were dots of dry paint on the page, and I only had to wet the brush and spread the paint within the lines to be an artiste. I also remember once getting a coloring book that specifically advocated drawing outside the lines. I don’t remember its name, but maybe it was something like the “Anti-Coloring book” or something like this.)

However, the image of people in the Fifties believing that their faux-creativity was actually liberating seems somewhat appropriate. During the fifties women were expected to be the happy housewife raising their children, cooking dinner for dad, and keeping the house clean. Interestingly this image was reinforced in fiction written for women.

Although I previously gave Betty Friedan’s book short shift on my blog, I should point out that much of the first chapter of The Feminine Mystique is devoted to evaluating the content of the 1950s women’s magazines, and, scandalously, comparing the content of the 1950s to the content of earlier years. This was the part of the book I found most disturbing because the fictionalized women of the 1950s were considerably more limited in their options than the fictionalized women of the 1940s: women in the 1940s were fictionalized to be career seeking to some extent.

Mind you some of this was because of World War II (randomly, I am always uncomfortable writing about WWII while living in Germany—something about the fact that Hitler and the Nazis were German—which of course goes to show that one cannot choose one’s ancestors). During WWII women were working in positions that once men had occupied, but the men were off fighting the war. After the war was over men returned to the States and returned to editing women’s magazines—which included fictionalizing women back to being homemakers.

(Friedan aside: She wrote the book because the male editors of women’s magazines believed that women were too stupid/uninterested in higher thinking or politics and thus turned down her early drafts. Considering that the book was widely successful and transformed society, I can only say that the editors really proved their wisdom, didn’t they?!)

Ok, so I’ve wandered quite a bit from where I meant to go with this, but the point is that people were told that they had to fulfill certain roles: Breadwinner Working Dad, or Happy Pregnant Homemaker—living in the suburbs. (Gitlin points out this factoid: in a Saurday Evening Post 1945 survey only 19% of people said they were willing to live in either an apartment or a used house.) If one did not conform to these roles, you were an outcast—and now that I think about it, I cannot recall ever having read anything about 1950s outcasts, as opposed to the 1960s where I can imagine the traditional families as well as the outcasts, and both have been represented in literature.

Thankfully today’s literature is much more diverse. It is possible to read fictionalized accounts of lives like mine as well as dissimilar lives. The divergence in literature’s themes have been incredible even since when I was a kid. Perhaps this explains why I find such great comfort in reading adolescent gay literature. Certainly its not geared for people my age, but it is charming to read about high school students who are gay, out, have boyfriends (or girlfriends), and are comfortable with it. Perhaps I would have happier earlier had I had these exemplars earlier in my life. And perhaps divergent themes in literature would have helped people’s sanity in the 1950s, thus preventing what Friedan called the “problem with no name.”


*True story: The class reflected many of his political priorities, and one day I walked into class. We hadn’t had any readings assigned that week so I was rather blasé about it, I glanced at the syllabus and read “Hospital Birth Video.” After reading that I thought to myself, “Gosh, I wonder how often they rotate these videos, because I couldn’t imagine anything worse than going into class, having a video turned on, and then seeing Mom, followed a bit later by… YOU!”

I think I actually commented on this to a classmate, when I glanced back at the syllabus and realized that I hadn’t read the syllabus correctly, it actually said, “Home Birth Video.” I suddenly knew what was about to happen. Sure enough the professor walked in with his young wife and two kids.

1 comment to The Sixties

  • B.

    About a year ago I picked up a copy of ‘Letter To A Yong Activist’ and really, really liked his style. He had a way of talking about the ideals & call to arms (so to speak) of the sixties without pulling a Timothy Leary turn on/tune in/drop out elitist vibe that leads the reader to believe s/he missed the boat by being born too late to have a draft card to burn.