Nonconformists prepare the terrain The 1950s

An Atomic Age

The Cold War and Red Scares

Affluence and Suburbia

Family

An American Century American military and economic power ‘Americanisation’ fear from earlier in century. Shared by conservatives and left Antiamericanism in Europe Culture: film, music, literature and television Global cultures and the local (McKay)

The teenager

Elvis and Rock and Roll

http://www. dailymotion http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1mvfc_elvis -presley-hound-dog_music#.UW0Xo44hQWY

An existential age? Intellectual disillusion Atomic age and cold war, mass society and holocaust. Jewish writing (US Bellow, Roth, Malamud etc) Disruption of Europe John Paul Sartre ‘Nausea’ (1938) and existentialism.

Albert Camus ‘The modern mind is in complete disarray’ (notebook, early 1940s) ‘L’etranger (The Outsider/The Stranger) (1942) ‘The Plague’ (1947)

Francois Sagan Bonjour Tristesse (1954) Written when Sagan was 18 ‘amoral’? Some critics praised 350,000 copies sold in the first two years ‘It was unacceptable, too, that a young girl should have the right to use her body as she will, and derive pleasure from it without incurring a penalty.” (Sagan answering critics 30 years later)

Existentialism and culture Sinatra ‘In the Wee Small hours’ (1955) ‘Only the Lonely’ (1958) Sloan Wilson ‘The man in the grey flannel suit’ (1955) ‘High Noon’ (1952) Fellini and ‘La Dolce Vita’ (1960) Antonioni ‘L’Avventura (1960) 1st of trilogy

The Blue Moment Jazz as modernity, global, improvised Miles Davis and ‘The Birth of the Cool’ Davis to Paris in 1949 (first trip abroad) Affair with Juliette Greco The Parisian Imaginary Return to drug addiction ‘Kind of Blue’ (1959)

Abstract Expressionism Rothko ‘untitled’ (1959)

Jackson Pollock Blue Poles (1952)

The Beat Generation ‘Spontaneous bop prosody’ Jazz and the beats (Charlie Parker) Buddhism, alcohol and the old America? (Different views) Ginsberg, ‘Howl’ (1956) Kerouac, ‘On the Road’ (1957) Burroughs, ‘Naked Lunch’ (Olympia Press, Paris, 1959. 1962 in US) The Beat subculture emerges in University towns and cities. Goatees, berets, cool and bohemia. ‘Hipsters’ Norman Mailer, ‘The White Negro’ (1957)

Politics McCarthyism silences the left Anticommunism in Europe Antiamericanism in Europe Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Fd. 1958 after J.B. Priestley article ‘Britain and the bomb’ in the New Statesman (2 Nov 1957) Aldermaston march, April 1958-1963 Civil Rights struggle in the United States.

Conclusion ‘The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an “I”, but it is not a true “I”. His main business is to find his way back to himself.’ (Colin Wilson, ‘The Outsider’) Brando in ‘The Wild One’ (1956) when asked what he is rebelling against, answers ‘What have you got?’ Teenagers, artists, writers and musicians reflect the crisis of modernity. This is politicised in the 1960s.