1. Making Sense of the Fifties Reform Revolt and Reaction Lecture Six: Term 1 Week 8

2. The Affluent Society 1945-1960 US GDP increased 250% per capita income 35% higher By 1960 the US (6% world’s population) consumed nearly 50% of world’s production Serviceman’s Readjustment Act aka “GI Bill of Rights” (1944) Truman (1945) “Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.”

3. Family and Suburbia Baby Boom (1942-64) 1950 Average marriage age dropped to 20.3 (women), 22 (men) Suburbs grow 40 times as fast as cities By 1960 75% families had a car, 87% owned at least one TV, and 75% had a washing machine Levittown, Long Island

4. Andy Warhol Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962)

5. Teenagers: Rebels without a cause? 1959 Teenagers spent $20M on lipstick, $25M on deodorant, $75 M on pop singles 33% of 18 and 19 year old ‘girls’ married JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (1951) Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954) James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

6. Elvis July 1954 records ‘That’s alright Mama’ Nov 1955 signs for RCA 1956 ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ No.1 for 8 Weeks (his songs filled the slot for 25 weeks in 1956, and again in 1957) 1957 Drafted into army

7. The Beat Generation Nov 1952 ‘This is the Beat generation’, by John Clellon Holmes Allen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’ (1955) Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957) John Updike, Rabbit Run (1960)

8. Think about… Issues of conformity vs individualism – what impact did mass consumerism and McCarthyism have on American society? The underlying tensions of the affluent society – and how were they expressed? What was the role of the teenager in the 1950s, and to what extent did a counterculture emerge in this decade?