-Caveat Lector- >From Brill's Content Those Fabulous Fifties Journalists have a lazy habit of dismissing the 1950s as a time when life was sterile, stuffy, and full. They must have seen too many movies. by Ben Stein Now, for a few words about media reference points, and let's start in my dentist's office, where I was waiting to have a crown put in. I picked up a recent copy of Time. Because I know (and admire) Gary Ross, the very talented writer-director of the movie Pleasantville, I started to read Richard Corliss's review of the picture. As usual, Corliss's review was astute. But, to my dismay, as is usual with media folk, he dismissed the 1950s (the decade referenced in Pleasantville) as "sanitized" and compared it to the "long night of the living dead." He gave that time period its usual bad rap for being bereft of personal expression, sexual freedom, and the chance to let artistic genius flourish. I cannot blame Corliss. His take on the time is commonplace in any media expression about that era. In fact, it's a standard media point of reference, a sort of totemic notion in commentary that cannot be challenged: Life in the fifties was starchy, monochromatic, and without creativity. Nothing interesting happened under President Dwight Eisenhower. After that, starting in the 1960s, the whole society and the culture really bloomed, taking us up to our present level of glory. The only problem with this presumption is that it is wildly, comically wrong. The 1950s were an explosive decade, especially culturally, but in political and social ways, as well. In fact, it's hard to think of a time when there was no world war and more happened. Take political life and international affairs: In 1950, the Korean War started. It was bloody, it came very close to being lost, and more American men died there than in any comparable period in any other war since World War II. In 1951, President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in a moment of high civilian versus military drama never seen before or since. In 1952, President Truman illegally seized the steel mills to prevent a strike, and Eisenhower became the first Republican president in 20 years. That same year, the United States tested the first doomsday weapon, the H-bomb, on Eniwetok Atoll. In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for spying for the Soviet Union amid extraordinary public furor on both sides, and the Korean War ended. In 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings gripped the nation as the famous red-hunter clashed with his enemies in a TV drama never matched before or since (I offer today's tepid impeachment hearings for contrast). In the same year, the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision in history turned American life upside down. Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation in public schools by race unconstitutional, plunging America into turmoil that led to bombings, riots, a gigantic and noble civil rights movement, and a court-ordered revolution in human rights never seen before in any large nation. In 1955, Rosa Parks, a humble seamstress, triggered the Montgomery bus boycott that led to civil disobedience and mass protest as a means of securing social justice, one of the largest such movements since Gandhi's in India. In 1956, the Hungarians rose against their Soviet occupiers, triggering a bloody war that ended only with the entry of the Red Army into Budapest and that sparked real fears of a Soviet push into Western Europe. My father-in-law was there with a nuke-armed missile battalion as U.S. forces in Europe prepared for World War III. In the same year, England, Israel, and France invaded Egypt, and Israel stunned the world by clearing Egyptian forces from the Sinai in 100 hours. In 1957, panic gripped America as the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, signaling that U.S. scientific and military supremacy could not be taken for granted and that the future might belong to the collectivist states. There was also rioting in Arkansas and throughout the south over proposed school desegregation. In 1958, the United States launched its first satellite. Civil-rights conflict continued. In 1959, the United States twitched with fear as Fidel Castro took control of Cuba and launched a pro-Soviet regime "ninety miles from our shores," as the popular saying of the day went. These are the highlights of an era of tempestuous conflict over racial issues and day-by-day concern about nuclear war, not to mention abiding fears about the economy (there were two recessions in the 1950s). It is hard to reconcile the notion that the 1950s were a sterile, boring, placid time with the twin notion that we were learning to "duck and cover" and building bomb shelters in the expectation of nuclear war. It is hard to say that nothing happened in the 1950s when the images of screaming, taunting mobs of whites blocking school doors against the entry of black children are still vivid in our memories. True, the White House was a calm, relatively scandal-free place. But there was real ferment and change going on in the nation. Nothing since has even been close to as monumental a change in American life as was launched by Brown v. Board of Education, and no national climate has ever been as bitter as the crossfire hurricane that swirled around the red-hunters and their enemies. As lively as the political scene was, the cultural scene was even more brilliant and glowing. The 1950s were a time when classics were turned out like clockwork in every artistic area. To compare the quality and artistic originality of what came out of the 1950s with what has come since is startling and even depressing. Take a look at some Pulitzer Prize fiction winners of the 1950s. Herman Wouk gave us The Caine Mutiny, Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, and William Faulkner offered us A Fable. Can anyone even remember who won a Pulitzer for fiction in the '90s? Or, if you want total shock, consider some of the Pulitzer drama winners for the 1950s. There were Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Can anyone imagine that a work of such power was created in our era? And now, if you want to have your brains blown right out of your head, take a peek at some Tony Awards for Broadway plays for the 1950s. Giants walked the earth: Rodgers and Hammerstein brought us The King and I in 1952. In 1953, we saw Arthur Miller's The Crucible, one of the classic dramas of all time. Also in that decade came Kismet, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, My Fair Lady, and The Music Man. Again, try to think of a single musical of the last 20 years that is not a revival and that will be hummed 50 years hence. Now, hear the music. In the 1950s, we had Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Charlie Byrd. Then, right in the middle of the decade, along came rock and roll: Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, The Platters, The Coasters, The Drifters, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and hundreds of others. Top poets also marked the 1950s. Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and Wallace Stevens were still churning out powerful poems. Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and Marianne Moore were making poetry for the ages. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were rebelling, but decades of rebellion are hardly moments of sterility in art. No decade is perfect, and the 1950s had plenty of problems with racism, sexism, and a lack of attention to the disabled and the nonwhite. But from the 1950s came the polio vaccine, the beginning of meaningful racial equality of opportunity, and a mass culture that assumed intelligence on the part of the mass audience: Anyone who recalls Omnibus, Playhouse 90 or Your Show of Shows cannot be anything but humbled by the comparison with what is on any one of the hundreds of channels we have today. If you remember the eloquence of Ike (his supposed stammering was always a myth) and Adlai Stevenson, and then think of Bill Clinton's fraternity-boy colloquialisms or George Bush's contempt for language itself, you cannot but wonder how fast devolution has occurred. The real story that begs for a movie is not how cool kids from the 1990s brought hip style to the 1950s. It's about how time travelers from the 1950s ventured to the late 1990s, gasped, and flew home again to a time of real excitement, genius-level creative output, and a last breath of elegance in human communication. SUBSCRIBE | ABOUT | MESSAGE BOARDS | ARCHIVE Copyright Brill Media Ventures, L.P. 1998 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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