Transcript Slide 1
Sex, Drugs,
and
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Television
Introduced just before
WWII, by 1957, over
40 million televisions
were in use in the US
TV quickly became
Americans’ primary
means of receiving
information, whether it
was the news, the
latest fads and
fashions, or what new
products were available
for purchase
Movies
Facing the stiff
competition from
television, Hollywood was
forced to adapt
Introduced 3-D movies in
the 1952
Introduced Cinemascope
(a special projection
system which required a
large, curved screen) to
make the movie-going
experience “grander”
than watching TV
Rock-n-roll
Bill Haley and the Comets
are usually credited with
having the first #1 rock hit
with “Rock Around the
Clock” in 1955
Rock-n-roll originated as a
fusion of African-American
based Rhythm & Blues
with jazz and country
music influences
The sound caught on with
teens, but was widely
considered “immoral” and
too sexual by the older
generation
Elvis Presley
1935 – 1977
“The King of Rock and
Roll”
Had his first major hit
record, “Heartbreak
Hotel,” and film “Love Me
Tender” in 1956
Recorded over 100 Top
40 hits in his 20 year
career before dying of
drug-related heart failure
The Beatles
1960 – 1970
Rock group who led the
“British Invasion” of
English musical acts which
became popular in the US
The band would reflect the
youth culture of the ’60s –
fairly innocent and cleancut at the beginning of the
decade and heavily
immersed in the antiVietnam War, pro-peace
drug culture at the end
The Beat Generation
Group of writers who
criticized the meaningless
conformity of American
life in the 1950s and
encouraged young people
to experience new artistic
forms, and engage ain
experimentation with
drugs and sex
Needless to say, they
were considered shocking
and obscene to
mainstream American
society
Allen Ginsberg
1926 – 1997
Poet; most famous work
is Howl
Shocked readers with his
depictions of
homosexual acts and
drug use
Ginsberg was essentially
everything that
mainstream America
was not – a bisexual,
communist Buddhist
who endorsed the use of
LSD and marijuana
Jack Kerouac
1922 – 1969
Wrote on a wide variety of
topics, often spontaneously
deciding what his next topic
would be
A writer of many personal
contradictions – he was
Catholic and anti-communist,
but freely used marijuana and
supported homosexuals and
other marginalized minorities
Most famous work is the novel
On the Road
Died from complications from
alcoholism
The Counter-culture
Upper and middle class white
youth began to abandon the
mores of their parents’
generation and create a new
society, one that promoted
the virtues of “sex, drugs,
and rock and roll”
Sometimes these “hippies”
lived and worked together in
classless communes,
pursuing the ideals of
tolerance and cooperation, or
pursuing new religious
experiences such as
Unification (a messianic cult)
or Hare Krishna (an offshoot
of Hinduism)
Woodstock
August 1969
Music festival, held in
upstate New York
Over 500,000 hippies
attended this
celebration of love,
peace, and rock and
roll that was the
pinnacle of the
counter-culture
movement
Bob Dylan
1941 – Present
Singer-songwriter
who began to move
rock away from the
innocent sounds of
the 1950s and early
’60s to a format used
to promote real social
change and to protest
injustices
Students for a Democratic Society
Organization run by
college students which, in
its 1962 Port Huron
Statement, urged ordinary
Americans to stop idly
standing by while the
nation was run by wealthy
elites and powerful
corporations who
oppressed the poor and
other minority groups
Carried out protests
against the Vietnam War,
racism, poverty, and a
variety of other social
injustices
Free Speech Movement
In 1964, the Univ. of
California moved to restrict
students’ rights to distribute
literature and recruit for
political causes on campus
Students responded by
boycotting classes and
staging a sit-in at the
school’s administration
building, prompting police
to arrest over 700
protesters
Eventually, the Supreme
Court upheld the students’
right to free speech on
campus
The Women’s Movement
The Women’s Liberation
Movement began to take
shape in the 1960s as
women became resentful of
discriminatory practices that
denied them access to equal
education, credit, job
opportunities, and pay
Women were also upset over
their lack of a political voice
at a time when many other
oppressed groups, such as
African Americans, were
suddenly experiencing widespread gains
The Pill
Oral contraceptives first
became available to American
women in 1960, giving them
the power over whether or not
they had children for the first
time
Griswold v Connecticut: in
1965 the Supreme Court ruled
that the states could not
restrict married couples access
to contraception
Eisenstadt v Baird : in 1972
the Court ruled that single
women had the same right to
contraception as married ones
Presidential Commission on the
Status of Women
Established in 1961
by President Kennedy
and headed by former
First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt to consider
women’s rights and
roles within the
workplace and
propose new
legislation on such to
the government
Equal Pay Act of 1963
Banned
discriminatory
practice of paying
women less than a
man for the same
work, unless the
employer pays on
basis of seniority,
merit, or
productivity
Betty Friedan
1921 – 2006
Her book The Feminine
Mystique, published in
1963, is often called the
beginning of the modern
feminist movement
The book focused on the
dissatisfaction felt by
American women with
their roles as housewives
and mothers and led to
creation of women’s
groups around the nation
National Organization for Women
NOW was founded in
1966 by Betty Friedan
Pushed for greater
educational opportunities
for women
Pushed for women to be
more included in
professions such as law,
politics, engineering, and
medicine
Targeted unfair practice
of paying women less
than men engaged in the
same types of work
Gloria Steinem
1934 – Present
Feminist journalist who
helped found and edit
Ms., a magazine designed
especially for the
women’s liberation
movement
In many ways, Steinem
became the national
spokesperson for the
movement due to her
willingness to do
televised interviews and
speeches
“Bra-burning”
As the feminist
movement spread,
women began to
express their rejection of
male-dominated culture
by rejecting the use of
bras, high-heeled shoes,
and other “beauty”
products
They also became
outspoken in their
distaste for
objectification of women
in beauty pageants,
advertising, and
pornography
Equal Rights Amendment
Passed by Congress in
1972, but failed to be
ratified by the states
Designed to protect
women from
discrimination, but
many feared that if
passed it would cost
women many of their
traditional rights such
as alimony in divorce
Phyllis Schlafly
1924 – Present
Political activist and
outspoken opponent to
the feminist movement
Organized the STOP-ERA
movement (Stop Taking
Our Privileges) which is
credited with defeating
ratification of the ERA
Argued that ERA would
lead to women being
drafted into the military,
unisex public bathrooms,
and loss of marital perks
Roe v. Wade
1973
Supreme Court ruled that
women have the right to
decide whether or not to
terminate a pregnancy
because of a constitutionally
implied right to privacy
States can not restrict
abortion during the first
trimester, but can create
limits during the 2nd and 3rd
trimesters of pregnancy
Case remains extremely
controversial to this day
Environmentalism
Throughout the
1960s, Americans
became increasingly
concerned with the
damage being done
to the environment
through pollution,
logging, and manmade alterations to
natural habitats, such
as dams, mines, etc.
Rachel Carson
1907 – 1964
Marine biologist who wrote
the book Silent Spring in
1962 which warned of the
dangers posed by overuse
of pesticides by farmers –
mainly that the pesticides
also killed creatures like
birds and fish which ate the
insects
The book sold well despite
opposition by chemical
companies, and led many
Americans to reconsider
their impact on the
environment
Environmental Protection Agency
Created in 1970 to set
and enforce pollution
standards
Tasked with enforcing the
Clean Air Act of 1970,
Clean Water Act of 1972,
and Endangered Species
Act of 1973, all of which
are aimed at limiting the
human impact on the
environment and wildlife
Love Canal
Neighborhood in Niagara
Falls, NY which discovered in
the mid-1970s that the
unusually high levels of
health problems experienced
by residents was caused by
the fact that the entire area
was built on top of a toxic
waste dump
The government relocated
over 800 families and spent
millions on clean-up
Led to tighter restrictions on
development in areas which
had been used for storage of
toxic waste
Nuclear Power
The US began to experience
serious energy crises in the
late 1960s and 1970s due to
oil shortages
At the same time, antipollution laws made burning
coal to generate electricity
more expensive
Many began to see nuclear
power as the answer to the
nation’s energy needs,
despite the possible danger
of catastrophic radioactive
accidents in the event of a
malfunction
Three-Mile Island
March 28, 1979
One of the nuclear reactors at
the Three-Mile Island power
plant in Pennsylvania suffered
a core meltdown, releasing
radioactive gas into the
surrounding environment
Although there were no deaths
directly contributed to the
accident, cancer and infant
mortality rates in the areas
downwind showed marked
increases in the years
immediately following
Since the accident, use of
nuclear power has declined in
the US
The Computer Age
First electronic computer,
called ENIAC (Electronic
Numerical Integrator and
Computer) was developed for
the US Army in 1946
By the end of the 1950s,
computers were being used by
business and industry to
handle large volumes of data
The personal home computer
would not arrive until the mid1970s and would not be
common-place until the mid1990s with the arrival of the
internet