20th Century
Shen
Name: __________________________
Youth culture and Rebellion
I. Mid-1950s there were 16.5 million teenagers in the United States – an untapped market
a. ½ of them were in secondary schools (the rest were in college or working)
b. Teens/youth was in the spotlight in the 1950s – child-centered culture and society
c. Increased buying power
i. Teens on average made more than entire families had a decade earlier. In 1956, the average
teen earned $10.55/wk as compared to the pre-war average of $10/wk for an entire family.
(Many teens had their own bank accounts and credit cards.)
ii. Used income to shop – new market
In such a child-centric culture, parents feared negative influences – what were those bad influences?
II. Juvenile Delinquency
a. Between 1948-1953, there was a ______% increase in juveniles being brought to court.
b. Rise in organized gangs – adults read more about these gangs in the newspapers.
c. Puzzling and frightening rise in crime, saw crime spreading to the suburbs.
III. Books
a. J.D. Salinger’s ____________________________: Holden Caufield, rebellious teen who fought
the system, got kicked out of school, swore, drank, smoked, spent time with prostitutes. Boy who
went out on his own to find himself. Cynicism.
b. Huckleberry Finn: Huck takes off down the river to explore the world, messages of disobedience
of social norms and of racial intermixing
c. Beat writers - more to come on this…
IV. Dangerous Teen Idols
a. Marilyn Monroe - sexy Hollywood actress & model. A nude
photo of Monroe graced the cover of the first issue of Playboy
magazine (1953). “Monroe was the stuff of which male fantasies
were made. She was at once both lush and childlike. She knew the
power of her own sexuality, knew how to turn it on and turn it
off.”1
b. James Dean – made famous for his role in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
i. Hollywood actor, played a troubled teen (jeans & leather jacket wearing, greasers.) He was
the embodiment of the restlessness, confusion and rejection of society, the rebelliousness,
and desire to break the rules of conformity.
1
David Halberstam, “Discovering Sex,” American Heritage, May/June 1993, p.43.
V. Rock ‘n’ Roll Music – “ON ROCK & ROLL”
a. Emerged as a defined style in the South during the 1950s (combined elements of blues, boogie
woogie, jazz, and rhythm and blues)
b. The term “_______________” was first used in the context of black gospel singers in the context
of biblical “rapture.” It later was used as a double entendre; could mean both dancing and sex.
c. In its early incarnations, rock and roll was very much considered “race music”—not heard by white
audiences. The white mainstream feared that the growing popularity of rock & roll signaled a
breaking down of existing racial barriers. They feared that it encouraged race mixing and sex.
d. ___________________________ was a Cleveland, OH radio DJ who was one of the first DJs to
promote “race music” to the white mainstream. He is also credited with what?
___________________________________________________________________________
e.
“Rock and roll” because more mainstream as white artists began to cover black R&B songs
f. Why was rock ‘n’ Roll appealing? ________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
g. Why did most adults oppose rock ‘n’ roll? _________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
h. _____________________________ brought together these musical strains
i. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi on Jan. 8, 1935 to a sharecropper’s family.
Grew up in Memphis, TN as a teen where he experienced the rich
musical scene of Beale Street
ii. Mixed gospel, country, hillbilly, and rhythm and blues music = first
white musician to do so, made R&B tremendously popular with white
teens
iii. Famous for ____________________________________. Banned
from appearing on many tv shows – shot from the waist up.
iv. 1956 meteoric rise to fame: Ed Sullivan Show, 14 million records sold,
30 movies, $150 million in record sales. Good timing – America
wasn’t ready for him in the 1940s but teens embraced his music in the
1950s, could afford to buy his records, had their own portable record
players and radios.
v. In teens’ eyes, listening to Elvis was a safe form of rebellion – music
and lyrics were objectionable (race music and swinging hips) but Elvis
didn’t smoke and drink at first, loved his momma.
vi. Elvis opened the door for black artists in a way – how so?
On Rock and Roll
When rock and roll exploded across the American music scene in the early 1950s, reactions to it were rarely neutral.
In general, adults were alarmed by the music and performers and their effects on young audiences. American youth,
on the other hand, embraced rock and roll as if the music and the teenagers were meant for one another.
Against Rock and Roll
A.D. Buchmueller, psychiatric social worker,
The New York Times, 1958
Kids, just like adults, get caught up in a mass kind of
hysteria, which is contagious. Some get hurt by it,
physically and emotionally.
But it is not helpfully and may even be harmful
for adults to take a strong and condemning attitude
and action towards adolescents in their rock ‘n’ roll
behavior. This behavior is part of their individual as
well as collective or group rebellion against the
strictness of adult society.
This doesn’t mean that I approve of rock ‘n’ roll.
I don’t. I think there are many other kinds of music,
more beautiful and culturally more valuable, that they
might be hearing. And also the suggestiveness of a
sexual nature is crude and…is to be deplored.
Against Rock and Roll
Phyllis Battelle, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music Is Tops with
Teenagers,” The New York Times, 1956
These rock-roll hops, now being conducted in most
large cities by disk jockeys on local radio shows, have
occasionally led to riots. Massachusetts has had a
particularly bad time: In Somerville, a youth was
stabbed with an ice pick at a “hop;” a girl was knifed
in Everett, Mass.; 30 students rioted at one another at
MIT, and a boy was paralyzed with a golf club…
In LA, a Catholic priest…deplored [rock ‘n’
roll’s] emotional impact. “I think,” he said, that the
rock and roll fad…can have an influence on the
average teenager to perform certain actions classified
as wrong or sinful. Such actions could result in illicit
sexual activities or possibly the use of narcotics.”
Against Rock and Roll
Frank Sinatra, singer, The New York Times, 1958
Rock ‘n’ roll smells phony and false. It is sung,
played, and written for the most part by cretinous
goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration
and sly, lewd, in plain fact, dirty lyrics…it manages to
be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent
on the face of the earth.
For Rock and Roll
Alan Freed, radio disk jockey,
The New York Times, 1957 and 1958
I was shocked when I read what Frank said. He has
no business knocking show business. It’s been good
to him. As for charging that this music is “dirty” and
making delinquents of children, I think I’m helping to
combat juvenile delinquency. If my kids are home at
night listening to my radio program, and get interested
enough to go out and buy records and have a
collection to listen to and dance to, I think I’m
fighting delinquency.
…It’s the rhythm that gets the kids. They are
starved for music they can dance to after all those
years of crooners. It’s simple to dance to and clap
your hands to and the kids know the words to every
song. That’s why they come. This is an audienceparticipation kind of music. They come in and pay to
sing louder than the performers.
And it’s natural that kids should look for
excitement and thrills. Well, I’d rather that they find
excitement and thrills. Well, I’d rather that they find
it in the theatre than in street gangs. And as they grow
up, they broaden out and come to enjoy all kinds of
music.
For Rock and Roll
Jeff Barry, songwriter,
Rockonomics: The Money Behind the Music
The big thing, I remember, was the difference in the
music itself, from what Frank Sinatra had done, Tony
Bennett, all of that generation. I was just a kid writing
songs for other kids to record, and for kids to listen to.
That was the difference. I wasn’t working in a room
with a bunch of older men composing what they
thought rock and roll was about; I was writing, really,
for myself, for what I liked, for kids who were like
me, my age, who could relate to the music instantly
and honestly.
VI. Perception vs. Reality
a. Most teens were not rebellious and had the “typical” teenage issues (clothes, relationships, sports, dates,
body image, career)
b. Most teens were very conservative – mirrored their parents and larger society – hence the name, the
_______________ Generation
i. Busy seeking the good life rather than the examined one that came with behaving differently
1. Censorship was common
2. Revival of religion
3. Conformist – sex and conservatism
ii. Most of the white middle-class sought to fit in (were not very political, little activism, wore
clothing: preppy, girls never wore jeans or shorts)