Friday, November 5, 2010

What we really miss . . .

According to Coontz, what DO we really miss about the 1950s? Do you think, in America at present, that we are still nostalgic for the '50s? Are YOU nostalgic for a particular time in American history? Why? In regard to the American family, do you think future generations might look back in an idealized or nostalgic fashion on today?

29 comments:

  1. Personally, I AM nostalgic for the 50's. Well, at least for the way that decade appears to have been. People want the simple lifestyle, and the picture of the nuclear family is a great representation of that. The perfect yards in friendly neighborhoods with the family at the dinner table make the typical 50's picture seem so perfect. Growing up I watched the old TV shows like Brady Bunch and Leave It To Beaver all the time. Those shows make the pettiest problems into the biggest deal of the day. "Oh boy Beaver didn't make his bed and lied about it." When compared to real problems today, I would much rather live with the Cleavers or the Bradys. In reality however, the 50's had just as many problems as we do today. They just aren't portrayed in TV shows. It's easy to get lost in the dream, to only see the good side of things. I think that future generations will probably look back with nostalgia on today, but only because they'll only see the brighter half of the picture as well.

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  2. I think that the views of the 50's and the way we now portray it are not very different. The generation of the fifties is made up of men coming back from war, educated mainly with army standards and structure. The way the shows depicted the family is in essence the same as the typical American fifties household.

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  3. I think in many ways Americans are nostalgic for what the '50s offered. It offered a stability in the family that has become rare in today's world, where dysfunctional families are all too common. Also, the '50s were a time of economic prosperity. Ignoring what exactly most people found themselves doing, men and women alike had purpose and direction in life. They were hard working but the fruits of their labor were enjoyed. I personally am nostalgic for that time in history. Our country, even at the level of the suburban neighborhood, seemed to be unified with a common goal of making the 'American way of life' possible through principles of hard work and self-government.

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  4. Almost every generation looks back on their childhood as an era of innocence and happiness. This comes from an ignorance of the issues which childhood implies. Childhood is innocent so people associate their childhoods with a more innocent time. It takes an exceptionally bad era to dispel this illusion. In the future people will even look back at this era with nostalgia. I for example am nostalgic for the 90s. But, the 50s hold a special place in Americas heart. I personally am not nostalgic for the 50s, but I can see how people are. Even with their dark underbelly, the fifties were a time when a person could easily afford to raise a family with his salary, when a person could get a good job with only a high-school education.

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  5. Americans look to the past to offer an example for the ideal way of life because that is what they have been told is best all thier lives. Parents who grew up in the 1950s immediately think that that time was the best to be raised in and pass that ideaology along to their children who continue it to their children. Why there is not more a recurring implication, where the parents who grew up in the '60s think that that time was best, or the parents who were children in the '70s and so on, I am not sure. But I do recognize that many people still think the '50s was the best time for life in America, without realizing the reality of that assumption. Does today's youngest generation look to the 50s as the ideal time as their parents had been taught to do? Quite the opposite, the majority of today's young adults look not reenact the 50s, but to find their own niche in the world that has become a massive repository for acceptance. The world today is more connected to all ends of the planet than in the 50s. A result may be a growing environment for tolerance for different walks of life.

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  6. People almost always look back on the past with some form of longing. Whether it be because of apparently better family structure or because of the lack of complicated technology, many people feel nostalgic about the 50s. However, -every- time period has its problems. Just because it is portrayed as simple and peaceful does not mean that that was the way it really was. I think that the 1950s is simply a symbolic time in our nation's history that people think of with fondness and longing, even if it was not actually that great.

    With each generation's changing views on technology, morals, and families, life gets seemingly more complicated. Therefore, there will always be nostalgia for past years. If anything, this can be a result of merely not remembering the bad things. After enough time passes, almost any situation can seem less bad just because people are not as connected to it anymore. Even if something bad is happening now, people may someday look back at our lives in 2010 just like how we view the 50s.

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  7. I think from a historical standpoint we are nostalgic about the 1950s but from a everyday standpoint most people do not reminisce about the past. We look back at the nuclear age and all that happened, but mainly for educational purposes. I personally do not have any feelings of remembrance towards the '50s, possibly because I was not alive back then but none the less there are no nostalgic feelings regarding the past. I think that the feelings we have now about the '50s will either continue as they are or only decrease in importance.

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  8. I agree with the sentiment that people are nostalgic about the '50s, but do not really want to have lived then. The idea of the 1950s is more of what they are concered about, an idealized perfect time, a simple time with few of the problems of today. However, I think it is naive to believe that this idea is anything more than an idea: it is an abstract thought, with no more basis in reality than any other work of fiction. Personally, I believe that nostalgic feelings for the 1950s are just as foolish as nostalgia for the dark ages. What we really want is for our lives to be easier and simpler, somethng I think we can ony find in the future.

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  9. I personally believe that people are not nostalgic for the '50s, but for the stereotypes born out of them. The hard working and caring father, the caring mother, the obedient and eager to please children. I believe that almost no one knows about, or remembers the '50s, and so only know what they have been told, or shown in TV and movies. So no, to me people are not nostalgic for the '50s, but for a commercialized and idealized version of them. And I would be surprised if some people did not look back at our time the same way. An age of invention where the internet boom, and a cultural revolution was started. What actually happened in the '00s and '10s wont be remembered nor will people want to. Our time will be romanticized and changed for the pleasure of those that care to think back to their recent past. Or we might be remembered for certain things that came out of our time that is still worth remembering, like the '80s with movies and music.

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  10. There was a great movie made here in the last ten years called Pleasant Ville. It was really interesting how the movie portrayed the 50's characters, naive, simple and quite oblivious to what the world was really about. When We look back on the 50's it is usually portrayed through a TV screen with. An earlier post commented that the 50's had the same problems we have today. This is very true, but television was just taking hold during the fifties ad there was a much lower tolerance of what could be shown. Now media networks grope for attention by showing disturbing images and inappropriate material to stay afloat. A family back then is no different from a family now, it's just that today's families need a lot more to entertain them.

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  11. I don't believe that it is proper to ask students of this age to be nostalgic or ask about nostalgia levels. After all, we have only lived through two decades, the 90s and 00s. Asking if someone our age is nostalgic about a different time period is impossible without gross assumption and profiling and entire generation and time period. It simply isn't fair to any decade. Personally though, I miss the 90s.

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  12. According to Coontz, what America really misses from the 1950s is the "nuclear family" dream that was nationwide during that era. A unified goal of every American family created stability within competition and allowed for a prosperous time in American history. However, like Coontz also mentions, there might be an overlying idea that most Americans remember the 1950s fondly, but it certainly isn't the great era in most people's minds. Personally, I think that any era has portions that can be remembered fondly, and portions that most people try and forget. It's only human nature to appreciate the good and forget the bad.

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  13. I think that there is a clear difference between being nostalgic over something and wanting a more innocent and stable era to live in. The 1950s were and still are nostalgic to a lot of people, but I believe that a lot of those people feel that way because it was a more stable period of time. It is for that reason that they are nostalgic. I don’t think that the 1950s as a whole is an era that people want to revisit for everything that it offered, only parts of it. But because such vast majorities see it that way, it becomes assumed that they are referring to it as a whole, not just the parts they remember. As for me, the only thing I’m nostalgic for is a better economic system in America. That creates less stress and less worry for the country. So other than that, I’m pretty content right now.

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  14. I personally am not nostalgic for the 1950s. While it appeared to be a time of happiness, it was more a time of ignorance compared to today. Families in the 50s only got news through the radio and newspaper while today we have everything on the internet to give us information. the 50s were a time of economic boom and technological advances following the second world war, but many advancements were untested and dangerous. In modern times we have learned from mistakes and made greater advances in technology.

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  15. It does seem that certain portions of America are still quite nostalgic for certain aspects of what the 1950s claimed to have offered. (One can see this in the ways that the merits of "family values" are sometimes brought into political debates, in an attempt to gain favor with what is presumably a large portion of the population.) I however, have little nostalgia for the 1950s. The 1950s was one of the most rigidly developed and fabricated eras in American history. The "stability" of the time was really just the militant attitude of the 1940s bleeding over, in which order and duty were made paramount. The optimism of the era, and faith in technological advances, was also completely misguided, also being another by-product of the end of World War II. The optimism associated with with all of this is also indicative of extreme naivety, which is not terribly surprising in a world where all one needed to thrive was a high school diploma. The 1950s seems to be a time which was driven by blind, uninformed optimism, and the impetus of victory from WWII, and little else.

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  16. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to live in the 50s, but maybe I'm just not one for misogyny and racism. Personally the thought of going back sixty years in social and technological progress is unappealing. There was also the Cold War and the thread of having your entire town wiped out via nuclear weapons through the 50s, so once again I simply don't see the appeal.

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  17. The 50s are portrayed as being a simpler time without all the complications of modern life when families lived in perfect suburbs with two parents and two kids. This may have been partly true, but the 50s where remembered because they where 60 years ago when our grandparents where growing up. As a child things seem much better than they actually are. Its the same reason we look back so fondly on the 70s. The 50s may have been better than the 30s and 40s, but it wasn't the perfect time we know them as.

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  18. I agree with Cyrus in that times have changed, and that the 1950s are not as "perfect" as modern America sees them. Family structure might have been ideal during that time, but given the changes that have happened in over 60 years, one must take all of these into consideration and see that the "ideal" structure of the 1950s is not the only suitable family type for this decade, and the ones to come.

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  19. I don't think people look back on the 50s as much as they used to. I think every person seems to have their own opinion in which era was the "best". I know quite a few people who like the 60s and the 70s and quite a few who dislike those times. I know I like the 90s just because that's when I was growing up and I wish I could go back and be a kid again but again, that is my own opinion. I think there will be people who look upon our time now and become nostalgic and others who won't. You will always find people who like the same time period, you just have to look around for them.

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  20. The only thing I think we miss about the 50s is how simple it was. Today we have so many complications and a lot of things to stress on. I'm not saying they didn't have things to stress on back then, but I am saying we have a lot of NEW things to stress on now. Overall, I think America is not nostalgic for the 50s. We mostly live in the here and right now. I'm similar to Soccer Dork in the fact that I am nostalgic for the 90s because I am a 90s kid. I personally love almost everything about that time. I do believe that future generations will look back in nostalgia on today. I think that will be mostly due to our improvements on technology though.

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  21. I think nostalgia towards the 1950s is really more just nostalgia towards the simplicity that coincided with living in the '50s, which almost every blogger above me seems to be saying already. The 1950s families are portrayed as cookie-cutter families where the father works a 9 to 5 job, and then brings home the "bacon" while his housewife stays home cooking and cleaning. The son and daughter are sent off to school with kisses and lunch bags and dinner is on the table at the same time every day. What I find discreetly evil about the familial dynamic of the stereotypical nuclear family is that the gender roles from the 1950s are the basis for the family structure, and it's blatantly oppressive. Women who want to work outside the home or who don't want to have children are deemed selfish and abnormal by 1950s standards. Gay men don't fit anywhere in this picture. Something wonderful about society today is that it is more socially acceptable for women to be independent and autonomous when compared to women in the 1950s. Today, gays and lesbians can be much more open about their sexuality than gays and lesbians in the 1950s, which is a great thing. I see that in some of the above comments, bloggers are attributing the petty problems that 1950s families on television to the simplicity of life in the 1950s. This is not true. Life wasn't more simple, society was simply more oppressive. Today, family drama could involve a son revealing he is gay to his family. In the 1950s, this wouldn't happen.

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  22. The 1950s was a more simple time than now and people feel nostalgic about the 50s because they don't want to deal with the problems that are occurring in their lives now, blah blah blah. I'm sure another blog post saying the same thing as 90% of the posts above this one is not really needed at this point.
    I believe that the only people who truly miss the 50s are those who feel hostile towards the change in their own lives. After all, this day and age is somewhat more demanding and complicated than 50 years ago. because of these demands and complications, sometimes people just want all their problems to go away and so they recall the 50s and a temporary escape. However, people do this because we live in 2 different eras. the 50s were a time where people thought in the present. Now, people are more anticipate about the future. A little time to look at the world we live in today and its actions will point out how accurate that statement is. People are trying to plan out their lives before they have even had a chance to live and I believe the gap that is caused when they don't meet their plans causes them to freak out. I believe people will look back on this day and age when people look at life in a different way than we do now, as it will be a life style people will miss.

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  23. I agree with the other posts that talk about how people do not miss the 1950's, but rather the stereotypes that have been created about that time period. The 1950's were really not as simple as everyone thinks they are. As for me, I am really not nostalgic about any time period in particular. While there are some people from history that I feel would be helpful now, there is really no time period that I wish for right now.

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  24. I look back on the fifties as a time of falsehood. Most families, even the happiest ones are not that…perfect. During the fifties everything looked perfect due to the repression of the age. Women were forced to act the part of the “perfect mother” and men the part of the bread-winning all wise father. Children were supposed to be well behaved, curious, well versed and agreeable. None of these are true today. Women are stronger than they used to be, men are more willing to show their emotions and children are more rebellious. Yes all these do add up to familial turmoil, but, if the family manages to be happy despite it all, at least the families are honest with themselves also.

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  25. I do not think that there was ever a family in the 1950s that simulated the "Cleavers." I would be scared if I found a family then, or even today, that followed the "nuclear" family. If anything Americans miss the fact that in the fifties, one could walk across the street, meet up with some friends, and actually do something. The world today is run by electronics. Kids don't go outside and play a pickup game of baseball anymore. Kids, online, talk to one another and play a virtual game of baseball. Sure I would love to live in the fifties. If one paid attention to American hsitory, the forties and fifties were times in America when America was united and people were working together to make America better. America during the fifties, with the exception of the cold war, was experiencing a time of peace and the world looked to America as a sign of hope. Yes, Americans should try to pick up some of the values left behind in the fifties.

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  26. I think that a lot of people miss the easy going, slow lifestyle like back in the 50's. There was the traditional family and living the american dream. Views on family life and this dream are now very different than that of the 50's. I believe that family life will get more and more complicated as time progresses. The idea of "The perfect family" will change greatly from now, as it has from the 50's, and it will be much harder to live this type of way.

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  27. According to Coontz we miss the idea of the nuclear family the most. I do not think my generation is nostalgic for the 1950s, but I do think we are the first to not be. When I was a kid TV channels showed many of the old shows and cartoons from the 50s in primetime but they don’t anymore (unless it is late at night or on a specialty channel). Nostalgic movies such as the Iron Giant have flopped in the box office and have since disappeared altogether. If I were to guess as to the cause I would site the end of the cold war as what killed the nostalgia(with a decade to cool off). I am personally nostalgic of the 60s but more likely than not a fantasy of the 60s.

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  28. According to Coontz, what Americans really miss about the 1950s is the idealized concept of a nuclear family. I do not believe that America is nostalgic for the 1950s in the sense that Americans want more nuclear families or in the sense that Americans want the world to resemble the 1950s. Americans seem obsessed with progress and moving forward, not dwelling in the past. Personally, I am not nostalgic for any time period and do not see the point in such nostalgia because the only thing that can affect me is the present. I believe that some future Americans may look back at the present with nostalgia, but that is only because I have observed that there are people in each age group that are nostalgic for the various time periods that they grew up in. I can only assume that this trend will continue.

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  29. I believe that we, as a whole, are currently not nostalgic of the 1950's, an era during which racism and sexism were prevalent. We have become obsessed with the idea of eliminating any form of prejudice from society while moving forward and making progress.

    I, for one, would very much like to travel back to World War II, a time where I believe America had the greatest sense of responsibility, righteousness, and duty, in terms of defending freedom. Though there are certainly aspects of the era I do not approve of, I feel the good far outweighs the bad.

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