Of all the critical analysis over the 1950’s we discussed in class, I believe Michael Dwyer’s article “Fixing the Fifties” and Stephanie Coontz’s “The way we never were” truly identifies why we view “the fifties” with such adoration. Of course this era so cherished and praised as the ideal time in America, is nothing more that a mythological veil. This obscured reflection has falsely projected a time of complete happiness, low social and economic distress, and even posterized what one should consider in living the “American Dream”. This sort of ideal conviction of the 1950’s has prompted generations to view the time with overwhelming nostalgia and while using a parallel cut almost deliberately eliminated the true culture and issues of that
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I found her reading very interesting and believe it fits well into how society is infatuated with the ideological view of the 1950’s. Her article shines light on the real issues of the era and accurately describes how this manipulated vision of the “American Dream” was manufactured. She begins by describing the accurate account of the American household during the 1950’s and states that the “computed percentage of total households that contain a breadwinner father, a full time homemaker mother, and dependent children, are fewer than 10 percent of American families.” (Coontz 22). Now these statistics differ than what we see when watching a 1950’s sitcom or watching a film that depicts the 1950’s. Most of our perception of the Fifties is a total opposite of this actually stat and that usually include a business type father, stay at home mother, and a couple of kids playing with there dog. So contrary to popular opinion, Coontz writes, "Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.”(Coontz 19). In the Beaver 's 1950 's; before food stamps and public housing programs, one in four Americans was poor. There were Federal programs such as housing loans, G.I. benefits, job-creating research and development, and highway construction. Coontz argues that such programs rendered the 1950 's suburban family "far more dependent on government handouts than any so-called 'underclass ' in recent U. S. history." (Coontz 25). Incidents of family violence and abuse remained buried under the idealized images of the times, "Wife battering was not even considered a 'real ' crime by most people,”(Coontz 25). He deep analysis over American society and specifically the American household sheds light on how this suburbia utopia was created. This ideal of a nuclear family center around the home was something new in the Fifties and totally
I found her reading very interesting and believe it fits well into how society is infatuated with the ideological view of the 1950’s. Her article shines light on the real issues of the era and accurately describes how this manipulated vision of the “American Dream” was manufactured. She begins by describing the accurate account of the American household during the 1950’s and states that the “computed percentage of total households that contain a breadwinner father, a full time homemaker mother, and dependent children, are fewer than 10 percent of American families.” (Coontz 22). Now these statistics differ than what we see when watching a 1950’s sitcom or watching a film that depicts the 1950’s. Most of our perception of the Fifties is a total opposite of this actually stat and that usually include a business type father, stay at home mother, and a couple of kids playing with there dog. So contrary to popular opinion, Coontz writes, "Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.”(Coontz 19). In the Beaver 's 1950 's; before food stamps and public housing programs, one in four Americans was poor. There were Federal programs such as housing loans, G.I. benefits, job-creating research and development, and highway construction. Coontz argues that such programs rendered the 1950 's suburban family "far more dependent on government handouts than any so-called 'underclass ' in recent U. S. history." (Coontz 25). Incidents of family violence and abuse remained buried under the idealized images of the times, "Wife battering was not even considered a 'real ' crime by most people,”(Coontz 25). He deep analysis over American society and specifically the American household sheds light on how this suburbia utopia was created. This ideal of a nuclear family center around the home was something new in the Fifties and totally