- Film:
- Rebel Without A Cause (1955), 111 minutes
[DVD 01070, LD 1199]
- Rebel Without A Cause (1955), 111 minutes
- Read:
- David Greenberg, Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, Chapters 1-2 (72 pgs.).
- Susan J. Douglas, Chapter 1, "Fractured Fairy Tales," pp. 21-42, in Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media.
- Stephanie Coontz, Ch. 2, "'Leave it to Beaver’: and ‘Ozzie and Harriet’: American Families in the 1950s," pp. 23-41, in The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.
The Suburban Consensus
Grounded in Cold War Liberalism
American political system is best in the world
The Mixed economy will work for everybody if you give it time
Strong belief in the the sanctity and power of the individual
Problems soloved by individual adjustment
Institutions like the Family are crucial to mainting consenus among individuals
What Fueled Consensus?
Prosperity
Desire to Return to "Normal"
Epitomized by the suburban ideal
What threatens Consensus?
The balance between "fitting in" and Conforming
particularly difficult as culture is nationalized through television
Rebellion
Rebel Without a Cause: the answer is individual adjustment
Social worker with a gun
The uneasy fit between the ideal of consensus and the social reality of life in the Fifties
REBELLION AND CONFORMITY IN AN AGE OF CONSENSUS
I love Lucy, 1953
Communism is no laughing matter
Lucille Ball testifies before House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC)
Anxiety and Fear could penetrate even popular caricatures of the suburban dream
In the face of this, Americans embraced an uneasy CONSENSUS
Consensus threatened on one side by conformity, on the other side by rebellion
By conforming to American norms, Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy survives charges of communism
with the help of a TV audience of millions
Thousands of Americans not so fortunate
Why Americans were so anxious
Senator Joe McCarthy (R, Wisc) took advantage of this situation
One word summed up all of America's problems: communists
he was a rebel, a renegade
Most elected officials were strongly anticommunists: it was McCarthy's STYLE that distinguished him
Truman takes institutional approach
McCarthy thumbs his nose at norms and insitutions
McCarthy is brilliant at capturing headlines, never mind the truth
Lucy had to demonstrate her conformity when charged with being a Commie
But a huge part of I Love Lucy's Appeal was that Lucy was a renegade
always pushing back against norms -- especially gendered norms
To remain popular, however, every show had to end by reinforcing those very norms
McCarthy's popularity did not endure nearly as long as Lucy's
But he forged a path to power that many politians would eventually follow
Running against the state
And by the 1960s, many rebels had FOUND their cause