CULTURE- TEENS 1950's

Question 1

American adults were …

Answer 1

anxious about the challenging behaviour of young people

Question 2

What were young greasers what did they look like and what were they seen as?

Answer 2

Young ‘greasers’ wore cut-off T-shirts, blue jeans, and hairstyles such as pompadours and duck-tails and were seen disrespectful and rebellious,

Question 3

What did Senate do as a response to the general unease?

Answer 3

held hearings on juvenile delinquency and newspapers and magazines focussed on the problem in 1955 and 1956.

Question 4

Who was Margaret Mead and what did she publish? and what did it claim

Answer 4

Publisdhed-
‘The school in American culture’ in 1951

Clamied that growing disrespect for teachers was due to rapid change in US society, where many young people began to regard formal education as irrelevant.

Question 5

What did Alfred Kinsey publish?

Answer 5

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female in 1953.

Question 6

Shocking statists stated that what % of males had been sexually active by 15

Answer 6

95%

Question 7

What idea did Kinsey’s work fuel?

Answer 7

Kinsey’s work fuelled the idea that the current generation of teenagers was very different from previous generations who (allegedly) respected their parents and conformed with adult society.

Question 8

Who published ‘ Seduction of the innocent’ and what did he claim?

Answer 8

1954, Fredrick Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, claiming that comic books helped corrupt the young through inappropriate depictions of sexual content of by presenting views which ran counter to traditional family life.

Question 9

By 1953 how many states had passed laws regulating the sale of comic books and censoring depictions of inappropriate behaviour

Answer 9

By 1953, 13 states had passed laws regulating the sale of comic books and censoring depictions of inappropriate behaviour.

Question 10

What activities did the News magazines Time aand Newsweek record?

Answer 10

Time and Newsweek recorded the activities of teenage gangs that ranged in size from 10 to 250 and were particularly numerous in the slums of New York and Chicago.

Question 11

What activities did the teenage gangs do?

Answer 11

They fought each other, stole cars, beat up motorists, demanded ‘protection’ money from school pupils and even killed.

Question 12

What were auxiliaries ?

Answer 12

Female gang members were ‘auxiliaries’, frequently carrying the boys’ weapons (the police hesitated to frisk females) and beating up other girls and motorists.

Question 13

What were violence and brutailty amongst teens caused by (what they believd)?

Answer 13

Some blamed violence and brutality in comic books

so the industry began to tone down the content).

Question 14

What were teenagers like for the most part in reality? and what things did they enjoy?

Answer 14

For many teenagers, there was little rebellion – only drive in movies, fast food, old cars and malls

Question 15

What was the silent generation?

Answer 15

Adults complained about a conformist younger generation that seemed to lack the dynamism that made American great. Most educators considered this a ‘silent generation’.

Question 16

Who were the beats ?

Answer 16

The most publicised dissenters from the mainstream culture of ‘squares’ were the mostly middle-class young ‘beats’, who rejected materialism, the consumer culture and conformity for a lifestyle characterised by spontaneity, drugs, free love and a general defiance of authority and convention.

Question 17

Who were the first members of the beats ?

Answer 17

The first members of the ‘beat generation’ were a group of Columbia University students that included Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac

Question 18

Who first used the term beat?

Answer 18

Jack Kerouac, a French Canadian, in 1948, but the term ‘beatnik’ was used more generally from the late 1950s onwards.

Question 19

What poem did Allen Ginsburg write in 1956 and what influence was he under? and what issues did it deal with?

Answer 19

‘Howl’, a poem written under the influence of drugs, which dealt with issues such as drugs, homosexuality and nonconformity.

Question 20

How did the San Francisco police react to the ‘Howl’ ?

Answer 20

San Francisco police seized copies

Question 21

How much attention did the Howl receive?

Answer 21

attracted national attention to ‘beats’

Question 22

When was Kerouac’s book published ?

Answer 22

Viking published Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), after removing much of the description of drug use and homosexual practices

Question 23

How many ‘beats’ became writers?

Answer 23

150 who became writers and estimates of the others vary from several hundred to several thousand

Question 24

How did the fascination of the beats change?

Answer 24

initially, the ‘bets’ were a media sensation, although after 1960 the media lost interest

Question 25

What did several beat followers gain for their oppositional stance?

Answer 25

Several ‘beat’ followers subsequently gained fame for their oppositional stance,

including singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, Tom Hayden and Doctor Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychologist who experimented on his students with drugs.

Question 26

Who were the beatniks and why did they form?

Answer 26

From 1958 , A somewhat superficial version of ‘beats’ developed in colleges, where it became fashionable for young people to adopt an anti-establishment attitude.

Question 27

What were the beats attitude towards the beatniks?

Answer 27

Genuine ‘beats’ had little time for them .

Although he became known as ‘King of the Beatniks’, Kerouac considered beatniks pretentious copycats.

Question 28

A beatnik could be recognised by which characteristics ?

Answer 28

A ‘pad’ (apartment) in North Beach, San Francisco or Greenwich Village, New York City, with a mattress, table, lamp, bells, bamboo curtains and a wine bottle or two suspended from the ceiling

Sandals or barefoot (males)

Long straight hair, tight jeans, baggy sweaters (females)

Jazz, sex, drugs (especially marijuana) and swearing

Critical of materialism, social snobbery, Christianity, the government, cops, politics, employment and patriotism.

Zen Buddhism or other Asian religions such as Hinduism

Opposition to developments such as the arms race within the Soviet Union

Urban black culture vocabulary (‘dig’, ‘cool’, ‘man’, ‘split’)

Question 29

When did Rock n roll arrive?

Answer 29

arrival of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s

Question 30

Before the arrival of rock n roll had there been a sharply defined teenage music ? and if not what did they listen to?

Answer 30

there was no sharply defined ‘teenage’ music; teenagers swooned over Frank Sinatra, but their parents liked him, too

Question 31

What was age group listened to rock n roll and what genres did it combine?

Answer 31

, rock ‘n’ roll was ‘young’ music. It combined black ‘race music’ (rhythm and blues) and hillbilly (country and western).

Question 32

In 1953, what did Alan Freed come up with rock n roll and who did he get it from?

Answer 32

In 1953, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed played black artists’ rhythm and blues records, christening it ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ because the lyrics were frequently focussed on sexual activity.

Question 33

Who were Alan Freeds main audience?

Answer 33

white, teenage radio audience

Question 34

Why did rock n roll really take offf?

Answer 34

Bill Haley and his Comets began copying it: rock ‘n’ roll really took off once whites started to perform it

Question 35

Name 3 popular rock n rollers?

Answer 35

Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

Question 36

2 reasons as to why rock n roll was popular among young people

Answer 36

It added to their sense of group identity – only they could appreciate it

With temporary jobs (especially in fast food outlets) and frequently generous allowances from their parents, teenagers had money to spend on records: $182 million in 1954, $521 million in 1960

Question 37

The older generation was less enthusiastic , the Times Magazine compared rock n roll concerts to …

Answer 37

Hitlers rallies and a

psychiatrist described the music as ‘a communicative disease… a cannibalistic and tribalistic kind of music’.

Question 38

Why did parents fear the impact of rock n roll?

Answer 38

often critical of middle-class behaviour and full of sexual longing

Question 39

What was Elvis Presley’s nickname ?

Answer 39

Elvis Presley was nicknamed ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ and was filmed from the waste up for his appearance of ‘Hound Dog’ on television’s popular family favourite, The Ed Sullivan Show on 9th September 1956.

Question 40

What did the letter that The Senate subcommittee on delinquency receive?

Answer 40

said Elvis Presley was “a symbol, of course, but a dangerous one.

Question 41

Did Elvis and rock n roll revolutionise music?

Answer 41

Elvis and rock ‘n’ roll certainly revolutionised music.

Question 42

What did rock n roll focus on? and why did parents not like it?

Answer 42

while rock ‘n’ roll sounded revolutionary, it tended to focus on love and annoying social conventions championed by disapproving parents that made life difficult for lovers, rather than on major issues.

Question 43

What features of Elvis Presley that appeased the older generations?

Answer 43

• His polite manners
• devotion to his mother
• the gospel songs
• romantic ballads

Question 44

Who was Berry Gordy and what did he found? and what positive impact did it lead to?

Answer 44

. In 1959, black American Berry Gordy founded the Motown record label in Detroit, the centre of the US car industry.

It developed a distinctive northern black American sound and launched the careers of The Four Tops, and Diana Ross and the Supremes

It laid the platform for nationwide popularity of black American popular music not seen since the appearance of jazz in the 1920s.