1950s Culture Weirdness

I am editing a book that contains a lot of 1950s fiction and I'm constantly running up against an aspect of the popular culture of that era that has intrigued me for many years. It seems to me that there was a fundamental shift in men's and women's perception of themselves and each other around that time. The style of the "Sweat Pulps" leaks over into some of these stories. I'm talking about that hyper macho, S&M tinged and sort of homo-erotic tone that you might also find in stuff like Micky Spillaine's material (if memory serves). At the same time you see the rise of that lush, decorative, silly child-woman style that women seemed to adopt between then and the mid 1960s. Marilyn Monroe is probably the classic example but there are plenty of others.

Both of these aspects of male and female culture seem to me to be the opposite of what was common in the 1940s and before. The portrayal of men seemed to always skew to the civilized, even if they might be fairly blue collar or in tough circumstances and women tended be idealized as lean and smart like Katherine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall. You also saw the male movie star ideal change from a guy who was sort of compact and tough to larger individual like Wayne, Mitchum and Hudson, who's manner of persevering was less about his brain or will than his brawn.

Now I know of MANY exceptions to my above statements but it does seem like there was a trend. I've been reading this stuff and coming up with all kinds of theories as to why these qualities came into favor and I've been having a grand time watching a friend of my mother's who still puts on the whole Marilyn-era thing, furs, diamonds, batting her eyes as if she doesn't have a thought in her head (like Monroe, she's actually pretty sharp) ... obviously something happened to her in that time period that anchored her there!

Anyway, the more I can understand that trend and the more I can get away from supposition that is simply mine, the better. So I'd love to have any input that you-all would like to give ...

MikeKardec said:

Anyway, the more I can understand that trend and the more I can get away from supposition that is simply mine, the better. So I'd love to have any input that you-all would like to give ...

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The cartoonist Art Spiegelman has called women such as you describe "Estrogen Souffles," which is as good a description of the type as I've ever seen.

The most common theory for what was going on there is that it was a counterreaction to the subversion of gender roles that had dominated the thirties and forties. A lot of middle-class women made strides in the business world in the thirties, even before the war, and it had always been common for working-class women to work in factories and such. The war, however, pushed a lot of middle-class women into blue-collar jobs, and really upset what a lot of men considered to be the Accepted Social Order. The cultural pushback after the war created exactly the sort of characterizations in movies and books that you describe -- an exaggerated sort of hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininty.

That's the common theory, which you may take as you will...

"Estrogen Souffles,"

This is me ...

...
...
...

Screaming with laughter!

Perfect.

after the turbulence of WW2 people wanted a nice, safe, model society in which men and women had clearly defined roles.
the 50s is the domestic dream writ large.

Apropriate to this topic is this page:

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/05/26/vintage-mens-adventure-magazines/

Be sure to read all the comments, like this one: "I especially like how it looks like the SAME GUY getting attacked by weasels, flying rodents, killer crabs, and turtles. Poor guy just can’t catch a break. Every time he leaves the house he’s getting his flesh ripped by something. I expect he’s one of the guys in the lifeboat being attacked by monkeys, too."

Matt

I get the women taking over the workforce aspect and think it is a part but it seems to me there's more to it ... but, of course, I don't know what or I wouldn't be writing this. I even suspect that it had something to do with the war but this whole trend doesn't seem to have shown up until six or eight years later. Correct me because I'm often wrong but that's quite a delayed reaction.

I've done some writing on the decrease of "Exotic Adventure" stories and the increase in Westerns after the war. I'm pretty convinced that Africa, the East Indies and China had vastly less appeal to the public when their buddies and family members had been bored silly, wounded or dying in such places. The Old West was an adventure that was safely at home and comfortably in the past. But that transition occurred right after the war.

Just joking but you sort of get the idea that any of Lauren Bacall's characters would have put out her cigarette in a guy's eye if he suggested she take on the role of one of those "estrogen souffles." And Hepburn? Sheesh! It's almost like there was a generation of icons that had to age-out first. The traditional pulps limped along into the 1950s before making the change to "Sweat Rags."

I've always wondered if it didn't have something more to do with the American ineffectiveness in Korea, the Cold War or the bomb or something.

I thought the same as some of you, in fact I nearly titled this thread "Post War Weirdness" until I realized it was actually a bit later than that.

Whatever it is, I find it amusing but it creeps me out too!

I think a big part of it was that you had a generation of men who had become used to being in a high-adrenaline state during their military service -- only to come home to a tedious life of clock-punching, strap-hanging, dinner-pailing, or white-collar-droning. Here were men who had spent their early twenties learning to kill or be killed, and now they sat at desks all day adding up columns of figures or monotonously running a punch press or selling vegetables or whatever other dull, thrill-less job they ended up in.

Being attacked by weasels or monkeys or squirrels or whatever must've seemed like a much more exciting alternative to the lives they ended up living. I think it's all part of the same continuum that produced the fad for hard-boiled-dick shows on radio and the example you mentioned of westerns. "I The Jury" by Spillane came out in 1947, and no doubt that had something to do with it too. Everything had to cycle thru before moving on to the next stage of the fad -- when the excitement wore off westerns, bring on the hard-boiled detective stuff, and when that got tiresome, bring on the gory comic books or weasel-attack pulps, and so on.

Remember also that a lot of men didn't even get out of the service until 1946 or so -- due to backups in the "point system" for discharging servicemen, a lot of men who'd entered the service in 1944 and 1945 were still in uniform a year after the war was over.

As for estrogen souffles, never mind movie stars. My Aunt Edie would have broken a beer bottle over the head of anyone who ever expected her to coo and giggle.

Yeah you would think the men were all football fans and women were all bimbos. If you mistake pop culture stereotypes for reality.

What you are looking at is what entertainment companies thought would sell. If you picked up a few supermarket magazines you might think modern American thought was dominated by Honey Boo Boo, those hillbilly duck call guys and the love life of Angelina Joli and Brad Pitt. You would be mistaken. Just as you would be, to take your perception of the fifties from movie magazines and pulp novels.

"weasel-attack pulps" Okay, you cracked me up again! A much better name than "Sweat Pulps." I had forgotten that "I The Jury" was out so early. It makes sense that the fads would cycle through, allowing the old icons to move out of public consciousness and the new ones to come in. I've wondered for years if there was a moment (maybe at the worst moments of the Korean War) when people started to realize that the US didn't "Win the War in Europe" as popular culture was struggling to suggest. It was really the Soviets ... the same Soviets who were then menacing us in new and different ways. Not that the Soviets fought a war against TWO enemies, but so much of the WWII mythos seems to be focused on Europe. If the Great Escape inspired Hogans Heroes (I'm not really saying it did) it is worth noticing that no one made a sitcom inspired by Bridge on the River Kwai. Pacific Vets were MUCH more private about their war. Anyway, I wonder if we couldn't add some sort of subconscious Cold War fear that we weren't as potent as we wanted to think we were to the list of Veteran's anxieties.

It's not that I think the items that I pointed up were things that effected everyone, the population at large, but when taste in entertainment shifts it does mean something. Another aspect were all of those glossy body building magazines, which seem part of the same trend. I won't go into what I think of that!

The whole process of demobilization was much more complicated than we sometimes think. My dad got out New Year's Eve 1946 but the reserves chased him around for years afterward. I think he was sort of in a sweet spot, a junior officer. I suspect that they had just enough invested in their Captains and Lt.s to want to keep track of them.

Something else that might be illuminating is to take a careful inventory of the sort of ads that appear in such publications -- they'll tell you even more about the audience than the editorial content. I'm willing to bet folding money that there's an awful lot of ads for baldness cures and elevator shoes and "1001 Foolproof Pick-Up Lines" books in the back.

LizzieMaine said:

Something else that might be illuminating is to take a careful inventory of the sort of ads that appear in such publications -- they'll tell you even more about the audience than the editorial content. I'm willing to bet folding money that there's an awful lot of ads for baldness cures and elevator shoes and "1001 Foolproof Pick-Up Lines" books in the back.

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A great idea! Though it's scary to think that is much like today. Actually, now that you mention it I am remembering the tone as well as the text of a lot of old ads and it's already illuminating. Will do!

LizzieMaine said:

I think a big part of it was that you had a generation of men who had become used to being in a high-adrenaline state during their military service -- only to come home to a tedious life of clock-punching, strap-hanging, dinner-pailing, or white-collar-droning. Here were men who had spent their early twenties learning to kill or be killed, and now they sat at desks all day adding up columns of figures or monotonously running a punch press or selling vegetables or whatever other dull, thrill-less job they ended up in.

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I think you hit the nail right on the head here. I would say another aspect of this is hot rod and motorcycle subcultures, both of which exploded in popularity after the war. In particular, many now (in)famous motorcycle clubs were founded in the years immediately following WWII by young veterans who had a hard time adjusting peacetime and civilian life.

Riding their bikes like maniacs provided an adrenaline fix and hanging out with a close-knit group of friends replicated the camaraderie they experienced during wartime.

Lizzie has a point. The biggest market for he-man mags was probably sunken chested office clerks. See Walter Mitty Complex.

"I am editing a book that contains a lot of 1950s fiction and I'm constantly running up against an aspect of the popular culture of that era that has intrigued me for many years. It seems to me that there was a fundamental shift in men's and women's perception of themselves and each other around that time. The style of the "Sweat Pulps" leaks over into some of these stories. I'm talking about that hyper macho, S&M tinged and sort of homo-erotic tone that you might also find in stuff like Micky Spillaine's material (if memory serves). At the same time you see the rise of that lush, decorative, silly child-woman style that women seemed to adopt between then and the mid 1960s. Marilyn Monroe is probably the classic example but there are plenty of others."

Where are you getting these stories? You are obviously looking at a very narrow slice of the literature that was available at the time.

Also if you think 50s magazines were bad go to your local news stand and look at the soldier of fortune, gun nut, weight lifter, survivalist, motorcycle gang fan magazines etc they publish today. And ask yourself if they represent you or anyone you know.

I clicked on the link and checked out the magazine covers and I will bet dollars to doughnuts every one is a phony. The artist caught the spirit of the thing but exaggerated a little too much.

Stanley Doble said:

"Where are you getting these stories? You are obviously looking at a very narrow slice of the literature that was available at the time.

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The book has a pretty wide variety of stuff in it although it is only one writer. And it is not for a moment supposed to represent the entirety of anything, thank god ... I'm struggling just to make sense of what I've got. I just happened to post about the particular material that I found odd and interesting and about aspects of a time period I find odd and interesting. I have my own suspicions, some of which are touched on above but I like to keep an open mind and that's why i was interested in some input from others. I've spent half my life working on material written between the 1930s and the 1980s and how the times affected it is really interesting to me.

It's great to be reminded to look at the ads and things like that! Seriously good advice.

There is all kinds of strange stuff out now and the internet has just made it STRANGER. In fact, one of the reasons I'm really interested in the period prior to 1960, or so, is that the popular culture tended to move more slowly and thus some of the sort of stuff in this thread is more trackable, researchable, what have you. Today you have the butterfly effect except its thousands of butterflies from all over the world simultaneously.

I don't have a lot to contribute here, but that's never stopped me before.

Somewhere I have a magazine from the 30s featuring an ad for, I think, washing machines (as in laundry). It features an illustration of a young couple, obviously dolled up for a night out, but the wife is collapsed in a chair, looking exhausted, and the husband is on the phone explaining to their friends that Mary is just too tired to go out because today was laundry day. That struck me, because it at least acknowledged the fact that housework is hard, and in the days before washing machines, doing laundry was a task that entailed more effort than many of us would put into Thanksgiving dinner. It seemed in contrast to the postwar image of the cheerful housewife who uses modern inventions that make it oh so easy, accompanied by little twinkles and elves or what-have-you, and still ready to be the vision of put-together femininity when she greets her husband with a martini. That's just an aside to the pre/post war dichotomy of women's roles that you mentioned.

My one other thought is in relation to the soldiers coming back. Not only had their short adult lives been lived at a level of intensity that made civilian life difficult to adjust to, in many cases, the young draftees who shipped out would marry their sweethearts spontaneously, not knowing if they would return. Men came back from the front to wives they barely knew, and children they had never seen, probably having thought of them in the abstract as a reason to keep going while they were getting shelled at Anzio or Normandy. The women, in the meanwhile, had spent anxious years never knowing if they were suddenly going to be widows, while living in the deprived conditions of wartime, often working themselves besides keeping the home hearths. I expect neither side really knew what to do with the reality of peacetime that was inflated on so many expectations and so little practical experience. So the gender roles may have originated out of an ideal that they had held onto and nurtured through hard times. I'm probably stating the obvious in a long-winded way, but, stick to your strengths, I say.

There's a reason why so many popular honkey tonk songs about heartache, cheatin' and divorce were produced in the post-war years.

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