Why do I hate the 1970s so much?

[Pilgrim]

Well, I guess I'm the odd man out.

I had a GREAT time in the 70's. I wore leisure suits, white shoes and belt and had a good time doing it. I didn't have much money, but I left college and got out into the world of work.

The music was great, and is still being played everythwere today.

In retrospect the hair styles were silly, but IMO today's body-piercing and tattooing is enormously more so. Advantage: 70's.

And the social change which went on - IMO much of it was for the better. I'll avoid further potential political commentary.

So don't ask me to be a 70's hater. I had a great time that decade. I'd LOVE to go back and do most of it again.

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

 

[jamespowers]

It is not only us vintage 1930s snobs who think of the hippies as kind of ... umm ...
Even many of the people FROM THE HIPPY GENERATION feel this way. Professor David Hollinger at Berkeley, who taught me American Intellectual History when I was an undergrad (amazing class! look up his stuff at Amazon) was a member of that generation. Once in lecture he said, "you know, I still occasionally see people I knew in the late 60s, still clutching old peace emblems and accusing anyone of selling out who wears a tie. And it's just very, very sad."

Oh geez, I ran to the closet to get my tie as soon as I read that. I am selling out. I'll live the American Dream. They can live their Stupified, drug-induced nightmares. :eusa_doh:

Regards,

J

 

[jamespowers]

Well, I guess I'm the odd man out.

I had a GREAT time in the 70's. I wore leisure suits, white shoes and belt and had a good time doing it. I didn't have much money, but I left college and got out into the world of work.

The music was great, and is still being played everythwere today.

In retrospect the hair styles were silly, but IMO today's body-piercing and tattooing is enormously more so. Advantage: 70's.

And the social change which went on - IMO much of it was for the better. I'll avoid further potential political commentary.

So don't ask me to be a 70's hater. I had a great time that decade. I'd LOVE to go back and do most of it again.

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

Especially the drugs.

 

[Dr Doran]

He "developed" schizophrenia!? I think he had an undiagnosed case for decades before that. :eusa_doh: He could have led a longer life if he was somewhere else where they would have recogized that as a problem not a lifestyle choice. :eusa_doh: RIP Naked Guy.

Regards,

J

Poor guy. That's the thing about excessive freedom. It allows both madness and antisociality to hide.

Pilgrim, I respect your opinion -- please don't think I don't. I do. Honestly. And I'm sure it was wonderful to meet lots of women who had a very non-prudish attitude about many things. However, all I can say is, a little dose of the 70s may well have been salutary to shake up many parts of the world that were still 50s, but too much of it is another story, in my opinion at least.

As for tattoos and piercings, guilty as charged. I am heavily tattooed and have had multiple piercings on the left ear and a ring in the lip. All the piercings are closed now and since I wear suits all the time, no one knows about the tattoos except my wife and those few people I've done e.g. jetskiing with.

With respect to certain things, it really is solely a matter of taste and there is no reasoning or rhyming that can alter it, I guess.

 

[Doh!]

Other than the "fashions" and disco "music," a lot of the entertainment was at least good back then. Some notable TV series:

All in the Family
M*A*S*H
Columbo
Bob Newhart
The Rockford Files
Fawlty Towers (is it cheating to include British fare?)
WKRP in Cincinnati

Movies:

Young Frankenstein
Blazing Saddles
Jaws
Star Wars
ALIEN
Halloween

etc.

I was too young for pot so TV and movies were my only "drug." That, and killer leisure suits.

 

[jamespowers]

Other than the "fashions" and disco "music," a lot of the entertainment was at least good back then. Some notable TV series:

All in the Family
M*A*S*H
Columbo
Bob Newhart
The Rockford Files
Fawlty Towers (is it cheating to include British fare?)
WKRP in Cincinnati

Movies:

Young Frankenstein
Blazing Saddles
Jaws
Star Wars
ALIEN
Halloween

etc..

I could live without all of them. [huh]

That, and killer leisure suits.

Especially those. :eusa_doh:

Regards,

J

 

[Dr Doran]

Other than the "fashions" and disco "music," a lot of the entertainment was at least good back then. Some notable TV series:

All in the Family
M*A*S*H
Columbo
Bob Newhart
The Rockford Files
Fawlty Towers (is it cheating to include British fare?)
WKRP in Cincinnati

Movies:

Young Frankenstein
Blazing Saddles
Jaws
Star Wars
ALIEN
Halloween

etc.

I was too young for pot so TV and movies were my only "drug." That, and killer leisure suits.

All in the Family was quite well done, and very balanced, in my opinion. And that theme song ... beautiful nostalgia. I watched MASH in the day, but now the idea of it bugs me. You are right, it is spiritually 70s: make love not war. Alan Alda ... sensitive male ... why can't we all go home and not serve our country ... yikes. The books upon which MASH was based, by one Richard Hooker, were quite different: the line, "it's important to beat the crap out of a liberal once in a while just to keep in shape" appeared in one of them. I don't approve, I just think it's funny that it was so different from the show. Newheart: fine despite the stammer, but the collars and the brown polyester sports jackets ... ugh. WKRP: I still sing the theme song. To my wife. All the time. Blazing Saddles: hated it. Young Frankenstein: Loved it ("those knockers!"). ALIEN: utterly brilliant, but the aesthetic had NOTHING, I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to do with the 1970s. It was out of step. HR Giger. Jaws: didn't grab me. Halloween: finally saw it a few months ago, good flick although Jamie Lee Curtis' medical hermaphroditism is both apparent and a bit disturbing. Star Wars: Yeah, well, I did love that back when I was 7. A lot. And I had all the "action figures" (=dolls). Even the Power Droid.

 

[Dan G]

Jaws scared every interest I had in water right out of me until I was like 19.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

The Ford Pinto Blowabout . . . 'Nuff said!

Also the clothes my parents bought for me. In high school, one girl gave me the moniker of, "Sweet Baby Toughskins." Need I say more?


Lee
_________________

"All the technology of the universe and we drive around in a Ford P.O.S.!" - J

 

[Doh!]

I could live without all of them. [huh]



Regards,

J

Bummer, man.

(I should qualify the M*A*S*H entry: it took a severe nosedive after Henry Blake was killed off.)

And you didn't laugh while watching Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein? Weren't scared by Jaws or ALIEN?

To each their own.

 

[The Wolf]

I, too, hated the 70s at the time

I remember in the 90s when the seventies was making a comeback and it was the worst parts: mood rings and bell bottoms.:eusa_doh:
I did however enjoy alot of the music (Harry Nilson, E.L.O. Jim Croce and more) and many television shows.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Awright, awright, let's redefine, gents and ladies: I'm thinking of 1970s less in strict chronological terms but more in specific stylistic terms. What I hate is not the chronological stretch itself but almost all of the aesthetic and many of the things that occurred.
I argue that punk doesn't count as the 1970s I describe because it hated the prevailing styles of the 1970s and its purpose was to DESTROY them. Joy Division directly went against the predominant 1970s aesthetic as well. Nor should New Wave (a la the great B52s) count as 1970s in the true essential 1970s sense.

I argue that counter-culture is just as present an aesthetic as mainstream culture. And therein lies the high point of the 70s.

 

[jamespowers]

Bummer, man.

(I should qualify the M*A*S*H entry: it took a severe nosedive after Henry Blake was killed off.)

And you didn't laugh while watching Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein? Weren't scared by Jaws or ALIEN?

To each their own.

I could live without seeing any of it. MASH especially. I had to listen to my father (a Korean War vet) complain about how it was completely wrong and how they would have all been court martialled within ten minutes if they ran things like that.
Jaws?! A rubber shark?! Oooohhhhh scary. :eusa_doh:
Alien?! Was it a movie about Illegals or legals? [huh]
Definitely to each his own.

Regards,

J

 

[Senator Jack]

Jack, I don't know the American Trad reference.

This is American Trad. No personal style. Team player. The Man. Mr. Charlie. This is the attitude that most people associate the suit with these days.

Unfortunately, to many people, the suit is no longer associated with infinite cool, like this.

 

[Rafter]

With all due respect, Senator, THAT is not a '70s suit.
THIS is a '70s suit:

(yep, that's me as a lad.)

The "infamous 70's leisure suit"!

Yep, tell me about it. The damned things were hot with that fake material and they had an odd smell to them for some reason. They fit like a sack and the colors. :eusa_doh: Oh geez the colors.

The fake material that had an odd smell was of course ....."polyester gabardine"!

My mother bought me two when I was a little guy. I remember fighting with her because I didn't want to wear them. And the colors...one was a hideous green and the other was bright cinnamon. They were hot as $#ll because of the unnatural polyester knit fabric.

 

[reetpleat]

In defense of the seventies

As someone born in 1966 who spent a go part of my late teens as a new wave guy rebelling against 70s style, I now find myself having a certain fondness for it.

On the one hand, it did have terrible trends, style and tv shows and hair. But there is a certain undercurrent I understand now. It was kind of a badly done deco revival and a lat hurrah for the golden age. While much of the late sixties was about counterculture, the 70s saw a certain nostalgia for the past. The art deco and art neveau, and design that combined modern with a certain attempt at deco style, disco was all about glamour and an attempt to capture the past.

Think scarface, the clubs in Miami for example. Pretty cool really.

Of course, I do think recent decades are more accurately divided into ten year periods based on about three years in. Fore example, the thirties ended with te war starting, but the fortie didn't really start until the end of the war and things were about the same till 53 0r so. then rock and Roll, elvis etc came on the scene and really hook things up. that ran until about 63, the british invasion, Kennedy and the civil rights movement. That era lasted till about 73 when style music etc lost their edge, viet nam ended and people got down to th business of the me decade. That lasted till about the early eighties when The reagan administration punk rock and other things changed. Just a vgue theory at best.

I am mixed on the underground trend thing.
While I do most enjoy the underground trends of any era, the seventies certainly had cool sub cultures. And punk rock certainly was a significant one that existed in oppoition to the era. But new wave was more of the popular musical shift that i would characterize as 80s. In other words, punk rock was aobut subculture, while new wave was about becoming popular music. This punk 70s and new wave 80s.

 

[Fletch]

This is American Trad. No personal style. Team player. The Man. Mr. Charlie. This is the attitude that most people associate the suit with these days.

And you know, tools used to have some class...

1963 VW repair kit

 

[Kimberly]

This is American Trad. No personal style. Team player. The Man. Mr. Charlie. This is the attitude that most people associate the suit with these days.

Unfortunately, to many people, the suit is no longer associated with infinite cool, like this.

OMG, the men that I work with seem to have suddenly appeared on my computer screan.

Classical picture and it shows the lack of personal style in mens suits very well! Even the women look dreadfully bland:eusa_clap

 

[Flivver]

I felt cheated by the 1970s. I was born in 1951, so I spent most of my twenties in the 1970s. But none of the pop culture appealed to me and I didn't even "get" most of it.

The U.S. entered a "down" period just as I was about to embark on life. We had the Watergate situation, the resignation of the President, two energy crises and run-away inflation. It was the beginning of an "America is no good" attitude that we still see remnants of today. Not to mention the 70s cars, music, fashion etc. Not to my taste, at least!

I longed for a return to the more confident, naieve times I remembered as a small child in the 1950s. So I "rebelled" against the pop culture of the day by driving a 60s car, watching silent movies and early talkies whenever they were shown on TV, listened to old music on 78s and did some writing about old radios and the companies that made them. I kind of watched the 70s go on all around me, but I didn't participate in them too much. And I don't regret it one bit!

 

[Novella]

They can live their Stupified, drug-induced nightmares.

All this talk about hippies and drugs - but wasn't the 1970s also home to something of a conservative backlash against what had been developing in the late 1960s? What about the hard hat riot?