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The American Dream of the Fifties
or the pop culture notes
The GI Bill of Rights
• Formal name: Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944
• Paid part of college tuition
• Provided a year’s worth of unemployment benefits
• Low interest loans made available
Daily Life in the Fifties
Levittown
• Mass-produced houses- “build a house in sixteen minutes”
• Less than $7,000 (about $62,000 today)
• Located on New York’s Long Island
• Suburbs encouraged conformity
Gender Roles
• Male = work, financial decisions, authority figure
• Female = house, children, support husband
• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
Baby Boom
• Late 1940s through early 1960s
• Largest generation in nation’s history
Leisure• Labor saving devices, 40 hour work
week = leisure time
• Bowling, golf, boating, sporting events
• Books, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, Life, comic books
• Television
• Rock and roll– Roots of rock and roll– Elvis Presley
Automobile Culture• 40 million cars in 1950, 60 million in 1960
• Suburbs made them necessary
• Interstate Highway System– Eisenhower authorizes 41,000 miles of
expressway in 1956– Towns die or prosper
• Impact on society– Drive-in movies, restaurants, malls, cruising– Noise and exhaust, stress of traffic– Middle & upper classes leave cities-cities decline-
economic gap widens
Consumerism
• Buying stuff = success
• Appliances & electronics
• “Planned obsolescence”
• Credit cards introduced- “buy now pay later”
• Advertising – Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, billboards– Psychology
Nationwide Business
• Major corporations like AT&T, General Electric, etc.
• Holiday Inn
• McDonald’s
• Things in different parts of country start to become more similar