1960s
Cultural Research > Decades Homepage > 1960s Intro > 1960s Essay
| |
|
|
|
|
Introduction - John Kennedy becomes youngest US President, January 1961. - Chubby Checker shows how to do The Twist in 1960. Little Eva does The Locomotion in 1962. - Pioneering independent record companies Stax in Memphis and Motown in Detroit point the way towards racially integrated Rock & Roll. - JFK assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Martin Luther King assassinated in Memphis and Robert Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968. - Beatles spearhead ‘British Invasion’ of USA in 1964; followed by The Animals, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Who and miniskirts. - 1965: 125,000 US troops in Vietnam. - Bob Dylan goes electric at 1965 Newport Folk Festival. - Beach Boys radiate Good Vibrations in 1966. - Psychedelic sounds: Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Hendrix, Grateful Dead 1967. - ‘3 Days of Peace & Music’ Woodstock Festival 1969. - Counterculture cinema in France (Breathless, Pierrot le Fou, Jules and Jim), Italy (La Dolce Vita, 8½, Blowup, Theorem) and America (The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Chelsea Girls, Easy Rider |
|
Essay Excerpt The ‘60s are actually two rather than a single decade. This is not because, as is so often presumed today, so much happened between 1960 and 1970: it was actually a rather uninventive period, its music and alternative culture having begun life in the ‘50s and even way back in the ‘40s. Instead the decade was broken in half by the Vietnam War and by the first wave of the baby boomers leaving their teen years behind. The film American Graffiti (1973) perfectly captures this momentous and historic moment when, in one evening, a gang of boomer-aged friends dance one last time at the high school ‘Hop’ before two of their group are to go off to college in the morning. Cutting the early ‘60s fun mood with a knife, the final credits tell us which of these fictional characters will die in Vietnam and which will flee to Canada to avoid the draft. |