Domestic Containment & The 1950s

McCarthyism House Un-American Activities Committee Case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin Censured by Senate colleagues in 1954 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html

McCarthyism Unions – Taft Hartley Act, 1947 Civil Rights – Paul Robeson Homosexuals – Roy Cohn Hollywood Ten

Conformity Nuclear family seen as defense against the dangers of the Cold War Women’s place in the home Men in Grey Flannel Suits

Conformity G.I. Bill, 1944 Suburbs Levittown Consumption

American Life in the 1950s

“Birth of the Cool”

Jazz, Hep Cats, Dope Jazz: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charlie “Bird” Parker Rock and Roll: Bill Haley, Rock Around the Clock, 1954 Elvis Pressley, Heartbreak Hotel, 1956 The Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smokin in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz… - Allen Ginsberg

Rebels Without Causes

Popular Culture Mad Magazine, 1952 Hugh Hefner & Playboy, 1953

Domestic Containment Key terms: McCarythism, HUAC, the Rosenbergs, Taft-Hartley Act, Paul Robeson, Roy Cohn, Hollywood Ten, Men in Grey Flannel Suits, G.I. Bill, Levittown, “Birth of the Cool”, Bill Haley, Beatniks, Allen Ginsberg, Rebel Without a Cause, Mad Magazine, Playboy