Maintaining & Challenging Mass Culture (College Board AP® US History)

Summary

The Second Red Scare didn’t just affect American politics; it also affected American culture. No one wanted to stand out when saying or doing the wrong thing could put you under investigation. That’s why so many Americans latched on to the images and ideals transmitted by the relatively new medium of television. They found comfort in TV’s homogeneous sitcoms, sports shows, and news programming. Paperback books were also immensely popular, as were shopping and attending church as a social activity.

Not everyone took pleasure in cultural activities designed for the masses. The Beatniks promoted rebellion and spontaneity, while novelists poked fun at Americans’ obsession with personal image and material goods. Young people showed their cultural independence through the new musical genre of rock and roll.

Mass Culture of Post-War America

Television

• Americans who worried about the threat of communism found a sense of safety in the homogenous mass culture of the 1950s and the early 1960s

• Television was the unifying medium

  • By 1961, there was one TV set for every 3.3 Americans

  • With only three broadcast stations, there was little variety in programming

  • Sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver depicted White, middle-class, traditional families with conservative values

    • Men worked white-collar jobs whilst women were homemakers

Books

• Reading was also a popular post-war pastime

  • Paperback books were introduced in the 1950s

    • By 1960, nearly 1 million paperback books were sold every day

Consumer culture

• Advertisers in all media began appealing to consumers’ emotional wants 

• Goods and services could now be purchased at suburban shopping centers

• People began using credit cards to fill their new suburban homes with furniture and other goods

Religion

• There was a resurgence in organized religion after the war

• Thousands of new churches and synagogues were constructed

• Membership in a religious organization seemed to be more important than one’s adherence to religious doctrine

  • Belonging to a church or other religious group reflected on a person’s identity and their social group

Challengers of Mass Culture

Beatniks

• Writers and young people challenged the things the White middle-class considered to be “acceptable” and “good”

• The Beatniks were poets, writers, and other intellectuals

  • They advocated for spontaneity, truth, and rebellion in the conservative 1950s

  • Their movement was led by poets Allen Ginsberg (“Howl”, 1956) and Jack Kerouac (On the Road, 1957)

  • The Beatniks were the inspiration for the youth rebellion of the mid-to-late 1960s

• Other rebellious writers included J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye, 1951) and Joseph Heller (Catch-22, 1961)

Rock and Roll

• Young people adopted rock and roll music, which was not well-liked by older generations

• Rock and roll was the combination of rhythm and blues which was mostly produced by Black musicians, and pop and country music, which was popularized by White musicians

• Black musicians like Chuck Berry introduced rock and roll

  • White musicians like Elvis and the Beatles imitated the style and made it popular in suburban America

• The marketing of inexpensive long-playing (LP) records helped spread rock and roll to the masses