The Conquest Of Cool : Common Perception Of The Counterculture

American culture in 1950s and today have numerous similarities “In the 50s, cars were flashier and more luxurious than ever...and used as a symbol of status. Similarly, today, upscale vehicles are still flashy and sleek…and upper-class consumers use them to show the status of their wealth.” Depending on the income that people earn, cars that contain more features are of better quality and class. Secondly, in the 1950s, ads had begun to seek out the attention on marketing for children. The products sold have cartoon characters and bright colors. In the modern era, citizens use similar tactics, using bright colors that are put at eye level. Children appeal to bright colors and characters when a company advertises on T.V. or in stores. Next, huge department stores became popular due to middle class’ increased power on spending. Now, the large chain department stores of Dillard’s and Macy’s are still very popular. People enjoy going out and just spending their money on the inventories that each department store has. “Then in the 50s, fast food became a

What does an ad say about a society? When viewing a product advertisement, many people never stop to think why the ad and product appeals to them. However, when a more critical look is taken, it’s easy to see precisely how ads are carefully tailored to appeal to trending values of a targeted demographic, and how that makes it easy to examine the society of those whom the ad is targeted at. In the analytic writing Advertisements R Us, Melissa Rubin provides an excellent example of this, as she crafts a logical and clear analysis of a 1950’s Coca-Cola magazine ad which thoroughly explains how advertisements can reveal quite a great deal about the society in which they were created.

The first advertising technique Schor examines is the idea of street-culture and the cool edginess inherent within. Street life, particularly in this article, describes the culture present in inner cities and is a lifestyle most commonly associated with poor blacks. Advertisers use the image of a hardened neighborhood affected by violence, drugs, and criminality to sell the cool feeling of faux danger to the middle class. Rap stars and athletes are often used to make products seem cool and “street”. While these people may have had past connections to true street life, they are now wealthy enough to live luxurious lifestyles,

Hippies represent the ideological, naive nature that children possess. They feel that with a little love and conectedness, peace and equality will abound. It is with this assumption that so many activists and reformers, inspired by the transformation that hippies cultivated, have found the will to persist in revolutionizing social and political policy. Their alternative lifestyles and radical beleifs were the shocking blow that American culture-- segregation, McCarthyism, unjust wars, censorship--needed to prove that some Americans still had the common sense to care for one another. The young people of the sixties counterculture movement were successful at awakening awareness on many causes that are being fought in modern

The counterculture and hippies are becoming extremely popular in our society today. The hippie culture focused on outward signs of nonconformity. The counterculture promoted rock music, free love, and the use of psychedelic drugs. Haight-Ashbury is the place is if you want to be a part of the culture, and go to San Francisco and be a part of love. The counterculture is about new ideas, and going against the social norms. The bright colors, feathers, leather, and hair. There are pop art and rock music. Go have fun, and be a part of the

Living the American dream was a part of the road to Suburbia. As soldiers were returning home from the wars, births were reaching record highs known as the baby boom. Just in the year 1957, a total of 4,308,000 babies were born.4 Desiring large families and great economic prosperity, the women’s role as mother and homemaker were built-up in movies and television and magazines. Ultimately, with additional “leisure time” at home, Americans bought televisions, nice record players, lawn mowers and other electronic products. Manufactures and advertising agencies jumped at the opportunity to profit on consumerism. “More and more, ad executives and designers turned to psychology to create new strategies for selling. Advertisers appealed to people’s desire for status and “belongingness” and strived to associate their products with those values.”5 The Baby Boomers that began the consumerism in the mid-1950’s socially altered the United States then and still do

“Hippies were called Flower Children because they gave flowers to communicate gentleness and love” (Salge). The Hippie Movement was a popular counter culture during the 60’s-70’s. Hippies are best known for their practice of psychedelic drug use, interesting political views, where they took up living quarters, and their unique fashion sense.

In today’s mass media, it is quiet common for advertisers to assimilate class into their commercials. These advertisements portray a certain level of elegance because of the sophisticated choice to use classical background music and thick European accents. On the contrary, other advertisers take the common-folk approach by structure these commercials around the western concept. Both of these advertising tactics supports an American paradox. As argued in Jack Solomon’s “Master of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, the contradiction lies in the desire to strive above the crowd and the quest for social equality.

The rise in advertisement played a key role in the rise of consumption. Thanks to well-developed advertisement campaigns, America redefined what a necessity is. Advertisers encouraged Americans to actively work towards maintaining a high social standing. “Advertisers made no secret of their intention to promote novelty for its own sake, in the hope that consumers would exchange perfectly serviceable goods for goods that conformed to the latest fashions” (Lasch, 2000). Consumers devoured this advertisement scheme and began to rapidly increase their spending. Many advertisements for common, household products made claim that they could make the normal appear comparable to the high end. For example, Lux, a soap company, ran an ad in 1920 that depicted two women talking - one of the women complemented on the other on the quantity of sweaters she owned, only to find out that it is not a new sweater, but rather her old sweater that Lux soap made it look brand new (Lux)! Men and women alike began to believe

When one looks back on the frenetic 1960s, conservative sentiments aren’t usually the first thing to come to mind. Yet, while the New Left and the radical counterculture were reshaping cultural ideals, it was the New Right who emerged from the 1960s as a viable political force. The New Left can be categorized as a broad, largely youthful, movement with the goal to challenge various social norms and to institute a “participatory democracy”. Moreover, the New Left was “New” in a sense that they differed from the labor-centered liberal elites at the time; insisting on creating larger, more radical changes to society. On the other hand, the New Right was a largely grassroots movement aimed to restore traditionalist values from the “Eastern Establishment.” The New Right was “New” in a sense that it revitalized conservative hope at a time when those hopes looked mighty bleak. When analyzing the wildly different outcomes of the two movements, it becomes apparent that the New Right’s political-oriented manner to achieve their goals proved to be the decisive factor in maintaining long-term stability; something the confrontational New Left did not have the resources to achieve from the outset.

Conformity was once a common concept accepted by many Americans. Citizens were expected to participate in similar behavior, activities, and lifestyles. Advertisers used the desire to conform to societal ideologies in order to endorse and sell their products. However, during the 1950’s cultural revolution, Beats movement, individuals began dismissing the need to conform and began expressing their own individual endeavors. As the result of the rejection of collective conformity advertisers converted their strategies and began using freedom of expression as a ploy to get people to buy their products by promising them rebellion with said product. In the article “Commodify Your Dissent”, Thomas Frank examines the strategic ways advertisers

During the 1950’s art took a major turn in history from traditional styles depicting people and scenes of everyday life to abstract thoughts and ideas that were transformed onto a canvas to express emotions and ideals in society. People, events, and society have always impacted several styles of art, but the consumer culture in the 1950’s impacted art in a new completely unique way. Post WWII society was more industrialized and more focused on developing and selling new products. The postwar generation had more disposable income to spend on the latest and greatest products and the market turned to advertisements in mass media to get their products out there to consumers. With televisions and films increasing in popularity the market flooded these forms of media with catchy flashy ads that showed favorable people like movie stars using products. With the increasing use of mass media, the culture shifted to consumerism which effectively shifted art as well. Art was directly impacted by the consumer culture because of society’s use of advertisements, photographs, and films which artists like Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol used those elements in their own works to portray the change of societal standards in a new modern style of art called pop art.

During the 1960s Music was heavily influenced by the political and social events happening at the time. At this time civil rights movements were common as many people were trying to spread the emancipation of racism and segregation. As a result the music of the time tended to reflect this counterculture of peace. This “culture” encompassed civil rights, anti-establishment and, inciting revolution. This was a vital time in history for civil rights activists as well as anti-war revolutionaries and the music industry. From folk music to rock music, everyone was affected by the war and chose to express it through the most international form of art, music. Anti-war activists and counterculture enthusiast craved the music that truly expressed

The hippies, a group of young free-spirited, peace-loving, drug-obsessed individuals, who changed the way of life in the 60’s. They had a lasting impact on music, lifestyles, love, relationships and many more. that has carried on into modern society. The counterculture during the Summer of Love was an American revolution that would change the ways people lived for generations long after the hippies of the Summer of Love. This group of people believe in living one's life the way they wanted it to be lived without having to follow the “norms” of society. Peace, love, giving, and drug use were some of the their practices they are still remembered for.

The early 1960’s to mid 1970s was the start of the counterculture of youth culture. There were many revolutions during the 1960’s surrounding around sexual, cultural and racial, civil rights, and educational issues. In addition to the revolutions, there also was centered around the transition to adulthood, anxiety, and consumption. The film, American Graffiti, which was set in the 1962 (1960s)–before the peak of 1960’s counterculture–and released in 1973 (1970’s) displays a more nostalgic environment compared to the environment during the counterculture. American Graffiti shows the 1960’s youth accurately with the adulthood transition anxiety, growing consumerism, and sexuality; however, set during the counterculture the film does not capture the idea of the relationship between youth, parents, and authority, and their growing anxiety.