Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and the Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: conservative ideological offensive, political nostalgia, nostalgic discourse, New Left, New Deal, White House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

The author weaves together popular cultural influences and politics in a masterly way -- Lary May, author of The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way

This is a smart, illuminating study of the political uses of nostalgia -- Paul S. Boyer, editor-in-chief, The Oxford Companion to United States History

Product Description

In the twenty-first century, why do we keep talking about the Fifties and the Sixties? The stark contrast between these decades, their concurrence with the childhood and youth of the baby boomers, and the emergence of television and rock and roll help to explain their symbolic power. In Happy Days and Wonder Years, Daniel Marcus reveals how interpretations of these decades have figured in the cultural politics of the United States since 1970.

From Ronald Reagan's image as a Fifties Cold Warrior to Bill Clinton's fandom for Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy, politicians have invoked the Fifties and the Sixties to connect to their public. Marcus shows how films, television, music, and memoirs have responded to the political nostalgia of today, and why our entertainment remains immersed in reruns, revivals, and references to earlier times. This book offers a new understanding of how politics and popular culture have influenced our notions of the past, and how events from long ago continue to shape our understanding of the present day.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press; illustrated edition edition
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813533910
• ISBN-13: 978-0813533919
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,531,739 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars popular culture as a tool to construct politcal memory, September 5, 2004

By	m_noland "m_noland" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This is a fascinating account of the use of popular culture in constructing nostalgia and with it collectively shared political-cultural narratives of the nation's history. It is particularly apropos during an election centered, to a strange degree, on events 30 to 40 years ago.

The book focuses on two iconic public figures, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who each successfully constructed alternative interpretations of the 1950s and 1960s and rode them to the White House. In some sense Reagan's was the simpler task, using his personal charisma to frame a nostalgia evoking American dominance and stability, "a chronology of 1950s normality, 1960s deviance and trauma, 1970s hangover and stagnation, and a 1980s return to health and glory," aimed at a largely white and male core political constituency for whom such a narrative did not do tremendous violence to their personal interests.

Clinton's task was harder-as Marcus observes, "American imaginations find it difficult to hold onto the image of an antimilitaristic, psychedelicized, left-wing white southerner." But Clinton managed to turn the trick, reaching back to JFK and Elvis as his touchstones. Indeed, Marcus argues that the death of George Bush's southern guitar-picking political advisor Lee Atwater deprived him of the one political hand who might have had the cultural instincts to fashion a successful counter to Elvis as Policy Wonk, and with an assist from Ross Perot, Clinton went on to win in 1992.

Reading this well-written book one wonders what Marcus would have made of the media's hagiographic treatment of Reagan at the time of his death, or the weirdly backward looking focus of the current presidential election campaign. But it is precisely that backward gaze which demonstrates the contemporary relevance of this book.