Popular Culture in Britain at the Beginning of the 1960’s
Uploaded by on Sep 30, 2007
In this essay, while completing the task of describing popular culture in the early 1960’s, I hope to cover four main aspects; pop music, radio, television, film, fashion and changes in society.
The term popular culture means a contemporary lifestyle and items that are well-known and generally accepted, it is a cultural pattern that are widespread within a population. A popular culture was being spread in Britain during the 1960’s. The 1960’s is considered by many to be the best decade in living memory. Popular culture during the 1960’s mostly consisted of music, television, magazines and fashion. In the early 1960’s popular culture was changing rapidly in Britain, fashions changed and people began to have a great interest in music as new bands and music genres were being formed, most of the music was directed towards youths. There was a lot of changes in society which affected a lot of peoples lives.
The 1950’s was a conservative period. The country was recovering from the ravages of the war and many people wanted society to return to how it was before the war. In the 1950’s, popular culture was rather dull and boring and only aimed the family as a whole unit. For example, the style in music was in general, slow and crooning. The older generation disliked the changes in children. New music was appearing such as Elvis Presley and cliff Richard. A very well-known quote can summarise the transformation in popular culture during the 1960s, “in the 1950s, daughters tried to look like their mothers. In the 1960’s, the mothers tried to look like their daughters”. This famous quote illustrates the amazing change of popular culture from the 50’s to the 60’s. during the 50‘s, daughters were happy to become like their mothers and have similar morals and views on life. But from the 60’s things began to change and teenagers wanted to look different to their parents and have a different lifestyle to theirs. Young people had more freedom, they no longer had to follow in their parents footsteps and were able to be themselves. Teenagers had more pocket money to spend on music and fashion. At the beginning of the 1960’s, more consumer goods could be afforded by the middle classes due to a higher standard of living. Televisions...