The 1950s

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in the 1950s, escapism was the norm with everyone wanted to be part of the middle-class, economically independent and not to worry about anything serious and intellectual beyond what was for dinner. The author describes the growth of suburban housing as built by real estate developer William Levitt, of the corporate executive and his helpmate and of the Western macho movies. The paper stresses that the reason for this attitude was that people needed to "chill-out" because not everything was right in the world: There was the USSR, the possibility of Nuclear War and the growing unrest of the African-America population and Civil Rights legislation.

From the Paper:

"This does not mean that everyone in the U.S. were interested in "never-never land". The Beatniks, some U.S. scholars and intellectuals were following the more serious Europeans in thinking about profound issues such as existentialism and the reason for living. The idea behind existentialism, advocated by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus among others in the 1940s and 1950s, was to determine the value of life. Bottom line: if life did not have value, then what was the reason for existing?"

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