Table Of ContentAmerica in the Seventies
America in the Seventies
CultureAmerica
Karal Ann Marling
Erika Doss
Series Editors
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Am erica in the
Seventies
Edited by
Beth Bailey & David Färber
U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S O F K A N S A S
© 2004 ty the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved
Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049), which was
organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State
University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State
University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
America in the seventies / edited by Beth Bailey and David Färber,
p. cm. — (CultureAmerica)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7006-1326-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 0-7006-1327-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. United States—History—1969- 2. United States—Social conditions—1960-1980. 3.
Nineteen seventies. 1. Bailey, Beth L., 1957- n. Färber, Dave. m. CultureAmerica
B855.A79 2004
973.924—dC22 2OO4OOI998
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.
Printed in the United States of America
10987654321
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z3948-1984.
Contents
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Introduction
Beth Bailey and David Färber / i
i. The Torch Had Fallen
David Färber / 9
2. "It Makes You Want to Believe in the Country"
Celebrating the Bicentennial in an Age of Limits
Christopher Capozzola / 29
3. Affirming and Disaffirming Actions
Remaking Race in the 1970s
Eric Porter / 50
4. "Vigorously Left, Right, and Center"
The Crosscurrents of Working-Class America in the 1970s
Jefferson Cowie / 75
5. She "Can Bring Home the Bacon"
Negotiating Gender in the 1970s
Beth Bailey / 107
6 "Adults Only"
The Construction of an Erotic City in New York during the 1970s
Peter Braunstein / 129
7. America's Poseidon Adventure
A Nation in Existential Despair
William Graebner / 157
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Contents
8. Cutback
Skate and Punk at the Far End of the American Century
Michael Nevin Willard / 181
9. Culture, Technology, and the Cult of Tech in the 1970s
Timothy Moy / 208
Contributors / 229
Index / 231
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Introduction
BETH BAILEY AND DAVID FÄRBER
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The best-selling book of the 1970s was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet
Earth, a novelistic treatment of Biblical prophecy and the coming apocalypse
that sold more than thirty million copies. In a time of great uncertainty, this
work promised certainty: the end of die world. In the 1970s, it seems, mil
lions found the apocalypse a comforting vision.
The 1970s may be our strangest decade. It was an era of incoherent im
pulses, contradictory desires, and even a fair amount of self-flagellation. It
was the decade that gave us die yellow smiley face, a sadly ironic symbol few
a nation on the downswing of postwar prosperity. It was an age of limits and
an age of excess: gas lines, pet rocks, and sixteen minutes of orgasmic moan
ing in Donna Summer's 1975 hit, "Love to Love You Baby." The 1970s were
a time when "earth-tone polyester" made sense.
Historians have been slow to put the 1970s into the narrative of American
history. In part, it is a generational problem. While the 1960s found a willing
legion of historians among those who had invested some of the best years of
their lives in the social movements and struggles of the era, the 1970s has few
impassioned champions, even among those who quite enjoyed coming of age
during the decade. The 1960s tended to overshadow the 1970s, even as peo
ple lived them. It was hard not to measure the 1970s against the revolution
ary fervor of protest, die black hole of the Vietnam War, the reach of the Great
Society, the honors of martyred leaders, and the grand possibility of a youth
culture that hoped to change the world. The Sixties were a decade of passion,
grandeur, and tragedy. The Seventies lacked that kind of emotional fire.
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Introduction
But the 1970s offer a different kind of drama. It was during the 1970s that
the results of the major social movements of the previous two decades
became concrete in American communities and in Americans' daily lives. It
was during the 1970s that America struggled through a fundamental eco
nomic transformation that dislocated millions of workers and—though few
understood it at the time—laid the foundations for a new, successful econ
omy. It was during the 1970s, in the backwash of political and economic cri
sis, that Americans dealt with a productive uncertainty about the meanings
of happiness, success, patriotism, and national identity.
America in the Seventies is not a comprehensive history of America in the
1970s, and it does not focus on the mechanics of policy and politics or the
intimacies of private life.1 Instead, this constellation of essays examines Amer
ican public culture—the ways and places in which Americans struggled over
the meaning of their society during these difficult years. The essays are
unified around three major themes: the importance of economic forces in
shaping the social and cultural life of 1970s America, the centrality of "iden
tity" and the ways in. which identities were reconfigured and contested dur-
— ' ...... r'*' '
ing die decade, and the pervasive sense of cultural uncertainty that yielded
both a culture of freedom and experimentation and a movement toward con
servatism. The following sections offer basic information about—and frame
works for understanding—economic transformation, understandings of
identity, and cultural uncertainty during the 1970s that should serve as a
foundation for the specific arguments of individual essays.
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ECO N O M IC TR A N SFO R M ATIO N
In the 1970s, the economy betrayed the expectations of the American people.
Since shortly after World War H, Americans had counted on a booming job
market, low inflation, and steady economic growth. There had been brief
recessions and spikes in unemployment, but until the 1970s such downturns
had been short lived. In file 1970s, economists had to coin a new term for the
economic crisis affecting die nation: stagflation. Inflation (rising prices) and
stagnation (low growth or economic decline)—which conventional economic
theory held could not happen simultaneously—had a stranglehold on the
nation's economy.
The source of the malaise was complicated, but international economic
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