Full Description
The Boomers are the generation that changed everything, from economics to politics to popular culture. This book examines the myriad ways and long-reaching consequences of the now fully "grown up" Baby Boomer generation on America.
Once upon a time, the members of the Baby Boomer generation were young, idealistic, and hungry to change the world. And they did create sweeping, irreversible changes throughout American society—but probably not in the ways their younger selves imagined they would. Now that the Boomers are in their late-adult or retirement years, their tremendous legacy can clearly be perceived. In retrospect, the paths the members of this generation took to come to power—and how they came to terms with that power—are also apparent.
This single-volume work supplies a broad yet detailed critical guide to the Boomer Generation, containing essays on key people, moments, and phenomena not only during the Boomers' 1960s heyday but also their extensive influences on American culture decades afterward. The contributors address key topics such as the rise of feminism; Civil Rights; the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement; the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and rock 'n roll; gay rights; idealism, narcissism, and materialism; the influence of television on America, and vice versa; and the transition of Boomers from being "Yippies" to "Yuppies." This work is an ideal text for students in undergraduate or graduate courses in television studies, media studies, cultural studies, and American studies; and is highly appropriate as a supplemental text in literature, history, and philosophy surveys.
Contents
Introduction
Brian Cogan and Thom Gencarelli
PART 1: POLITICS
1. From Camelot to Watergate: Ten Years That Changed the Politics of Boomer Culture
William M. Knoblauch
?2. The Whole World Is Watching: The SDS and Student Movement of the 1960s
Ed Tywoniak
3. Breaking Down Doors: The Stonewall Riots and LGBT Rights
Anastacia Kurylo
4. Wearing Members Only Jackets: Baby Boomers and the Shift from Sharing in to Buying into Community
Todd Kelshaw
5. Boomers in the Global Village
Michael Grabowski
PART 2: TELEVISION AND FILM
6. Let the Games Begin: Baby Boomers, Capitalist Ideology, and the Containment of Gender in Sports Television
Cheryl A. Casey
7. "And Now Bringing You the Good Life—A Word from Our Sponsors": The Changing Face of Television Advertising from the Sixties to the Present Day
Rebecca Kern
8. Moving with the Pictures: Film Viewing across the Boomer Era
Sheila J. Nayar
9. Chilling to The Big Chill: Representations of Boomers in Movies
Robert Hensley-King
10. The New Horror Movie
Todd K. Platts
11. Rock Music on Film: A Selective Chronology
Sarah Boslaugh
PART 3: POPULAR MUSIC
12. "It's Only Rock-'n'-Roll": The Rise of the Contemporary Popular Music Industry as a Defining Factor in the Creation of Boomer Culture
Thom Gencarelli
13. "In My Life": The Transformative Power of Music and Media during the Rebellions of the 1960s
Robert Albrecht
14. "Love Is All You Need": Why There Will Never Be Another Beatles
Phil Rose
15. Bob Dylan and Spectacle Culture: Yesterday and Today
Salvatore J. Fallica
16. "Come See about Me": Why the Baby Boomers Liked Stax but Loved Motown
Gary Kenton
PART 4: LITERATURE
17. Reading the Boomers' Reading: What Did They Read? Who Did They Read? Who Wrote about Them?
David Linton
18. Equipment for Living: The Popularity and Use of Second-Wave Feminist Literature among Baby Boomers
Kim Trager Bohley
19. "After Life, the Magazine, the Splintering of the Categories: Boomers as a Target Audience" (including "Mau-Mau-ing the Press: The Rise of 'New' Journalism," "Rolling Stone: The Magazine That Marked a Generation," and "Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, and the 'New Journalism' as Literature")
Brian Cogan
20. Soul on Ice: The Rise of Minority Literature
Christopher Allen Varlack
21. The Baby Boom, the Bomb, and Outer Space: Growing Up in a Science Fiction World
Lance Strate
22. Marshall McLuhan and the Making of a Countercultural Generation
James C. Morrison
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
