In effect, those born in the 1950s and 1960s were the first generations to be co-parented by popular culture. They were the people, who as Bruce Springsteen put it in No Surrender, “learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school”. They drew life lessons not from fireside chats with parents, but from David Bowie or Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. They were entertained not by parlour games, but by The Generation Game. When they wanted to understand why they felt as they did during adolescence, they didn’t speak to their families, they listened to the Smiths, or whoever answered their particular need.
They did so in homes in which, often, both parents were absent much of the time. Millions of kids spent more time with pop stars and film stars and TV stars than with their parents. (Not for nothing were the children’s TV presenters of the 1960s and 1970s usually presented as surrogate parents, like John Noakes, Peter Purves and Lesley Judd on Blue Peter, rather than the matey older siblings of the late 1980s and onwards) They were also the first generations for whom adulthood was deferred, by the expansion of education, by the postponement of marriage. There was no pressure on them to loosen their bonds with the people they had grown up listening to or watching.
Yep, that's me (but delete "The Smiths" and "The Generation Game" and insert, let's say, "The Kinks" and "Monty Python"). You, too?
I'll never forget those dark winter afternoons around 1965, coming home from school to an empty house, and turning on the TV in anticipation of a daily dose of The Magic Roundabout. It was great! I believe the sociologists back then called us "latchkey kids", and feared we were prone to behavioural problems, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual promiscuity. As if! No, that was all strictly for the weekends...
I'll never forget those dark winter afternoons around 1965, coming home from school to an empty house, and turning on the TV in anticipation of a daily dose of The Magic Roundabout. It was great! I believe the sociologists back then called us "latchkey kids", and feared we were prone to behavioural problems, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual promiscuity. As if! No, that was all strictly for the weekends...
Latchkey chicks
11 comments:
You don't feel safe, walking past that tree. The police should do something about them kids...
Zouk,
I know! Dead mice all over the place, and the constant repetitive hooting... It's a disgrace.
Seen the kerfuffle in the comments on a recent article about Stevenage's cycle paths in the Guardian? I can remember when young layabouts used them underpasses as improvised cinemas...
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage
Mike
Cinemas? Don't get it. I do remember they were good places to spark up a fat one, and it's nice to see the tradition continues.
Thanks for the cycle path link. 1226 comments. Blimey! I use them every day. I don't understand why pedestrians stroll down the centre of the cycle paths, wearing headphones and absorbed in their mobile devices when there's a parallel footpath two yards away. They should walk in the main road imo. Pity about all the broken glass, too.
Zouk,
Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot...
I have a very vivid memory (admittedly probably after said fat one) of -- one night in or around 1971/2 -- a small, exclusive company standing in the pitch dark of a recently constructed underpass beneath Fairlands Way, watching cinematic scenarios being acted out in the brightly illuminated rectangle, like a stage set, on the sloping grassy bank at the far end (mainly by a guy called Tone, whom you may also not remember), lit up by the tall street lamp in the road overhead.
Mike
Never heard of him. Sounds more like Dave P. to me. I daresay we forget these things for a reason. I never remember films anyway. I think I know which underpass you mean, though: it connected nowhere to nowhere else, if I'm right, so you didn't have to be bullied by passing cyclists and the "fuzz" went over your head, unseeing, in their warm panda cars. Nowadays it connects Aldi to Tesco's goods-inwards area -- no wonder their stuff is so cheap: they get it from Aldi's!
This is an intriguing image, Mike. It brings to mind the spaceship interiors in "Arrival," a seriously beautiful movie. Being the tech nerd that I am, I wonder what the aspect ratio your "screen " was? My recollection of underpasses is that they tend to be 1:1. Any thoughts on this?
Kent,
I presume there are two comments here, rolled into one? the owls are stuffed, and live in the Booth Museum in Brighton. From (very long ago) memory, the "screen" in question was around 1:2, or even wider. Our underpasses are never square, always a wide oblong.
Mike
Sorry for the inexactitude. I was asking about the underpass. Any thoughts about why designers chose "oblongs?" (Upon looking up the word, I'm confused to see it refers to both an oval AND a rectangle.) I suppose people can more easily pass one another going opposite directions if the tunnel is broader than high. And I'm pretty certain I've encountered underpasses square, oval, and rectangle.
Not sure why this interests me. But the idea of the end of a tube being a "screen" is intriguing, as I've certainly taken many a photo from inside darkened chambers out to the daylight, including the interior space around the "screen" as a reference for where the camera was positioned. Looking for some "depth" in a 2 dimensional medium?
Kent,
I presume for exactly the reasons you suggest. For cycleways, there will be a tarmac roadway", with pedestrian pavements on one or sometimes both sides. I also presume a rectangular passage is easier and cheaper to construct: if you're ever in London, the Victorian brick and tilework of the underground system tunnels (and of the passageway leading to the Natural History and Victoria & Albert museums) are marvels of beauty and skill.
Mike
Kent,
Here's a photo of a Stevenage underpass of the same sort of dimensions as the one Mike's talking about:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/coultart/9147752968
Imagine no lights in the underpass (no artwork either!), but a very bright standard lamp high overhead, illuminating the road above and everything outside the dark interior. As I (now) recall the one in question had a high grassy bank a few yards from the mouth, forming a sort of theatrical backdrop.
I think an oblong, technically, is a 2-d figure longer than it is broad, but we tend to use the word casually to mean rectangle, just because it's an easier word, I suppose.
I once surprised a couple having a knee-trembler in an underpass near the football ground in Broadhall Way as I shot past aged 16 on my bike. Can't imagine how they thought they'd remain undisturbed for long ...
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