Stereotypes

During the 1950's in the United States, manufacturing and home construction were on the rise as the American economy was on the upswing. Generally speaking, this time period is most commonly viewed in a positive light. The Western world is generally depicted as both socially conservatinve and highly materialistic in nature, due to a recovering and thriving economy. For this reason, compliance and conformity are noticeable themes during this historical period.

Because conformity was most often expected, people tended to follow the group rather than stand out from the crowd. Life was regarded as very conservative as we look back at that time period. There was a "traditional" family where the wife was a stay home mom, and the husband earned the paycheck. People wore similar hair styles and clothes, and decorated their homes in the trend of the 50s.

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The middle class experienced an expolosion of growth during this decade. Furthermore, the need to always have more and better goods emerged rapidly in the West during the 1950s. Consumerism became a key component of Western society. People bought big houses in the new suburbs and bought new time-saving household appliances. This buying trend was influenced by many American cultural and economic aspects such as advertising; television; cars; new offerings from banks (loans and credit); immediately being able to have what one wanted; and achieving a perceived better life. This increased desire, or need vs. want, is certainly one trend that has survived throughout the decades. In fact, it can be aruged that this "bigger/better" mentality consumes our present culture, despite the anemic economy. //--from wikipedia.org//

There are a few Dr. Seuss books that you could easily use in the classroom to discuss some of the themes prevalent during this time period. For instance, "The Lorax" would be perfect to use to introduce this "need vs. want" that stemmed from this era. This Dr Seuss book was first published in 1971, and it contains additional themes such as protecting the environment. This book chronicles the plight of the [|environment] and the Lorax, who speaks for the trees against the greedy Once-ler. As in most Dr. Seuss works, most of the creatures mentioned are original to the book. It opens with the scene below discussing how things were once alive and thriving, but then the greedy Onceler decided to use all of the truffula trees from the forest to create a multitude of "thneeds" for consumers to purchase. The Long Walk Home This film, featuring Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Golderg, would be a great film to use in the classroom while discussing themes relaetd to challenges, oppression, or personal struggles. Essentially, it chronicles the journey of a White couple and their African American maid during a tumultuous time in America. It seems to provide an accurate depiction of the stereotypes during this time, in that it features the White male as the bread winner, the stay-at-home wife, and the subservient African American housekeeper. media type="google" key="6650219631867189375&hl=en&fs=true" width="400" height="326"media type="youtube" key="sJfNdb7d-cs" height="349" width="425"

A movie that discusses similar issues, yet geared toward a younger audience (6th-7th graders) is __Perfect Harmony__. It's set in South Carolina during the 50's and illustrates the clash of class and race between two White teens (one African American and one White).



The "Good Wife's Guide" above was rumored to have been featured in the May 1955 issue of //Housekeeping Monthly//. Regardless of whether it was actually published, many of these statements are illustrative of the wife stereotype during this time. A video/spoof was can be referenced below that mentions several of the statements outlined in the "Good Wife's Guide."

Housekeeping and raising a family were considered ideal female roles during the 1950-60's, although that standard was less rigid than in previous decades. With marriage and birthrates booming, women were becoming wives and mothers at unprecedented levels. But more women were entering the work-place as well. During World War II women by the millions took factory jobs to make up for the domestic manpower shortage. After the war the number of working women dropped, but by 1950 it was climbing again, at the rate of a million a year. By 1956, 35 percent of all adult women were members of the labor force, and nearly a quarter of all married women were working. As A. W. Zelomek, president of the International Statistical Bureau, reported in //A Changing America//(1959), two out of five women with husbands and school-age children worked outside the home. This statistic is most likely related to social class and financial ability to stay at home to raise the children. Even children's books and movies at the time showed young girls the idea that they needed to find themselves a hard working, stable man to provide and take care of them instead of being able to care for themselves. //--from []// media type="youtube" key="J-YwJKIqyOE" height="349" width="425"

African Americans in TV Land Blacks appeared on a wide range of early non-stereotyped programming. In 1948 //Television Chapel//, the first regularly scheduled religious program, occasionally featured a black congregation during its Sunday worship. The same year, the DuMont network televised Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, a well-known clergyman from Washington, D.C. and the Southernaires, a gospel choir, appeared on ABC.

Not all viewers were comfortable with non-stereotyped black performances on the new medium. Flattering appearances by minority entertainers often provoked hateful reactions. And all concerned in such bookings—the white host as well as the sponsor, station, network, and African-American talent—risked vile insult, even physical abuse, from racist whites. Nowhere was this pattern more obvious than in the case of the Will Mastin Trio and its per­formance with Eddie Cantor on the //Colgate Comedy Hour//.

While television utilized blacks in a wide variety of program formats, the medium could be harsh on obvious reminders of a less tolerant past. White men wearing burnt cork, the classic make-up of the minstrel show, failed in early television. Al­though a star like Eddie Cantor occasionally might appear in blackface for one or two songs on the //Colgate Comedy Hour//, network TV found it unprofitable to build an entire show around the minstrel format. //American Minstrels of 1949// was a stillborn ABC project. It intended to revive the popularity of Pick Malone and Pat Padgett—blackface comedians for over a decade in film and network radio—and feature their mocking comedy routines. The program, however, was poorly received and left the air quickly.

Of major significance for blacks in television was the //Billy Daniels Show//. This was a quarter-hour musical series aired Sun­day evenings on ABC throughout the fall of 1952. Although it lasted only thirteen weeks, the program was a milestone. First, it was a network project carried in the largest cities in the nation: Boston, New York City, Detroit, Birmingham, Philadelphia, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Fran­cisco. It was also the first black show to be broadcast nationally by a single sponsor, the Vitamin Corporation of America for its Rybutol B-complex vitamins.

Few black shows were produced or directed by African-Americans. Where such programs did exist, they were local in their orientation and predictable in content. These shows seldom failed to highlight music. Whether it was a religious series like //The Mahalia Jackson Show// on WBBM-TV (Chicago) in 1955 or //The Gospel Show// on WATV in 1957, a jazz showcase such as //Rhythm Review// on KCOP-TV (Los Angeles), or a cooking feature like //The Kenny and Flo Show//—featuring tenor Herb Kenny of The Ink Spots—on WMAL (Washington, D.C.), music was invariably the central ingredient. Significantly, these presentations represented a miniscule por­tion of American TV programming. //Ebony// touched on this fact when it reported that as late as 1957 there were less than a dozen programs in the United States being produced by blacks. //--from []//

The Mammy stereotype The mammy figure—usually portrayed as a portly black maid in a white household—was a familiar stereotype. She emitted a certain human warmth that was sometimes difficult to discern beneath her aggressive self-confidence and implacable personality. In early television the black maid was a highly popular character. Between 1953 and 1964, Lillian Randolph played Louise, a maid for the Williams family on Make Room for Daddy (later called //The Danny Thomas Show//). She also appeared in the mid-1950s as Birdie Lee Goggins, the maid on the syndicated //The Great Gildersleeve// series—a role which she had enacted on the radio version of that program for more than a decade before it came to video.



The Elevator Operator

The Amos 'n' Andy Show

Specific complaints regarding the Amos 'n' Andy show
 * Most often were portrayed as inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest.
 * Every character in this one and only show with an all-Negro cast is either a clown or a crook.
 * Negro doctors are shown as quacks and thieves.
 * Negro lawyers are shown as slippery cowards, ignorant of their profession and without ethics.
 * Negro women are shown as cackling, screaming shrews, in big-mouth close-ups using street slang, just short of vulgarity.
 * All Negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind

Bang or Bust?
There is little doubt that //Amos 'n' Andy// contrasted with the more realistic image of blacks offered on television. Written, produced, and directed by white men, the series was a stereotyped projection of black life. Certainly characters were exaggerated for purposes of comedy, but their essence was drawn directly from offensive minstrel shows, an entertainment form that was anachronistic in the 1950s. Defenders were correct in noting that the series meant success for many black actors. Some felt that as the first long-running network program utilizing dozens of blacks, it might be the beginning of prosperity for blacks in TV. But critics were also right in maintaining that //Amos 'n' Andy//, despite its popularity, was no breakthrough for African Americans. Overall, many have argued that //Amos 'n' Andy// was a false interpretation of black reality, unfairly lulling whites into complacency and unjustly reducing African Americans to a position of inferiority.

The bottom line: Millions of white Americans see this Amos 'n' Andy picture and think the entire race is the same. Such programming could have aroused black indignation. The assumptions that there were no black heroes in Africa and that native Africans always were less successful than white men or women was eminently debatable. The fact that documentary films fed racist imaginations more than they educated mass audiences was an issue that could have produced legitimate criticism of television pro­gramming.

Here's where another Dr. Seuss book, //Horton Hears A Who,// can come into play in the classroom. Even though the film is slightly different from the book, it could still be used to promote the well-known mantra "a person's a person, no matter how small." It wasn't written for this purpose, however, many of the main points speak on equality and value. It has also been adopted by anti-abortion groups for this same purpose.

media type="youtube" key="B0qZ4V53EV4" height="349" width="425" Another Seuss classic, //The Sneetches//, is a resource you could use when discussing identity, materialism, prejudice, discrimination, and/or entrepreneurship. The basic version of the story is that some of the sneetches have a star on their belly, whereas others do not and are discriminated because of it. So, Sylvester McBean comes to the scene with a machine that could put stars on the "non-branded" Sneetches so they will no longer be discriminated against. Of course, like most things, there is a small fee for this service. What each group of Sneetches is unaware of is that Sylvester McBean is only concerned with making money, not prejudices, so he allows both types of Sneetches to pay a nominal fee for use of the machine. Both groups of Sneetches continually use this machine until they are financially broke. You'll have to read the book to find out what happens next :-) media type="youtube" key="v3yJomUhs0g" height="349" width="425" Toward the end of our decade there is a sharp movement away from the conservative and compliant norms of the fifties and early sixties. Tensions were beginning to rise which resulted in revolutionary ways of thinking and change that would affect the cultural fabric of American life. For the most part, the groups of people insisting change during this period were youth, women, and African Americans.

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**Connections to Literature**

 * //My Most Excellent Year//
 * //It's Kind of A Funny Story (book and film)//
 * //Speak (book and film)//
 * //We Beat the Street//
 * //The Giver//
 * //Gathering Blue//
 * //Lies My Teacher Told Me//
 * //Freakonomics//
 * "A Raisin In The Sun"
 * //Into the WIld//
 * //House on Mango Street//
 * //Their Eyes Were Watching God (book and film)//
 * "What White Publishers Won't Print" (essay)
 * "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" (essay)
 * //Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass//
 * "Indissoluble Matrimony" (short story)
 * //The Lorax//
 * //The Sneetches//
 * //Horton Hears A Who//

Films

 * __Perfect Harmony__
 * __The Long Walk Home__
 * __To Kill A Mockingbird__
 * __Guess Who's Coming To Dinner__
 * __Blast From The Past__
 * __Pleasantville__

References: Goodwin, Susan and Becky Bradley. //American Cultural History//. Lone Star College-Kingwood Library, 1999. Web.

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