Can anyone please point me to that petrol station filled with fuel cuties …
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on the January the 8th 1935 in Tupelo. He was a big part of the Invention of the Teenager, TV celebrities and the global Rock & Roll-Phenomenon.
Rock’n'Roll also invented the teenager as a consumer and so called youth culture. Suddenly there was a different music and stars for youngsters.
After the dreadful WWII the new middle class could afford to give some money for teenagers, who were eager to spend their allowance. The teenager therefore is a product of modern rich society – a luxury item of you will …
While kids can be pleased with toys, teenagers are eager to define themselves with style and suitable products. So music became the a tool for identification (or better say product?). Depending on your teenage tribe (and personal "style") you listened to a specific kind of music. Subcultures proved to be goldmines. Anyone who could define a new "style" or own certain artists could literally print money …
The first King of Global Record sales and Teenage Manias.
Plus mass production allowed cheap records, radios, record players and TVs. Most of all the new medium television needed to be feed constantly with new acts, personalities and stories.
Stars and celebrities were nothing new at that time. Already the Roman Coliseum knew the celebrities and famous athletes. But it was in the roaring 1920’s when the true Star Cult was born – mostly thanks to Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford were the first global stars. But apart from movies in the theatres, cigarette and chocolate cards there was little to consume for the masses.
The real celebrity based merchandising frenzy and consumerism started with the 1950’s and the invention of the teenager …
Early design is terribly dry and frugal, don’t be fooled by the flowers (to make it look nicer and more organic). But still today most designs are straight lines and boxes. Designers love right angles. How boring!
Bob and Judy tried to speedup the development of their prodigy child Jimmy, but they were slow to understand that genetics are hard to accelerate in that manner.
Click image for more Marilyn.
She didn’t have big breasts, she was not really exceptionally beautiful – but she had charm and charisma.
The shot is today a classic nude moment – back in 1953 is was simply sleaze. How times change …
Raymond Scott was far far far ahead of his time. This song is from the 1950’s when he already experimented with electronic sounds. Add to this sound some heavy beats and it would perfectly electro pop modern.
Click illustration for a bigger rocket.
Call me old fashioned, but I still would like the promised space age to arrive in style and in my lifetime.
Just making a small atmospheric jump with Virgin Galactic is not my idea of the space age – I want aliens and rocket ships that fly to other galaxies …
Please!
Let’s deconstruct this yummy pulp cover:
The male gun is directly aimed at her vagina.
Redheads are supposed to be extra sexual and her red lips and fingernails add some extra horny undertones.
Her skirt is blown away just at the right place to reveal her panties.
The same applies to her blouse to show one of her breasts.
Her unstable posture makes her easy to kick over or press her against the wall. The perfect victim.
Otherwise the cover is high art and perfectly innocent.
BBC News: NASA’s 50 years in Space (Videos)
The dogmatic search for a better future was the driving force of the 20th century.
Let’s go back to the Age of Enlightenment that was driven by new insights and lofty goals for humanity. It was the time of colonialism, conquests and the true start of globalization. Although under the brutal direction of European Colonials the world was for the first time completely explored, connected and aware of each other.
Excuse me, we are nice colonists and are looking for a place to build a spaceport.
But it was also the Age of Humanitarianism, when we realized that King & Country were not eternal and that humanity needed better tools and ideals to guide itself into the future. One outcome of this new Idealism was the French Revolution as well as the United States of America – a totally new way to govern modern societies.
Compared to the former religious societies our Forefathers suddenly had “mental space” for a different and better future. Under Religion and Royals there was no “improving” future as we know it today. There was only the continuation of yesterday until Judgement Day. Any change driven by human ideas was considered blasphemy and unnecessary – since everything was nicely arranged in God’s perfect plan.
Move aside God – we need space for the future …
The Industrial Age of the 19th Century with it’s incredible social and scientific achievements where the ultimate proof that “God was dead” (Nietzsche) and that the nation state transcended Religion and Kings. The eternal plan was scraped, finally there was a Future and the mental space for real progress.
Already in the early Industrial Age authors like Jules Verne established many modern visions of a technological future: underwater cities, submarines, flying machines, rockets and interplanetary travel. All based on the work of daring scientists and engineers.
New political and social sciences radically changed western cultures: Psychology, Socialism, Mass Production, Consumerism and Individualism transformed the old Democracies into new powerful nation states.
He didn’t built any rockets, but he was one of many important fathers of modern science.
All new political ideas like Socialism, Communism and a new modern (Market) Capitalism were based new insights and sciences available at the time. Even Fascism got many of it’s ideas from science, especially from Darwinism and most of all Social Darwinism – which lead to the dreadful science of Eugenics.
Small side note: Social Darwinism has actually not invented by him – it was rather based on Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton work. It was first just a very convenient way to justify Colonialism and the Class System.
Sorry, your nose is too big to be an Aryan or an Astronaut.
Nevertheless – Science was established as the ultimate method to build a better life. Our future depended on better science and technology. Our Forefathers were delighted and enchanted by all the exciting new discoveries.
Already in the 1920’s and 1930’s a new kind of Futurism swept through America, Europe and some parts of Asia. Freud’s psychology fascinated people all over the western world and the although the great Depression was a terrible event for everybody modern Consumerism started to thrive in that time too.
Modern Consumerism always demanded High Tech.
But there was also a cultural Futurism (not to be confused with the Italian Futurism). Thanks to new forms of Mass Media (especially comics, radio and cinemas) science fiction presented a glorious technological future to the masses. Hero’s like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and many others showed the way to the Future – first as comics, then as radio serials and later as movies.
Interestingly enough: early science fiction (in literature and on the screen) adopted Democracy and Humanitarianism as the ultimate choice for any lifeform. Technology and science as tools to archive the best way of life. This message is ultimately portrayed in the movie “Things to Come” (1936).
I am sure evil Ming’s military never faced NASA’s budget cuts!
The terrible conflicts of ideas first dismantled the old colonial powers in WWI and WWII. Both wars showed that science and technology was the ultimate weapon. The future belonged to flying machines, atomic power and electronics.
Many weapons invented in WWII are still stranger then (science) fiction like flying saucers. But the Cold War fathered even stranger and more futuristic machinery: like the atomic bomber, killer satellites or stealth fighters.
The space age already started with Wernher von Braun and his terrible V-2 rocket in 1942. But this was really only the beginning …
There is one small reason for NASA’s existence: Sputnik.
In the 1950’s rockets and spacemen were already deeply embedded into the public’s mind through science fiction and popular science. But on October 4, 1957 it all become real with the launch of Sputnik. Hardly a year later the Americans founded NASA on July 29, 1958. The space age finally took off with full power.
Once again the chimps got there before us!
From the 1950’s till the mid 1980’s popular culture and media was shaped by science, technology and science fiction. From Sputnik to the Space Shuttle and from Captain Kirk to Star Wars – it was the Age of happy technology and unlimited possibilities.
Star Wars 1977 not only my personal turning point in my childhood …
Every boys dream was to become an Astronaut. Being smart or even being a Scientist was considered cool. Building stuff that actually worked was even cooler. Toys like chemistry sets, rocket kits or ever complex LEGO machinery were best sellers.
Totally out of fashion today: being an Astronaut. Not as cool as being a Rapper or Supermodel.
I was born 1967 – I was two years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Too young to really watch it. But I do remember that I watched every bit of “space anything”, science fiction or scientific program on the telly.
Until the mid 1980’s my generation grew up on a positive vision of the future, science and technology. Sure – already in the 1970’s the Hippies questioned our modern lifestyle – but it was not until the start and success of the green movement that this positive and uncritical vision was replaced with a more darker, distrusting and often strangely esoteric vision of the future.
I am still in my heart a spaceman, but I guess that era is over.
Ah, they don’t make movie posters like that anymore – and it’s a good thing too, because that means they don’t make stupid movies like that anymore too.
I love the style – first employed by the new Avantgarde and many Soviet propaganda posters. Today’s artists are way to focused on "photoshopping" all elements of an image into perfection – so the poster would look like one seamless piece of art. But I like the collage style and emphasis on different objects.
We might laugh today at the blunt message of this 1950’s TV commercial. But has the message really changed? Individualism has become more prominent since the 1970’s – but the method is still the same: fear. The fear of being not cool, fear of NOT belonging to the big crowd, fear NOT to doing (buying) the best for your loved ones, fear of being NOT adorable, sexy, smart … whatever.
Since most products hardly differ in quality or features – they have to get their uniqueness either through “cool design” or marketing. For example: most cell phones for €100 have the same features for that prices, but they look very different and are often targeted at different crowds (business user, kids, pussy tech, etc).
And it is still fascinating that we still reacted to finely tuned amounts of fear and associations: “Oh, no this cell phone is made for woman. I am a strong guy, I am not gonna buy this although it’s cheaper and does exactly what I want it to do!”.
*inspired by OliviaB sending me a similar coffee ad*
I am sure this is where you want to read books about GOOD interior design and a horror stories …
The only way to take over the world … when you are a kid. Too bad they really can do it today with their computers.
This is the perfect lone wolf and lonely fighter movie. It provided a template for many Hollywood imitations like ‘Last Man standing’ with Bruce Willis.
Akira Kurusawa is one amazing men. Japan’s greatest director, his movies like Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Ran and Dreams just blew away any western competition.
Hollywood copied many of his movies.
His solid storytelling and his talent to create amazing characters, just glues me to the screen every time! Hardly any director – apart from Steven Spielberg or David Lean has made so many epical movies.
Click image for even more madness.
The final scene of Sunset Boulevard [watch it on YouTube] always sends shivers down my spine. Although this movie is already half a century old it’s still fantastic and has lost nothing of it’s impact, madness and magic [here is the old trailer]. Not many old Hollywood productions age so gracefully. Thank you Billy Wilder, William Holden and most of all Gloria Swanson.
William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim – who was a great director himself.
Addicted to Oil? Use smaller cars to reduce consumption and traffic jams. You don’t need a huge Hummer or Minivan to drive around the blog. Little cars are very popular in Europe and Japan – let’s hope Americans learn that lesson as well – plus let’s hope that India and China never develops a hunger for MegaCars.
More? Isetta @ Wikipedia
Isn’t there a UN resolution against such designs? The 50’s have been a strange decade and dogs behaved very different from today. Taken from the blog of killer knitware:Threadbared.com.
