Covers (1951-1964). Culture, youth and rebelliousness

Covers (1951-1964)

Culture, youth and rebelliousness

From 2 October 2012 to 3 February 2013

Academia exhibition room - La Nau

From Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 to 14 and from 16 to 20 h.

Sunday, from 10 to 14 h.

Organised by Universitat de València

Produced by General Foundation of Universitat de València

Sponsored by Bancaixa

Curators: Justo Serna and Alejandro Lillo

In the years following World War II, the Unites States underwent an unprecedented expansion of its population and economy. As from the 1950s, the upward trend of the families’ standard of living seemed unstoppable: America showed its supremacy off to the world. At the same time the country feared and opposed the Communists and their infiltration from remote sites. It was the Cold War.

The welfare levels reached had been simply unthinkable just a few years earlier. That prosperity, present in American everyday life, could also be seen in the media. Satisfaction and achievement made it to the covers of the magazines. Wealth and prosperity were flaunted. Adverts featured smart and casual clothes and herringbone suits, dresses and skirts, hats for the gents and stiletto shoes for the ladies, bright jewels, pointed sunglasses, swimsuits, and fine, figure-enhancing lingerie.

Life Magazine was a loyal witness to the period's fashion trends. And so were television comedies like I Love Lucy. But advertising also focused on cars, motorbikes, refrigerators, food processors, television sets: all types of appliances to meet different human needs, small luxuries to make life more comfortable and to speed it up! In retrospect, these accessories and machines have a cool, vintage touch. Some of the ads are glamorous even by today's standards.

But material joy also conceals a discomfort that goes unnoticed by some. The uneasiness of the American youth is not negligible at all. Restless youngsters seen from a restless perspective. They make known their dissatisfaction in an attitude of contempt, to the adults' dismay. They seem to scorn their inheritance, the world of adults, or the prosperity they benefit from. And they do so by dressing differently, uniformed in differentiating clothes, whether jeans or leather jackets or tight-fit trousers. And with music, singing along songs that express their unease and longings: love, desire, the body, speed…

Radio and television report on their changes. The future is not long enough and young people want it all now. Their eagerness, rejection and insolence become characteristic features of subsequent generations. The rebels and their gangs, doing the steering, asserting themselves, and standing up against adult hypocrisy: they are The Outsiders, as recreated by Susan E. Hinton years later (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola (1983).

Covers is about the roots of this discomfort. The exhibition helps us ‘hit the road’ in a trip to an opulent and anxious nation, one needing soothing therapies and psychoanalysis. It is an invitation to return to a country which showed the uneasiness and rebelliousness of the young for the first time they way we know them today. Our travel to the US takes us back to the 1950s and the early 1960s.

J. D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. In 1964 The Beatles and The Rolling Stones arrive in the US for a TV show with Ed Sullivan, and they go on tour. The outset of young rebelliousness can be tracked down to the period between both dates, with Marlon Brando becoming an icon of the wild side. Rock and roll is born and Elvis Presley becomes a star, swivelling his hips. From the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, James Dean and John F. Kennedy enter the scene, hit the headlines and die young: they live quickly, take drugs and enjoy sex to the full. It is the Beatniks’ time. Youth revolution is unleashed, and the waves it causes are strong. This cultural boom changed looks, everyday life, lifestyles and values. Nothing would be the same ever again. But not everything was serious. There was happiness and optimism: the twist was danced by many in the early 1960s.

By means of these different cultural expressions, images and looks, Covers aims to show the origin of contestation and rebelliousness, the eagerness to live fast and die young. With film sequences, record jackets, songs, photographs and literary works, Covers uncovers the identity of those pioneers and their values, and what took them to the cover pages: What do the covers show and conceal? What was affluent America like? What were those young rebels like? What music did they listen and sign along to? What songs did they turn into new versions?

Covers is actually a version: it reiterates something which is already known but with new elements. The lyrics express wishes and confirm yearnings. Expectation and frustration –repeated over and over- lie in that legend. Mass culture is all about that: repetition. How did those youths present themselves then and how do they present themselves to us now? Countless copies of those models and roles have been made: versions and replicas.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman, was published in 1959: a sociological study of the social dramaturgy, relations and representations of Americans. Pure theatre. With and without a script, and with background music. And a soundtrack.

Welcome to warm, friendly and colourful America. Welcome to the rock ‘n’ roll years.