The "Good" Ol' Days: Romanticizing an Era That Didn’t Exist
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
- The so-called ‘good old days’ weren't so good for everyone, so why are they constantly romanticized? When people talk about “the good old days,” what they usually mean is the mid-20th century - and perhaps one of the reasons this is looked on so fondly in America is because it feels like that’s when a lot of what we know about contemporary America was born. There was a spirit of post-war optimism that now, at a time of great global anxiety, there feels like a need to harness. But not everyone had the luxury of being optimistic. This was a time of huge inequality. So by romanticizing that era uncritically - both in art and in our real life politics - we’re in danger of endorsing that culture, which becomes even more dangerous - given that right now, so many of the gains that have been made in the past half century feel like they’re being rolled back.
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00:00 Hollywoods Mid-Century Obsession
01:53 Who were the Good Ol' Days even good for?
05:55 Nostalgia for a darker time
09:05 What mid-century was really like for everyone - Zábava
WATCH MORE - Hollywood has a checkered past with portrayal of marginalized communities. Here's our take on "The Model Minority": czcams.com/video/qWBPGc_dpmY/video.html
My Policeman, The Imitation Game, and Benediction was set in Britain. They don't have the same view of the 50's as the U.S.. Also their laws were different with regards so gay sex. Why are you mixing up the two?
You realize that Captain America #1 came out in early 1941…right? It was May when it debuted. Pearl Harbor was December 7th, 1941.
Hey WATCH MORE, why don’t you make a video on how all people are assholes? Regardless of their gender or race! A video on how people are self-centered and entitled. And just how social media confirms how egotistical all people are. People of all ages, eras, and color are all JERKS!!!!!!
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"Women were still limited in what they could do in society. Homosexuality was illegal. And the Civil Rights Movement was being fought in bloody battles across the country." So.... the 2020s?
I got into it with a "trad wife" type about this. I'm old, and I remember that era well. My assertion was it was nothing like 1950's sitcoms and it would be impossible to maintain the households portrayed and always be perfectly coiffed and dressed (like June Cleaver) without full-time domestic help. Her response was "June Cleaver didn't have a maid". JUNE CLEAVER WASN'T A REAL PERSON!! Assuming 1950's housewives lived the way they were portrayed in sitcoms is about as realistic as assuming the roommates in "Friends" could really afford that apartment or that Carrie Bradshaw could afford all those Manolos and brunches on a journalist's salary.
Interesting you note June Clever because if I recall ine of the creators of the show took inspiration from how he and his wife brought up their boys. June and her husband always talked over what to do when it come to parenting and she had a collage educated women. While these crazy people who talk about the good old days imagine they a time when they and they alone decided ever thing and the wives just shut up and did what they told.
@@stephennootens916 People often miss that part about June Cleaver! She was no dummy and she was no doormat.
@petunia7623
I say this in the most loving of ways: ‘Ok boomer!’ You’re not a history revisionist and speak the truth and I’m loving it! I like your style! And accurate recounting of “the good ‘old days.” I value your input.
My dad rants that my bro doesn’t do more than DoorDash and that I have nearly as much in student loans than what he bought his house for many moons ago. He forgets that he was a union man and how those barely exist due to the hardcore union busting of the last few decades. My dad didn’t go to college much less finance the outrageous cost of attending. My bro would love to be able to go to trade school and join a union but he needs money NOW and the gig economy, in all its exploitation, allows that quick money to make sure his baby has diapers.
But for what it’s worth, I love my boomer dad with all my heart ❤ we teach each other things, and he is willing to listen and open to seeing things as they now are, not as a lot of folks wish they still were. I love listening to him too, he has a lot of life lessons and stories to share.
Take care and continue to speak the truth to these trad wives - nostalgia can be the most toxic impulse, unfortunately.
@@stephennootens916 And the Brady parenting sounded closer to gentle parenting than the typical "I'll give you something to cry about" parenting of that era
The trad wife is going to have a rude awaking when she isn't good enough for her husband
When you’re used to privilege, equality and diversity feels like oppression.
Okay seriously, I’ve never thought of it that way. Well freaking said!! Bravo.
There is no fucking equality when things go so smoothly which is this slice of time that we living , weak and subservient people start to ask for equality 😂😂 everything feels like a birth right we're living in such a farcical times
Cringe
It really doesn't. Maybe for some people, but I'm glad to see more people getting opportunities
@@MrBirdistheword444 explain
Lived through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. There were never any good ol' days. Just your childhood and the music you loved. That's all. It was all pretty damn turbulent, right up until today.
That’s what how I remember things as well.
Excellent comment Mare. I agree with you.Even though I didn’t live through those times lol. I know every decade is turbulent.
well as someone who was born in the 90's, this comment feels to me like my sister does, who was born in the 80's.
I remember that Hans Zimmer said in an interview about how he wrote the music to Interstellar, that he chose the church organ, and it makes sense because in that time, it was a very complicated piece of technology, and if that's where the technology was at the time-it can't be all that bad. So when you say it's just your childhood and the music you loved, without wanting to romantisize things, that can't be all that bad. Your heart must have been with you, and you still remember it, and that's it's unique way of beautiful, a way that I as someone who was born in the 90's might never fully grasp.
Very well said 🙌🏽👌🏽
I've made the "mistake" replying on comment sections of multiple music videos and movie/TV clips merely saying not everything was perfect in the era of which the video came from on CZcams. If I'm the bearer of bad news reminding people that bad things did happen outside of their individual worlds, it won't make me lose sleep.
"Last Night in Soho" really did a splendid job of deconstructing the notion of "The Good Old Days", and pointing out that every era had their dark side.
I love that movie. It did a good job of appreciating the fashion and music of the 1960s, but also revealing that dark side of that time
Love that movie. Very beautifully haunting. Love it even more because it was filmed at my universities campus and the makeup team were graduates. (Slight inaccuracies of how a fashion design course at lcf works/looks like aside)
This. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned. I know Eloise idolized the 1960's (in London), but many of the same themes and lessons from that movie can be applied here.
EXACTLY! Like how Damien Chazzelle´s new film ´Babylon´ very well and honestly shows how wild the 1920´s were and the notion that they had more decorum back then is therefore invalid
Sadly, that dark side of the 1960’s London is still present if not more prominent today
As a vintage enthusiast of the 50’s, the saying “vintage aesthetics, not vintage values” comes to mind. We can look back at the mid century with fondness but also recognize that a lot of inequality and misogyny was happing. I think it’s important to realize that there is good and bad to every time period so we can learn from it.
Exactly! Every era has fashionable retro aesthetics, it is possible to separate them (albeit sometimes it’s harder than others eg the white middle class mid century ideal obviously is tied up with racism even only looking at aesthetics - but that just requires extra vigilance and awareness).
Women in the west are less happy now than half century ago (based on numerous studies/surveys), despite having better technology and more rights. Right now 25% of young people say they seriously considered suicide, and 75% of them have some form of mental illness, including depression. None of America's institutions are working, and people have lost trust in authority figures and their own government.
I like this perspective and how you sum it up: "vintage aesthetics, not vintage values." kudos.
Same here! People look at my vintage dresses and create a whole persona of me in their head. I admit, I like 'being in character' when I dress vintage, as in, act extra feminine. But I'm queer and neurodivergent, I would hate living in that era
Well said!! I love mid century modern furniture. I also love the designs of the 70s particularly
As Billy Joel says: “The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”
Touche' (smile)
Dang I don't listen to a lot of his songs so this is the first time I've heard this quote but my goodness I love it
I will never forget when I decided to go swimming at my apartment complex and I met an older white woman with her grandkids. She noticed her kids were trying to play with me and she started talking to me. She discussed her childhood and kept talking about how “ good “ it was back in the 1960’s growing up on a farm. I spoke about how bad it was for black people then especially for my grandmother who told me the horrors of growing up in the Jim Crow era and how she had to fight to make it. The old lady literally ignored me and was like anyways well it was good for ME and I had so much fun especially during the summer. She kept going on and on about how those were the “ good ole days “ and she “ wished she could go back “. I was literally shocked. Just because it was good for YOU doesn’t mean that it was better back then.
Princes you are a narcissist. You think everything is about you while you and your life will not matter. You are only an unimportant spot on the glass of the uninerse. She - that old woman - had all her rights to be nostalgic and you can go to safe place (I 'm cursing you sending you to)
One word, selfishness. That’s humans for you. Both black and white
Prince, you are a Karen. Shame on you. Don't Karen yourself, don't show youtself, be modest
People do this because they were younger back then. Being young and worry-free is always better than being old. I think this is an aspect ignored in the video.
@@augustosolari7721 No, that's the point of this video at all. I mean sure, that plays a part in it. But only a part. To willfully ignore that the 50s were not good for large parts of the population is part of why racism continues to this day.
The fact that the first shot of this video is from “Catch Me If You Can” is so freaking perfect. I’ve been saying for years that when people of a certain generation talk about “the good old days,” I bet they’re picturing a world that looks like the one in CMIYC.
And that it ends with The Stepford Wives
@@jessicavictoriacarrillo7254 😂
I lived it. It was much better than the Woke crap of today. Gen Z has no clue.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 you completely missed the whole point of this video so I'll just block you
I think a lot of the draw to “the good old days” is that we live in such turbulent times, that people long for an escape to when times seemed simpler. Kind of like how the grass is always greener; we look at the past times and see them as simpler, looking at only good things. We don’t see the ways that things were just as bad, if not worse back then.
The thing is the good old days were turbulent times too.
Also, people tend to romanticize their younger years.
@@augustosolari7721 Yeah I think a lot of people are just ignorant as children (I mean...are you really going to bombard a toddler with the geopolitical climate's problems?) but we assumed that because we lived through it, we know everything that happened.
I guess the baddie that killed "the good old days" is information. Back in the day you could live you life "peacefully" without knowing how many people were killed in a shooting halfway around the globe. Or without having to cope with your bitch friends being nonstop insufferable through messaging apps. But, knowing all that, would you still choose living in ignorance while reality rushes past you?
P.S. If your bitch friends are making your life unbearable, you should ditch them ASAP!
@@diegoiunou That's an excellent point, and one I don't think gets brought up often enough. Besides major wars, "World News" didn't become a thing until the 1970s or so, and the 24/7 global news cycle didn't happen until the 90s cable news boom. Prior to that, most people were fundamentally sheltered and provincial due to a lack of information inflow.
This is one of the big things that separates the Millennials and those born after, from everyone who came before. Those who grew up on the Internet, globally aware from a very young age, end up with a radically different viewpoint than those who grew up in the analog days when their local newspaper dictated most of the information they got. That's not just a generation gap, that's a massive generational chasm.
I remember someone telling me to copy the aesthetic, not the values. Not to say the aesthetic is divorced from value but the tribute has to be a holistic one.
@@egdarallenhoe this is really interesting to ponder, thank you man
My Great Uncle Alex Chapman, who would have been born close to 1900, had a great response when someone referred to the "Good Old Days" - "Hmmph! When there was always someone dying in a back room".
My father was born in 1927. Whenever someone would talk about the good old days, he would say "The good old days were not that good." He was grateful to live in the 2010s versus the 1950s.
2010s??? Dang your father had a better time when he was in his mid 80s than when he was in his mid 20s?????
@@dathip he's probably not talking about his own health but a broader view of the world
I LOVED this take, especially as a black woman. This is why black people never play that "fi you could go back in time, what time would you choose" game. Best case scenario, we are treated like crap. Worst case, we don't make it back.
This is an extremely important topic that isn't looked at enough. These "good old days" certainly weren't for my mother, or her family here (my father is Nigerian). Not one of us would go back. It's easy to long for those days when you were on top. It boggles my mind that more white women voted for Trump, as those "good old days" limited their freedoms. They still had privileges, though. If well off enough, they stayed home. Black women have been working since we were dragged here. This further highlights the disparities between white women and women of color.
It further drives me insane to hear about these white nationalist groups, but I get it. White men used to control 100% of everything. Now, they are down to about 95%. Scary thought. /s 😕As someone else has said, when you've been on top all your life, the slightest bit of equality can feel like you are losing everything. The big fear is that the oppressed will rise up and oppress their oppressors, even though this hasn't happened. When black South Africans gained more rights and power, they didn't turn around and enslave white South Africans. They did fight to get their farms back (which had been stolen in the first place), but at no point did they try to subjugate whites. This is the fear here in the US and it's insane. We don't want white enslavement. We want equality.
Regarding nostalgia, I wish this take has mentioned the movie Last Night in Soho. The era idolized was 1960'd London, but the themes and lessons were the same. A young woman worshiped 1960's London, only to find out that that era wasn't great for everyone. In the end, she still loves the era, but no longer looked at it with rose-colored glasses. I believe that is the approach. We don't have to focus on only the negative, but trying to pretend that it didn't exist is a slap in the face to those who endured it and sets us back as a society.
Even some black men think this was the good days in terms of family life and BW submission.
There was one time where black people were seen as equals: pre-conquest of Constantinople. The Muslim world worked hard to foster good relations with the West Africans in the Empire of Mali. And on the East Coast with nations like the Swahili Kingdoms and Great Zimbabwe. While Europe longed for meetings with their religious cousins in Ethiopia.
Yes I know this is nowhere close to the whole of the continent, but it was still true that during that time, Africans were not looked on as inherently inferior. In some cases, they were the ones who got special treatment, either because of their trade power(Mali, Great Zimbabwe), or their status as the only official Christian Kingdom left in the continent(Ethiopia).
@@suzettewilliams1758 as a black man any black person who speaks on any time in America as the "good ole days" especially pre 1980s I look at side eyes
Oh really? So pre-colonial, pre-slavery Africa is not "good old days"?
@@georgecrumb8442 No
“Nostalgia - it's delicate but potent.”
- Donald Francis Draper
I couldn't agree more, every time period romanticises the era that came before. Right now, the 80's, 90's and 00's are currently receiving the rose tinted glasses treatment, and as barmy as it might sound now, the 2010's and 2020's will get this too.
Don't forget Synthwave and Vaporwave too.
Though I do think it would be odd to want to go to 2020 &2021. But I guess no bra's and messy hair will be romanticised. They will forget how annoying it was if you ran out of toilet paper or that you could not buy anything not sold in supermarkets. Or that it was so nice outside but you could not do sports in the parks with friends. Staying indoors for weeks not knowing what to expect... that will be glossed over.
@MissMoontree
This is America. It won’t be glossed over it will be forgotten. That’s the American way, forget the unpleasant or merely inconvenient and believe in fiction ‘cause it’s easier.
I always knew people would romanticize the 90s and 00s, but the 00s has absolutely baffled me. As someone who lived through those decades, what we see on film isn't what we saw in real life.
Everyone thinks the 90s just had Beastie Boys, Nirvana, Metallica, The Offspring, NWA, Tupac, and Pearl Jam blaring from every speaker on every corner. No...we were actually suffering through Kenny G, the forty thousand boy bands made up of former members of the Mickey Mouse Club, and whatever blockbuster movie soundtrack was being astroturfed across the airwaves that month.
But even that was infinitely better than whatever the fuck was in the water for the 2000s that gave us numetal and cargo pants.
I don’t think 2010s will be romanticised just as the 60s and 70s are not romanticised. But I think 2000s will be romanticised as the pre recession era will be seen as a economically prosperous times
The evolution of the musical Grease is an interesting look at this glamorization of the past. Originally, it was quite critical of the time period, poking fun at the perfect suburban WASP 50s, and highlighting the real lives of working class children of immigrants dealing with real teenage problems. But as it moved to Broadway, it was sanitized quite a bit, and by the time it reached movie theatres, it is entirely glamourizing the era, with barely a spec of criticism. The mainstream media just could not fathom showing a critical look at the 50s
I think this also shows how art as commentary, can change over time. Not just purposfully stripping away critique to make something appeal to larger audiences, but also because certain messages simple don't translate through time, to generations that have no experience with what's being critiqued.
Which is probably why it's SO important to have well researched and truthful history talks. Cause everytime we try to glamorize or sugar coat something, we aren't giving the full picture.
I love the sheer number of examples presented in this video, and how they can endorse, satirize, or subvert the concept of “the good old days“ to varying degrees. It’s a complicated topic, but examining a wide breadth of its representation like this is a good way to see the bigger picture.
“I don't know how it works across the pond, but I am black. There is literally no place in American history that'll be awesome for me."-
NBC's Timeless may have come and gone, but this quote was amazing, and has stuck with me ever since. We all think of time travel as fun and exciting, but I've never seen many writers point out the context would be different depending on who you are. I appreciated The Umbrella Academy Season 2 touching on this as well. If anything, this stuff isn't ignored, but *willfully avoided* as to not grapple with some uncomfortable truths. (And frankly, some progressive works also ignore context- in their case, to romanticize an ideal.)
Anyway, this is a good video, with some great shoutouts. The Imitation Game, Judas and the Black Messiah, Good Night and Good Luck, and Selma, all in one place? I'll take it! But it's interesting that movies based on true stories are the only ones showing the nuance. It's the fictional tales set in the mid century that should be more mindful. Playing devil's advocate, in some sense, I think creatives just like writing for a time before the ubiquity of cellphones and internet because it gets characters to actually interact with each other ;) But for something like, say, a Black The Wonder Years, there's definitely an opportunity to look at the era with some scrutiny. Pleasantville definitely landed a whole new way when I watched it for the first time in forever recently. It is eerily prescient for some of the turmoil going on these days.
Good point. About the time traveller, I would recommend to everyone interested in the topic the book Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It deels with a time traveller who is a black woman. She goes back directly to the antebellum South, and the novel shows us all the horror a black person would suffer back then.
that is also pretty much how it goes across the pond. and in latin america, asia, and australia. also, north africa, and south africa.
I applauded when he said that statement in Timeless. I have considered this thought a majority of my life, growing up in the 80s, and only seeing slaves represent my descendants. Yes, this is a truth that many ignore.
I love Timeless and watched every episode before it was canceled, and this is the only quote I remember verbatim from that show. It is so true. I am currently rewatching Umbrella Academy and just started rewatching season 2 yesterday. Allison’s evolution into a Civil Rights activist is very reasonable as the minute she arrived in 1963, she was reminded that she is black and has no right to be in white spaces. I remember watching Wanda Vision and being shocked that Monica/Geraldine was among the women at the event planning meeting and no one batted an eye. Black people were absolutely not allowed to buy houses in the suburbs anywhere in America until about the 1980’ s. I then remembered that Wanda wasn’t born in America and probably didn’t know that black people were oppressed during the time periods she grew up idealizing because of the shows she watched. Those shows never included or even mentioned black people. She would not know to oppress them in an existence she created with her powers.
@@kimsim8750 completely agree. My parents were allowed to buy a house in the "white" section of my major city in 1987. They said the deed forbid selling the house to black people. People that say racism is a relic of the past are ignoring the truth.
The book “The Way We Never Were” by Stephanie Coontz also discusses this theme of Americans falling into the nostalgia trap and looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.
There's no such thing as The Good Ol' Days, just good memories of old days.
Long felt the same! The good ol' days were days when men could harass women, treat people of different colors poorly, & judge anyone who didn't fit the "status quo" and get away with it. Now you can't, and you mad?!
@Jermaine Anthony There's lots of information out there to prove it, and pretending racial and sexual injustice wasn't a thing is very myopic on your part too.
@Jermaine Anthony You see it your way, I see it mine.
@Jermaine Anthony You seem hard up to defend the times so stay in your bliss. 🤷
@Jermaine Anthony You have educated me on nothing as you have not even made clear what your disagreement was, as my statement was the times were sexist and racist in your only comment was I didn't know better. I'm m not saying there's no way or my way, I'm saying your way is poorly articulated and makes no sense so stop bothering me with it.
@Jermaine Anthony Great talk 👌
You really can't gloss over the dark sides of the past. I mean, I LOVE everything vintage/retro and classic Hollywood movies, but I am also bisexual and a woman and if I were to actually live in the 40s or 50s, I would have to "pass" as straight for my own safety.
I love the vintage aesthetic and would love to mimic the clothes, hairstyles, and makeup, but I wouldn't actually idealize those decades with rose tinted glasses because there was also a war that went on, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc
I agree. If you ever look up mental hygiene articles which speak about young permiscuous women, you'll find that many were signed off (by their parents) into schools that ran like prisons (which they couldn't leave till they were adults) because they were deemed unsightly by the public. And yes, some did succumb to shock therapy.
@@TheChildstudies Women who are sexually active are still judged, but their jobs are at risk instead of the "old days" when they were sent to institutions to be "fixed." Still, if you're a woman or feminine presenting person who's sexually active, you're seen as a four-letter word starting with S and ending in lut and if you're not sexually active, you're a "prude" or seen as "boring" and "not fun..."
I do agree that slut shaming is still very prevalent in modern day society. However, I believe the job aspect depends on what job you occupy. I am in the field of education, therefore, I am set to a higher standard than other careers.
@@TheChildstudies Yeah! People expect more from you and if you show any difference of who you are a part from your profession, people become very critical of you. I remember the news story about what happened to that nurse when she got fired because her OnlyFans was leaked. That is a violation of her personal rights
Perfectly said!
I'm curious if people will consider our current times good old days in several decades... kinda terrifying.
Our current times have Covid, which exacerbated the cracks of our countries like shitty politicians, racisms that went from latent to blatant, and elections that elected worse politicians (at least in my country). Hopefully, it will get better
The Kardashians will
@@ezelfrancisco1349
Racism and bad elections wouldn't exist without a strong support network - and those are the people who will get nostalgic
Oh God I hope not. But likely at least a couple people will think that
As us '90s kids get older, many of us are developing pretty boomerish attitudes towards younger generations and are looking back on the '90s with rose-tinted glasses. I remember the sweet, but I also vividly remember the bitter.
I think Mad Men did a good job of properly portraying the era. I mean, Betty was a depressed housewife, Don was a philanderer, and June was a victim of SA by her husband etc anyone thinking the show glamorised the 50s and 60s wasn't watching closely enough.
To me, the "good ol' days" were those of my childhood in the 70's. I knew only of what I saw every day... going to school, playing with friends, few concerns. There was so much I didn't know (or was vaguely aware of) and I could be happy in my ignorance. I didn't know the realities of life my parents had to endure or what went on in other parts of the world.
Sometimes, I almost think it a crime to shield kids from the reality of life. We don't want them to be psychologically damaged but, at the same time, we need them to be realistic, critically thinking and prepared to deal with the world and, more importantly, to courageous enough to make changes in the world when their aging parents have to let go. But many of those parents refuse to let go and to try take the world back to their idealized time when they were young and ignorant.
Now that I'm an adult, there are far more concerns and a realization of the processes out of my control that define what I can or cannot do. I still do have happy times, but they are even more treasured when I'm able to temporarily set aside my burdens and concerns and simply be in the moment. I was happy in those good ol' days... but they were good because I was unaware.
Yah, it’s this kind of romanticizing, as well as the general lack of diverse perspectives within older movies/cinema, that has definitely affected my relationship with movies as someone who used to be a lot more interested in them.
This discussion is why I laughed at people who preached “MAGA”. I asked them “When was America truly great for everyone?” I always get a weird look in response.
I love asking questions like that. Ask enough questions, and they'll start to run out of answers. And maybe, maaaybe start asking some questions themselves.
I talked to my dad and grandfather about this type of positive restorative nostalgia that everyone their age like to throw around as the perfect time. And both dad and grandfather said it wasn’t. And they gave many reason why it wasn’t. So I have a different view of this than other people. I laugh when men say that women need to stay home as only mothers. Both dad and grandfather always snarked on that sort of thinking hard. It was food for their mockery.
Pleasantlville is such an overlooked critique of the nostalgia for the 1950's - which we have from TV shows from that era! Also,
Mrs. Maisel's privilege has been called out often by POC characters - after the first season!
The only reason we romanticize the past is because things were affordable. You could go to college, own a car, own a house, and support a family on a single salary.
My mother had to work full time in the 50sand 60s, as did some of her friends, and we were far from well off!
Ah, but affordable for who? That's sort of the video's point
@@catofthecastle1681 Yup lol....affordability only existed to a slice of the overall population. White collar jobs paid more in the post-war era that allowed a lot of men in those careers to have stay-at-home wives. Blue collar work, service jobs, jobs held by minorities? Yeah, no. Those paid like shit and the poor remained poor.
It's significantly more than that. Plus, "affordable" for whom? I think you missed the whole point of the video.
My parents were from those days…. Both poor with hunger.
Whenever you hear about the good ol' days, it's always cherry-picked. Always.
I am child of 80s and 90s and I also tend to romanticize those decades. It's mostly because I was young and innocent and since there was no internet back then, we weren't aware of many many bad things happening and many many really horrible people that we can see openly now or hear their horrifying opinions online. Which back then we didn't know there is. For example, I really didn't know how many men really hate and despise women and that horrified me. I wasn't aware of wars, many sufferings, there were no such cemented beauty standards and we didn't really have the need or ways to show our life to whole world online or to see other people's life. We couldn't compare ourselves to anyone else but people around us. And I had no idea how much diseases and suffering is in the world. It was kind of better not knowing so much. I don't know.
Omg YES! This whole essay hit every nail right on the head. I’ve always said that there’s a reason you don’t find many people of color who are nostalgic for the 50s. But I’ve met so many white women who buy into it and are obsessed with the 50s housewife aesthetic and I’m like sis…. You do know that being a housewife in the 50s wasn’t just one long “I love Lucy” episode right??
Lana del Rey’s older work is a good example of this and it always rubbed me the wrong way, although back then I couldn’t put into words why it made me so uncomfortable.
Also, the show South Park did a really good depiction in season 20 of the connection between nostalgia and alt-right conservative movements. The “memberberries” that evoke feelings of nostalgia when people eat them start off seeming innocent and fun (“remember ghostbusters? The original star wars trilogy? We should make reboots!”), but then slowly they start making people reminisce about more dangerous aspects of history like segregation, lack of reproductive rights, etc.
all of this is happening in the show at the same time as trump’s campaign and his MAGA slogan is gaining popularity.
I’ve always found the 50s very dystopian
Right, it seemed like a film set- not a place.
This is why the vintage community online likes to espouse “vintage clothes, not vintage values”
I swear, THE TAKE, y’all be on point with these video essays. I was just have the same discussion with my dad yesterday about this. He’s a boomer.
He’s not a boomer he’s just older than you
I think it is largely due to the way old-timey things and clothes look, in terms of the general approach to design everything was much prettier up until the Internet, ironically, with all those souless minimalist houses and clothes of now. 1950s has a unique look and I guess people miss the uniqness historical periods used to have and it makes them think that if it lookes so pretty it was the better time, but as a lot of folks in vintage community say "Vintage style, not vintage values".
I’m so happy that the Queer angle was mentioned. Society just stopped thinking of us as anti-social elements and now we’re in limbo, it seems.
If you want a TV show that is set in the mid centaury era but doesn't glamourize or romanticize that era and deals with hard real issues then I always point people towards Call The Midwife. It has tackled everything from Domestic violence, disability, single parenthood, addiction, SA, poverty, racism and everything inbetween. It is set in a working class part of London and shows the realities of the people living in that era in that era but we can still see all those classic aesthetics of the fashion and the interior design and the hairstyles and the food and products. It has that dissonance of the cosy and familiar and fun 50s and 60s aesthetics but then the dark harsh reality of what was actually going on in the world. They had an entire series arc centred on backstreet abortions due to them being illegal in the UK at the time and they have tacked the subject of homosexuality at at time when it was illegal. It's always such a brilliantly acted and written and directed show and I always recommend it to people. If you want to snap out of how good the "good old days" were then watch Call The Midwife. It is a hard show that isn't glamorous in anyways.
I've heard so many good things about that show
A lot of the basically just comes down to nostalgia.
When you look at all of the 80s pop culture references that have popped up since the 2010s, it's just people regurgitating the era that they grew up with rose-tinted glasses.
I'm sure that Zoomers will do the same thing once they begin to take over Pop Culture in the following years
yup and and someone who came up in the 80s I tell younger people that it was great...depending on where you grow up. If you grew up in the inner cities like I did, they were always considered rough where you stayed away from but during the 80s those neighborhoods went from rough to outright violent and scary. I remember I had to be inside once it got dark, if you walked at night it was basically a ghost town. Violence increased, teen pregnancy increased, AIDS epidemic that saw gay people blamed and demonized even more, hard drug use increased, a lot of things got worse in the 80s but the nostalgia we see a lot of often overlooks those aspects.
yess!!
it's just like how the early 2000s are "good old days" for me, because I was a kid and my life was simple and joyful, and the worst time for my parents because there was an economic crisis in my country
And most of us feel our nostalgia is awesome;) Justifiably so. Most decades had their own creations and distinct identities. Imagine the next generation being nostalgic for an era that was nostalgic. Unpack that
Exactly! And in addition to nostalgia and selective memory, each new generation elicits negative reactions from the older generations, that's almost as a law of nature.
@@janehargrove3651 yep, and for me it's the 90s because it felt like animation was really going through a Renaissance and I was able to really engage with things like Cartoon Network without having to worry about the woes of life
"Weren't things better when things were worse?"
HAHAHA! I love this comment!
"What 'good old days'?"
"When Playboy used the airbrush!"
The Stepford Wives (1975)
Whenever someone asks me if i could travel in time when would i go i always state " I'm black, gay, and a woman" there is no way in hell I'm checking out anything but the future. 😂 if it's the music/clothes/style people are missing, look it up and order it, make a remix or something. We have the internet
The point of flattening important stories of the past into winners and losers was such an insightful one. Thanks for this video!
I discovered this channel (still with the old name, I fail to remember now) with the videos about Mad Men and instantly fell in love with its unique feminine/feminist perspective and thorough analysis. Lovely, to see the era return to it.
I'd like to add that I believe, that huge part of the romanticising of "ye good ole days" stems from the fact that it was the time, when the dominant demographic, the Boomers, were young.
I see something similar (with a different demographic) in Eastern Germany where those, who were young in the 70s and 80s, now still are nostalgic for the "happy years" of socialism, ignoring all the terrible sides of the system.
ScreenPrism. I also remember following them when they were still under that name
@@favour3734 you're right! That was the name!
The truth is: I have been following and unfollowing many film channels over the year, but never thought about unfollowing The Take. They still manage to produce really meaningful content after all these years.
@@mina_en_suiza yeah. I'm impressed their content always feels relevant and still as great
@@favour3734 I loved the screenprism videos so much
Jay: “I’m gonna meet a bunch of guys I played High School Football with. Man, those were the good old days”
Gloria: “Yeah, unless you were a woman, black, Hispanic or gay”
There's a book from the 1970s that some people watching this might enjoy -- "The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible" by Otto Bettman. He was the image collector who assembled what is now called the Corbis archive. The book is a collection of captionec images and from the 1870s to the 1930s showing how bad life in that Era could be.
There’s another book that’s similar, called “the way we never were” by Stephanie Coontz that talks about American families and the nostalgia trap.
Thanks for the recommendation :)
It's not just limited to the 50's or 60's but also the 80's and even 90's. People like the neon aesthetics, music, etc. but they don't understand the birth of Reagenomics and the then heighten threat of nuclear war. As a POC with autism born in the 1990's (92 to be exact) and a lover of all things 90's, I wouldn't want to go back to even the 90's knowing how difficult life just thirty years ago. It's always good to focus on the future and make life better for the future.
I always think of Pleasantville when someone mentions nostalgia
A "spot on" analysis, The Take! Love your thoughtful videos
It, as usual, is progressive crap.
Ah yes, the good ol' days when I wouldn't have been allowed to have my own bank account.
Summer of Soul is one of my favorite documentaries next to Rumble (which is a music doc about Indigenous musicians who helped contribute to American music). They both unveiled hidden pieces of music history that have been forgotten. It is a shame, but not surprising that Woodstock is widely recognized as one of the most iconic festivals in music history yet we didn't know about the Summer of Soul festival until Questlove's documentary. Before watching Rumble, I had no idea that some musicians in rock/metal bands are Indigenous.
"American Myth American Reality" by James Robertson is a good read too
This also ties into Fandom and nerd culture. Geeks romanticize a time when discourse over diversity and representation in media was borderline silent but only because those trying to advocate for it were silenced.
Heated as they can be, they were necessary to shine a light on how inequality still persists big and small. But white folk don’t get into nerd stuff to be challenged. Not like this anyways.
It’s worse when they try to discredit things like depictions of female characters by way of the same few examples. Of Sarah Conner. Of Ripley. Of Toph. Not knowing that, good as they are, them being to go-tos are the problem.
It just shows how few there are.
Especially since as valuable as they are, there could’ve been so much more representation.
They also ignore diversity as it existed back then, too. I swear to God if Street Fighter was released for the first time today instead of 1987, they'd piss and moan. They'd say Kenan and Kel was some cultural Marxist plot to destroy western civilization. Family Matters and Fresh Prince would be Jewish brainwashing to trick people into accepting interracial relationships in order to cuck the white man.
Oh wait! People whined about this stuff with Mortal Kombat 11 lmao 😂😂
Bonus points for male washing and forgetting that women created modern fandom
Thank you, plus it's really not helping, that in media, that there can be a lack of representation of women& people of color geeks(again as short as the youtube series was, I am very thankful that I came across the cartoon Fangirls)
Fascism starts with a narration of the glorious past, which is ‘The Good Ol’ Days’ but on steroids and peppered with falsehoods.
What a dumb post.
Nostalgia is not always happy for marginalised people and in the context of Queer People (with various intersections), every time period was a struggle.
Tbh whenever I meet white ppl with a fondness for "yester-year" or who talk about how they were '' born in the wrong era/time'' I immediately see them as social red flags. Back in art college I was surrounded by white hipsters who would either style themselves in 50s inspired clothing or ask me and other POCs "If you could go back in time and live in any era in history when would it be?" It didn't help that they never actually had POC friends at school.
As a black man I fully agree I call them "Woke out of convenience" white liberals
I think people should read the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Naked Lunch." Malcolm X talks a lot about his youth during the 1940s. When he arrived in New York, the drug trade, prostitution, gambling, gang violence, and organized crime were already well-established long before he got there. We think of the 40s as everyone in America doing their part to fight WWII. The reality is a lot of crime and unrest plagued large portions of the country. People were fucking, doing drugs, and everything else during that time period. As far as I know, drug use is lower today than it was back then.
Which brings us to Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs' collection of short vignettes about his time as a heroin addict in the 1950s. Things were just as dirty and dark as any other era. People forget this is when the Mafia was at its height since they could easily traffic narcotics and didn't worry about RICO or drug laws. This meant heroin (and to some extent, cocaine) was everywhere and easily available. Naked Lunch shows just how ugly things got.
Hell, even The Wire is mostly based on the America of the 1960s, even though the show takes place in the 2000s. Omar Little and Avon Barksdale were based on real people (both of whom are in the show) that operated in the 60s.
I read Malcom x in high school as a class project. I loved the book. I loved his story. And I loved him for his stance against injustice, racist inequality. People told me he was a hater towards white people calling them devils….. well YEAH…. In those days white people enslaved, mistreated, abused, and discriminated black people, I would hate them and call them devils, too. Mx was not a hateful racist, he was a strong, wonderful man!
@@gbear2253 For sure. It's deliberate slander against against someone who fought against injustice and part of whitewashing MLK's legacy. MLK was a fucking radical, but after his assassination, his life was distilled down to "MLK gave a really nice speech, the racists realized they were wrong, and racism was over."
Malcolm X gets tossed into this narrative as "MLK saw how violent the other blacks were and stopped Malcolm X from killing all the white people." This of course ignores Malcolm X's hajj, how MLK continued to feel disillusioned with what he called "white moderates," and how both men understood self-defense. Even MLK knew he should probably carry a gun after his house got firebombed.
"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes have invariably meted out to them relentless persecution, and received their teaching with the most savage hostility, most furious hatred, and a ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, however, attempts are usually made to turn them into harmless saints, canonizing them, as it were, and investing their name with a certain halo by the way of ‘consolation' to the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping them; while at the same time emasculating and vulgarizing the real essence of their revolutionary theories and blunting their revolutionary edge."
Love Burroughs! The entire beat movement is maybe the most redeeming part of that era
This is so fascinating, thanks for the recommendations man I gotta check those out
If I could take the social progress of today and combine it with the 90s pre social media good times vibe I'd be content. Of course the internet is responsible for a lot of social change we enjoy today. But I miss pre social media.
The “Good Ol’ Days” for my parents and theirs was living at the harsh end of segregation. Nothing good about any of that mess.
I will say appreciating fashion, music, and movies of a past era is just fine but don’t get it twisted. Every era has its bullshit, including Gen X through the present and it will be like that until whoever or whatever divine presses the reset button.
People also forget about the cold war and the fear of nuclear war. I think part of the reason why people look back with rose closured glasses is because they remember the innocents of their childhood and early adulthood. They Remember the fun and games with their friends while being oblivious the hardships their parents had to endure. Now they are the parents or grandparents who work hard and look back at those care free days of their youth. Children are also not old enough to understand or care about world politics, but when they get older and start paying attention to the news, they wonder what the world is coming too. I have noticed that people my age look back to the 90s like they were the good old days, but no one said that at the time. Everyone in the 90s was wondering what the world was coming too.
This is the exact argument I present to anyone who says they wish we could go back to the "good old days". The time period they refer to was good only for a select few.
People who overtly cling to this "era" are doing it in a way that's quite *territorial* from what I've seen :/
This is a well done video. Thank you for making this.
How did this quote from "Handmaid's Tale" go? "Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some."
Personally, I don't think the yearn for the "good old days" is limited to mid-century. It's always directed towards a time somehow "before" ours, that never actually existed, like the "Golden Era" that Ancient Greeks postulated. It's a myth that can be filled with whatever era has a special appeal to you. This trope is brilliantly played with in "Midnight in Paris".
During those times my family were poor farmers and fishermen just some steps from starvation. Women in my family never got to be just a "housewife", they also worked their a$$es off
You don't want to go back to the good ol days, you are feeling nostalgic and scared/uncomfortable with the current worlds changes and want to go back to a time that feels familiar and better in your life because you don't like your current struggles and responsibility and the familiarity of your past brings you more comfort than dealing with the current changes.
When my parents were alive, those were the good days 🥺
Huggles
It goes deeper than that. The "good old days" motif is based on nothing except the universal human cognitive bias to focus on everything going wrong in the present and ignoring everything thats good, while simultaneously remembering everything good about the past fondly and forgetting everything that was bad. Not only was the past worse for women, black people, lgbt people, etc, it wasn't even any better for straight white men.
Its why virtually everyone today agrees that the world is a disaster today but life was great at some point in the past. (Even most people on the left believe this, they'll just point to a different time)
In reality, by virtually every possible objective measure (war, disease, poverty, racism, sexism, technology, wealth, freedom etc) the world is the best its ever been right now in every way and even "privileged" groups are simply wrong that their lives where better in the 50's.
I would add that the US was also backing and financing military dictatorships all over Latin America to uphold their influence during the 60s, and this is just one aspect how this nostalgia is pretty much a matter of point of view
Speaking of which, I would love to suggest a theme @thetake! How about exploring Hollywood's consistent failure in depicting other countries?
It wasn’t just Latin America.
@@BlackDoveNYC nope, Latin America is just one of many examples :)
So? Better days.
This is the best video I've seen from y'all in a long time.
The most interesting thing about this video is that it’s presented as if it contained a single original observation.
We should start dreaming new dreams.
I just would like to point out that women heavily used "mothers little helpers" at that time, and that's a euphemism not about nannies.
Valium?
European here, so our history was a little different to what you guys got across the Pond... but I agree fully with the gist of this video. The so-called "good old days" were not such for anyone but white, middle to upper class, healthy, straight white men. Even as recently as the 80s and 90s, I remember how the vast majority of people thought having a gay or disabled child was a source of shame or stigma. How normal it still was, to a great extent, that the man was the main bread-winner and the woman was the home-maker. That non-white people played second fiddle in any role in society and had to be a tiny, token minority in order for society at large to consider their presence acceptable. Among others, trans people or people with mental health issues were often considered figures of fun or freaks. I loved my childhood and youth, the 90s especially were great under so many points of view, but I refuse to be nostalgic about them or retrospectively regard them with rose-tinted glasses.
Bull. You inow nothing. My family was not rich at all, yet streets were safe, there was much more love.
The Left today is all hate.
I'm 2 mins in... The whole point of Mad Men was to subvert this romanticizing, but I'm guessing you'll address this if you mention specific shows
Ok, that was about as reductive a take on mad men I could imagine
I remember when I first watched Mad Men and thinking how it seemed to be a show seems to promote the idea of in the past every man was a cheating lying asshole. Or I should say every white man. I also remember that they treated major historical events in such a low key way. Like when JFK was killed and the show runner saying how they were making a show about the parents of the baby boomers and something about how such things weren't big markers to them.
If you finished the video you'd see that they talked about that.
@@Alaskan-Armadillo I said reductive, they addressed something but missed a lot of the point of that show and misrepresented it to make their point
@@stephennootens916 If you only watched it once you need to watch it again. And Matthew Weiner said something closer to, "to them, in the same way we view world events, these things happened on a screen, they still had to go to work." But thats my point, its hard to explain but the show uses these events to illustrate what the characters are going through, so that the event is almost commenting on the characters lives as metaphor. So Kennedys shooting or The Cuban missile crisis,or the moon landing are not just in the show, whole seasons are crafted around these events... and its not just the big ones that people talk about all the time.
Whenever someone might talk about the "Good old days", I want to refer back to an artist they would probably think fondly on or at least respect: Billy Joel. "The good old days weren't always good; tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." (Though given that song came out a good 30-40 years ago, he might be rethinking the 2nd part).
Dang! Yours is the second in reference to Billy Joel but I can't bring that particular song to mind. Guess I'm going to have to listen to hours of Billy Joel to remember the song.😁
You guys hit the nail on the head, & I agree with most everything discussed here. Myself, I'm in the middle on this topic, & know that both the left & right are flawed on this subject. I stand on neither side. I also recognize the power of nostalgia, & really, how we need to to stay sane in today's scary world, & dark looking future. Though, my generation is certainly not the ones romanticizing the post world war 2 era, especially being that we weren't alive at the time. We tend to romanticize the 80s & 90s, lol.
The "Good Old Days" is whenever you were YOUNG. Whether you are Boomer, Millennial, Gen X or Gen Z, black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight - your YOUTH is your good old days. And what can you say about any era? It' was the BEST OF TIMES AND THE WORST OF TIMES.
Well it would be fascinating to take a peek into the lives of the people from before, recognizing the good the bad and the ugly helps humanize history.
The irony of it is a lot of the people who reminisce about the past times are conservative/religious, and the Bible has a verse in Ecclesiastes saying it is foolish to do this.
Underrated video. Well researched
This is probably the worst least thought out video The Take has released. They’re usually very good
Part of what I liked about Mad Men was that it did sort of deconstruct the perception of the era it's set in. Don is the archetypal successful business man who has everything he ever needs, but still lives within a vicious system that leaves him a continually miserable, hurtful bastard who can't ever truly connect with anyone because he's obsessed with reaching an impossible ideal for happiness that his own agency invented to sell cigarettes.
Nostalgia was always dangerous, especially in times of economic depression. The public can not easily associate their hardships with a broken system, they would rather turn to an older more ideal version of society that they likely never experienced first hand only through the sugar-coated lens of the media they consume. It is certainly easier to imanige a world that has been presented to you as perfect or even the worlds demise rather than the demise of capitalism as Mark fisher said
A wise man once said “time is man greatest ally and greatest enemy, with time come hardship and decay but time can also give us progress and growth”. Time may be tough for some but not for other. If people are living in a tough time, they need to remember that it can get better they just need the will power to get though those time or they can sit alone angry and bitter and try to remember the times they thought that was good but really wasn’t.
The only cool thing about the 1950s was the clothes, music & movies. So glad I live in the here & now
The things i miss from the 90s is the simplicity of life without social media or a lot of technology.
Can we do similar video to the 80s I feel like that's another decade that gets overly romanticized as wel that and 90s
I'm 67 yr old white guy and am still shocked by how women were mis- treated ,minorities dumped on,and how the " Good ol' boys" rode roughshod over everything!!It was disturbing then,and today there are new facets of this!! Shocking,yet it is but re- apperaring!!
I absolutely love this Take!! ❤
💯
"Miss Maisel" feels like an odd inclusion because of when it takes place. In 2023, Jewish people are (mostly) accepted as white. That wasn't true in the 1950s. Whiteness isn't fixed, which actually would be a great topic to tackle: how the depiction of whiteness has changed in media over the decades.
oh yeah, in Maisel there are some Jewish-only activities, which Midge seems to approach as kind of inherited baggage she can take for granted/ dump, but they are there bc Jewish people wouldn't have been allowed into other places. Like the family holiday etc.
Thank you! Absolutely. Jews aren’t white, and certainly weren’t considered white then, even if we passed as white. Jews often weren’t allowed in country clubs etc.
I've watched two documentaries about the 1950s, one a PBS documentary and another focused on Duluth, Minnesota during the 1950s. Both were fascinating, but they both presented a nostalgic, feel-good, rosy view of the 50s, while omitting glaring social issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia, inequality, ect. The latter documentary briefly covered the Civil Rights Movement, but neither discussed the horrific, and often bloody reality of living through the Jim Crow era as a non-white person. I am all for sharing fond childhood memories and recollections, but I bristle at folks who claim the 1950s were the "good 'ol days" when it wasn't the case for everyone. And woe be to anyone who mentioning this to anyone who dwelling "on the good 'ol days".
For anyone interested in more videos analysing this subject, The Take also did some for a few Mad Men characters! It digs deeper into the 1960s & 70s, in the context of the show. Mad Men as a tvshow is a masterpiece in writing & acting as well, highly reccomend!
The Take is simply the finest cultural channel today; Period.
It happens with all eras. I grew up in the 80s and I always say it was the best decade but that's because it was great for me since I had a good childhood. I now understand it wasn't great for everyone.
This is the first time I'm gonna say this about a "The Take" video, but this video was inaccurate and confused. With the exception of Captain America, which is a disney family film so whatarreyagonnado, every movie showcased here was an indictment of america in the 50's. Just because its not purely in the text doesnt mean its whitewashing issues of the past. If you pay attention Mad Men is brutal in its warnings about the dangers of nostalgia, the whole point of the show is... things weren't how you remember them, even though they may look nice, yes they are trying to have their cake and eat it, but that is a cake crammed with vegetables, it baked into the concept of the show. Just because the show doesn't explicitly say "it was hard for black people in the 50's" here an hr of just that, doesn't mean it isn't constantly telling us that in subtext. Even Don't Worry Darling had more depth than just nostalgia and that sucked.
The real criticism here is a lot of those shows/movies don't show that many black people and SEEM to be uncritically nostalgic about that time, mainly to draw people in, when the fact is I've learnt more about american civil rights battles and women's rights and lgbtq acceptence from Mad Men than I have from anything else (I live in the uk) and way more besides, the show gives context to what people were fighting against, while at the same time deconstructing how perception works and puts the people we see in power, and why we have the media and social power structure we have today. You call out Good Night and Good Luck for being critical of that time, but what you really mean is its a recreation... which is boring. An easy way for a passive audience to "be good", and watch an awards film, tut and shake their heads, then forget it when the next "issues" movie comes along. Its good that we have clear and direct movies and documentaries, but those are doing way different things than Mad Men, Pleasentville, Blue Velvet et al, the former tell you the truth, the latter make you feel it, if you let them.
As a black person myself I get it, but as this is a video essay and not a subversive tv show it needs to be clearer about its point. And its point is, its good that we are getting more films from marginalised groups... and it is.. its great, but that doesn't reduce what was there before to nostalgia movie/shows and its wrong to label them as such.
I've said my piece.
4:43 Well they are right. Their voice & authority in America has been completely destroyed... they just reached the wrong conclusion about "why". In the 50s the average citizen with full rights (white straight men) experienced the enormous freedom that comes from general economic prosperity.
Since that time, more of our people have received full rights or have at least made significant gains towards full rights. HOWEVER, no average citizen with full rights has anything even remotely close to freedom because economic conditions have drastically limited personal freedom & political power
Personally, when I say we should return to "the good old days" I mean "every American should be experiencing what it was like to be a white straight male in the 1950s"
Most based take.
When you cherry pick good moments from a year, or a decade, of course it will make that time frame look good.
My first memory of watching the nightly news was around the age of 7, when over 240 American marines were among the fatalities in a terrorist bombing in the nation of Lebanon. I would learn, through the rest of my childhood, that the world outside the safety of my home was not always good.
I vaguely remember my stepdad, glued to the couch, watching the Watergate hearings on TV. I couldn't understand how he could be sitting inside for hours watching that boring stuff when I spent every free moment I had outside.