Cyclic National Fascination: Difference between revisions

 

Cycles are frequently triggered by some innocuous entry into the meme pool, like a popular song or book -- see also [[Follow the Leader]].

* In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the previously secretive world of advertising agencies suddenly became the focus of immense cultural interest. The inner workings of Madison Avenue became the fodder for books, plays, TV shows, and movies (''The Man In the Grey Flannel Suit'', ''[[How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying]]'', ''Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter'', ''[[Bewitched (TV)|Bewitched]]'', ''Lover Come Back''). Its unique internal jargon, often focused on CYA and consensus building, briefly flooded American speech; some bits of it still remain (for instance, "run it up the flagpole and see who salutes", which was a well-worn cliche decades before it appeared in [[Harvey Danger]]'s 1997 song "Flagpole Sitta"), and the TV series ''[[Mad Men]]'' seems primed to revive much of the old adman slang. (As a nod to the old fad, ''Mad Men'' casts Robert Morse, the leading man in the original 1961 Broadway production of ''How to Succeed in Business...'', as the eccentric Bert Cooper).

* In the 1970s came the trucker and [[Hollywood CB|CB radio]] fad, kicked off almost singlehandedly by the CW McCall song "Convoy" and the movie ''[[Smokey and The Bandit]]''. The cultural momentum it gathered was so substantial that it actually forced changes in the way the government licensed CB radios. For a few years in the late 1970's, some US-made cars even had CB radios as factory-available features. And to this day, practically every trucker character in TV or movies is a direct descendant of the Rubber Duck.

* The post-[[World War II]] villains ''du jour'' in American media have been: Sinister Russian [[Dirty Communists|Commies]] during the postwar period, Sinister Muslim [[Arab Oil Sheik|Oil Barons]] during the energy crises of [[The Seventies]], Sinister Russians again during [[The Eighties]] and [[The Nineties]] (with [[The New Russia|a transition]] from commies to [[The Mafiya|gangsters and arms dealers]] after [[The Great Politics Mess Up|around 1990]]), and Sinister Muslim Terrorists during [[The War On Terror]]. [[Vladimir Putin]] is alleged to be working hard to maintain the cycle.

* [[Everythings Funkier With Disco|Disco]]. [[Deader Than Disco|America spent twenty years trying to forget.]]

* For a time in [[The Sixties]] or so, biker culture became a fad.

* In the [[The Eighties|late '80s]] through [[The Nineties|the '90s]] and the [[Turn of the Millennium|early '00s]], many suburban white kids became [[Pretty Fly for A White Guy|fascinated]] with [[Gangsta Rap]] and "urban" culture, most likely because their parents [[The New Rock and Roll|weren't]]. It ended in the mid-late '00s once [[Moral Guardians]] stopped caring about rap music, [[Glam Rap]] became part of the fabric of pop music, and pre-2000 "old school/golden age" hip-hop started passing into [[Nostalgia Filter|nostalgia territory]].