Hacker Cinema
Making Sense of the Sixties
1991 · TV series · documentary · 56 min episodes · 1 season
Created by David Hoffman
A look back at one of the most turbulent decades of America's recent history, this documentary examines the political and cultural changes, from the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK to the rapidly escalating war in Vietnam to the wonder of the moon landing, that shaped the era and left an indelible mark on later decades.
1 negativefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
1 comment on Hacker News
"in the 1960s when the youth cohort of that era expressed their adolescent rambunctiousness and exuberance with particular abandon and swerved even more strongly from ‘we’ to ‘I’ thinking: do your own thing, live and let live, anything goes."
I don't see it that way (Reagan probably did). The post-WW2 era was notable for its conformity. There were lots and lots of rules, and formulas, and laws, about how you had to live your life ... from the nuclear family right down to how to comb your hair.
Some individuals came together right now to overthrow many of those strictures, create music festivals and much less uptight music, explore communes, create food coops, explore religions outside the 'acceptable' ones, protest the war and the draft, read alternative histories (not taught in school after saying the pledge of allegiance), create Earth Day and a Whole Earth Catalog. In short, to create a counterculture - one with quite adult concerns.
There were a lot less people in the world back then. Trying to blame today's behavior on the 10 or 20% of 60s kids among 'those hippies' (the heavily-distorting 1991 TV series 'Making Sense of the Sixties', for example) has never worked. Many mainstream adults (Howe's 'we') were constrained to conformist role-playing back then. But look at the music, films, TV and bestsellers they picked, once off-stage. IMO US people today are less 'adolescent' than in the 1960s.
Prof. Howe's hidebound paean to life with the blinders on is little more than a dip in nostalgia for those without the stomach to look forward instead.