After the 1910s, things began improving. Companies weren't getting men with firearms to shoot at crowds of striking (underpaid) workers anymore (like Pullman or Carnegie). Inventions were "taming & refining" the filth of the Industrial Revolution. Child labor was abolished, along with unpaid overtime. Women could find jobs, other than seamstress or at a chicken slaughterhouse. Tenement housing was finally being addressed. Distribution of wealth was a key element.
Alas, it unwound before succeeding.
Looking at old photographs/films, you can trace the decline in American sense of adventure, genteelism, attire, manners, craftsmanship, and levels of customer service from the 1920s into the 1970s and current. The world began to improve, then mighty powers got greedy and "stole the rug out from under you".
Yes, back then, women rode motorcycles (above), and folks sped to foreign territories in seaplanes (below).
As a society, people have gone from the "intrepid explorer" to the gullible drably-dressed mindless wanderers, who hover near "tourist/consumer traps" or barely disengage from their cellphone. The grandiose settings of real life that were illustrated by Arthur Freed, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Myrna Loy, and Sam Spade eroded, just like Pre-War buildings compare with Post-War Construction.
Ironically, after WWII, America emerged as the #1 winner, reaping the greatest "fruits" of victory. During its 6 years in the war, America grew from the 17th world military power to #1. Its overseas bases expanded from 14 to 30,000. (In exchange for help in the war, America took trading ports from the British Empire, which was dismantled). Gross National Product doubled, and America became the biggest lender/creditor in the world. America commanded half of the world's manufacturing capacity. It owned two-thirds of the globe's gold stocks. Dominating the world economy, America controlled the formation of the United Nations. The "New Deal" sparked miracles at the federal level, and for famously corrupt cities like New York and Chicago.
You'd think that its citizens would be enjoying a surreal society. America ought to be flush with superior-quality well-made products. People's homes and possessions should last a long time, made with quality. Healthiness should be rampant.
Instead, America lost its craftsmanship in favor of austere mass-production. It lost its culinary taste for frozen foods and chemical preservatives. American society lost its robust architecture, its well-made machines/cars, its sense of community and upstanding morals, and its sense of adventure. Only its banks, corporations and financial systems continued with unbridled growth. Most citizens fell into overwhelming debt--especially with the invention of credit cards. "Small-town USA" was eradicated to produce isolationists suburbs. Great cities fell to corruption and vandals. Farmers of the "American breadbasket" are now constrained to contractual manufactured/engineered seed purchases. Artificially-made or enhanced food "products" took over supermarket shelves, as the population was coerced to overeating malnutrition. Customer service diminished, yet prices rose. Job benefits diminished, as corporate profits and tax-evasion climbed again. Ask a man what it was like working on an assembly line during the Industrial Revolution, then compared to working a line during 1940s heydays, and compared again to working in a modern grey cubicle.
Folks might think of actor Lionel Barrymore (a relative of current actress Drew Barrymore) who usually portrayed characters that represented American core values. So, as a different example, lets look at actor Robert Young. (Incidentally, I do admire Young because he took a leading role in the 1947 film "Crossfire", which was initially written about gay-bashing but was censored/contorted into a plot about anti-Semitism… which was considered less taboo).
Beginning in the 1930s with dapper roles: grandly intrepid world traveler, swashbuckling, debonair, insouciant in formal tails, and at ease amongst a household of hired help.
Into the 1940s: refined, dapper, upstanding, adventurous war hero, man-about-town (with a valet), man-of-industry, elegant for dinner/dancing.
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(I'm not saying that we have to return to bustles, corsets or wearing a tie to weekday family dinner, but its nice when a guy gets gussied up once in a while).
Quarantined to the 1950s sappy stereotypical household: average, dull, meek, predictable, cuckold in a cardigan--fixing the plumbing and scolding the kids.
His character went from dining on ocean liners, going to a city club for cocktails, and eating fresh pheasant whilst in the country... to Betty Crocker "instant" brownie mix, Spam (which we also call our junk email), Twinkies, Jello, frozen veggies, and Hostess cupcakes.
(it looks like prison food)
As coincidence today, Nadia (on TV's Food Network) said to, "Avoid artificial maple syrup--which was invented in the 50s, along with an attitude that man can surpass nature with 'empty' ingredients. Why use fresh lemons and cane sugar for lemonade when you can add water to a 'space-age' packet of bleached sugar, fructose corn syrup, citric acid, sodium nitrate, maltodextrin, magnesium oxide, ascorbic acid, soy lecithin, calcium fumarate, and Yellow food coloring #5!"
I researched the powder/drink, Hi-C. When it was created in 1946, its inventor, Niles Foster used these ingredients: orange juice concentrate, peel oil and orange essences, sugar, water, citric acid and ascorbic acid (Vit C). After Minute Maid (then Coca Cola) bought the brand, in 1954, Foster left the company. Perhaps due to diverging values? Nowadays, Hi-C is made of: Water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, ascorbic acid, potassium benzoate, modified food starch, natural flavors. Such development for a better future?!
Meanwhile, other countries--not as successful after WWII--in Europe and South America still had home cooked meals with fresh ingredients! And still do.
In fact, that "image" was so important that TV studios reused the "Father Knows Best" house for "Dennis the Menace", "I Dream of Jeanie", "Betwitched", "Hazel", and "The Partridge Family".
It looks very "Truman Show"-ish, doesn't it? While amusing, the problem with those shows--unlike "Seinfeld"--is that they pretended everybody was like that… that it was the normal & only way to be. Propaganda. In real life, there is a mix of people, ideas and cultures. People explore, venture out, try new things. In the official 1960 press release for the last episode, Robert Young said, "Some days, I feel like the prisoner let out of the penitentiary: the gates clang behind me and I'm temporarily lost." The release also said, "Can you imagine how demanding it is to continue to produce the same program series, almost every week, for six years? [The show] has gotten a better score from the audience research polls. But the very success struck terror in our hearts."
Via television, the government and "big industry" promoted "consumerism": buy houses, buy cars, buy appliances, buy clothes, buy gadgets, make children. (Nothing to do with money management or smart spending). General Motors did a great "carpet-bagger" job, with their "Parade of Progress" across Small-town USA, followed by their slogan "Tour the USA in your Chevrolet"! (No small coincidence that in 1953, the President nominated GM's CEO, Charles Wilson to be Secretary of Defense [manufacturing contract$], and Wilson said, "What was good for the country was good for GM and vice versa.")
But it wasn't true progress because--after such forward-thinking, social advancements, and leaps of technology of the 20s thru 40s--the 1950's brought a return to strict traditional values, anti-diversity and conformity. That conformity begot ignorance--behind each suburban home's picket fence, which led to being manipulated.
It's no wonder that Insurance Companies were flush with money in the 1950s--building bigger and bigger gold-topped office buildings all along Manhattan's Park Avenue South. Advertising "selling" agencies were quick to follow, parallel along Madison Avenue. "The powers that be" wanted an almost Victorian-type household again. Women who'd previously worked in Industry and earned their own higher paychecks, were scuttled back into roles of housewife or secretary. For the second time! (the gov't lured them to jobs during WWI and then kicked them out). Had they stayed alongside men, society might've leaped further faster.
After having sexily worn them from the 1920s-40s, women weren't "allowed" to wear trousers again until Mary Tyler Moore did so in the late 1960s on the "Dick Van Dyke Show".
And they went from the femme fatale form-fitting outfits of the same previous eras...
into Christian Dior's 1947 "throwback" constraining corsets and petticoats.
After building and flying airplanes, driving cabs and achieving more equality...
women again subjected themselves to archaic constraints.
Men who'd fired anti-aircraft artillery, flown planes, strategized, operated submarines, and tasted life in Hawaii, Nepal, Italy, Paris, England, the Netherlands, Greece, and Belgium...
or had really built things in daring ways...
were shooed into becoming 9-to-5 pencil-necked "bean counters". They got to holler, "Honey, I'm home!" (like in the satire film "Pleasantville").
Even the sleek adventurous sleuthing duo of "The Thin Man" movie series was discontinued, as the producers made them have a child, in post-war 1947, and promptly settle down.
I daresay, if the female and minority workforces, that existed in the 1930s and 40s, had stayed in place, it might've propelled our society to greater heights. (Instead of stymying people's ideas/careers because of their gender/race/sexual persuasion). Society would've been immeasurably helped if greedy organized corruption hadn't blocked the advances of people like "ahead-of-his-time" auto-maker Preston Tucker, or aviator Howard Hughes (both at their peaks in the 40s) or free-energy mastermind Nikola Telsa (died in his hotel room in 1943, a year after the Manhattan Project's atomic weaponry began)... just to name a famous few.
If you've watched older movies, some really great plots occurred! Heck, the MGM "Andy Hardy" series had more "adventure for life"--and better-written lines & acting--than the 50s shows like "Leave It To Beaver", "Donna Reed Show", or "Mr. Ed". While those TV shows did teach etiquette, many were so stale that the 1998 movie "Pleasantville" made fun of them, illustrating that life has more meaning when explored beyond the status-quo. We're not even going to talk about the idiotic Game Shows that the American public guffawed at… which replaced amazingly well-written/acted/sound effect-engineererd radio shows
like "Amos & Andy", "Jack Benny" and "Fibber McGee and Molly", which I've heard online).
The 1950s saw the end of elegant ocean liner travel, elegant railroad travel--which were entire industries of flawless Customer Service.
Gone are convenient (affordable / less polluting) streetcars, ripped up from communities across the country... thusly pushing people to buy automobiles from the Big Three auto makers.
Other countries, around the world, still have them nowadays!
The end of "evening clubs" for dinner/dancing. Hotels and Supper Clubs used to employ full orchestras and "floor shows". Daily, the Waldorf Astoria featured the rhythmic Latin American beats of Xavier Cugat, which was even broadcast on the radio. Now, WA's ballroom is gone, and their only restaurant is the tepid "Peacock Alley". Here's what's missing...
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Gone were well-made and tailored clothes and footwear. All the creatively nifty styles of mens & ladies' hats were GONE--and from a Fashion standpoint, headwear had been an integral part of human attire for a thousand years.
A quick look at wedding gowns, across the decades, shows the ups & downs of style:
1900s still shows the poofy layers of the preceding 200 years.
1910s kept women clamped in corsets, whale bones & wires
1920s (and Coco Chanel) transformed girls into boyish waifs; it showed skin but hid the curves of your body.
1930s stylishly showed off the female figure, amidst a wave of female confidence... without layers.
1940s began with glamour and satin's shine.
1950s reverted back to Victorian corsets, tulle and dress-hoops
1960s swung back to trim simplicity.
1970s didn't produce many noteworthy fashion items.
1980s exhibited lackluster, formless and baggy outfits, like the hair styles of the era.
Thankfully, modern-day availability of world-wide products and information had reinstated good style. But, not for other things like the great Hollywood Musicals, excellent cars like Duesenberg and Packard, and good craftsmanship. Gone.
We all know what current-day austere architecture and design gives us, so look at what's missing: details, art, creativity, embellishment, craft! Admire the work/"attention to the smallest detail" in these pix of things built long ago:
As you look from image to image, passing over each building, discover a different nuance of detailing--from the eaves to the railings and stairs, the visual architecture experience can be as amazing to the eye, as a symphony is to the ear!
Wonder why they're gone? See what's in the background...
Currently, the tallest buildings in these states belong to banks: NY, GA, RI, CA, UT, TX, DE, NC, IN, ID, MA, NE, WI, OR, AR, AZ, FL.
Now, we have lots of new "space" (even at million dollar prices) that looks austerely "modern/minimalist" like this:
We've also lost the innocence and good-naturedness of American professional sports; any sports fan will attest to it. Compare them to old-time players. Appliances and furniture that had been "made to last" were gone. Great films like "Gone With the Wind", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "You Can't Take It With You", "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon" were replaced with cheesy Space-age "alien/mutation" films. (The films' themes aren't surprising. When Society had been stifled in the buttoned-up late-Victorian age, it resulted in a culture upheaval via books like "Frankenstein", "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Dracula". So, naturally, in a "reproduction Victorian ambiance" of the 1950s, culture upheaved in B-movies about the world ending. Note: The books, however, are still considered masterpieces. Those movies are mostly forgotten). Compare older hand-drawn cartoons, like "Pinocchio" to the ones we see now.
Even Bugs Bunny cartoons had cleverer plots than current-day toons. Listen to Carl Stalling's amazingly-arranged Looney Tunes soundtracks, played by a full orchestra! Modern movies like "Batman" and "007" (with the disappearing car in the ice temple) show just how badly ridiculous the "Rambo"-notion of excess & sequels can be. Instead of applying money to acting and scripts, they poured it on plastic-like "special effects". Below is the ridiculous "over-the-top" progression of Batmobiles.
Levels of service dropped, too. As did appearance of Service. When did you see an American (often expensive) gas station do this?
No more milkman, orchestra leader, Pullman porter (whose Union had been one of the strongest in the country), laundry delivery service, tuxedoed maitre d', bellboy (the 2014 big-star comedy film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" bemoans the loss of Service from 1930s into the 1970s). Who even cares about their uniform/appearance nowadays? The FedEx guy? The mechanic? The deli counter person? Not any more.
Years ago, there were uniformed cab drivers, Full-Service gas station attendants (in pix above), valets, movie ushers, and even "carhops" (the waitresses who'd serve hamburgers at "Drive-in" Burger cafes). Thank McDonald's for initiating the cost-cutting method, when they fired their 1950s waitresses to make customers serve themselves… and its been "downhill cheapening" ever since. Think of their modern "beef food product" process in the 2008 film "Food Inc." or the documentary "Bought".
Big-business and local shops both used to provide home-delivery, by respectful and well-uniformed employees. They now charge more but give less service.
Doctors used to charge fair fees and regularly make house-calls! But not after the 50s. (They still do in France, per the 2007 film "Sicko", and perhaps other countries). An older NYC widow once described her husband, "He was a doctor, but we were the least medicated family in New York. He was very against prescription drugs and very passionate about the benefits of good nutrition. Even though he was a doctor, he was always wary of the healthcare 'industry'. He thought the whole system was sustained by sickness, not health. He said there was little interest in curing patients, and little interest in killing patients, because everyone made their money off long-term problems sustained by drugs. He never charged his patients more than $5 per visit. Millionaires and homeless people paid the same price. For 30 years, he never once raised his prices. The IRS always thought our family was hiding money, because they didn't believe a doctor could make so little. But he helped people in big great ways, and saved their lives." (thats him below)
Even the great service provided by PanAm stewardesses vanished. Below is a picture of former Business-class dinner.
In The Letters of Noel Coward, he--who had known the poorest people and was also close friends of the Queen of England and Admiral of the Fleet, Lord (Earl) Louis Mountbatten (nicknamed Dickie)--remarked how the beginning of the 1960s saw such a disappearance of "good quality service" and "general courtesy" and saw such a "cheapening" in its place.
Even the elegance and innovation of car designers like Harvey Earl disappeared… showing the following results.
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or these 4 pix of Cadillacs that "progress" to the last pic
Appliances used to be made with metal. Now, they're made with plastic, with stainless steel added outside, which they charge you extra for. They put real citrus in floor polish, and sell orange juice from concentrate to people. The Empire State Building was built in only 1 year and 45 days. The Golden Gate bridge was completed in under 4 years (supposedly without a fatality). The immense Hoover Dam was done in 5 years. However, in the new millennium, it took over 3 years to build a mere baseball stadium in Queens, NY... and probably cost more (due to syphoned money).
The BEST example is how this country went from using the affordable/multi-talented/seemingly-indestructable military Jeep (which lasted for decades after manufacturing) to… the Hummer, a gas-guzzling, oversized, expensive, impractical vehicle. And the 1980s-Hollywood-origin (poor acting skills) foppish Governor of California--scandalized by having an affair with his maid, who also hires someone to clean his cars with "goat-hair brushes", and who married into the Kennedy family--prompted variations of Hummers to be made and sold to the public. Idiots would rather drive a Hummer than a Jeep or Rover.
It seems like the organizations with the most money are charging more, and carelessly offering less and less. But the ignorant/"don't know better" public doesn't demand anything better.
Neither does the media. Back in the day, newscasters like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather travelled internationally and researched their own stories. The term "investigative reporter" actually meant something. Nowadays, the bleached-teeth news anchors--called "talking heads"--merely recite from tele-prompters. They don't even know what day it is: they just show up and read to us. Thats why shows like HBO's "The Newsroom" poke fun at them and illustrate how often what they read to us isn't even true or fact-based! Its also why you can look up so many "News Bloopers" online, because they didn't write their own "news stories". They're as clueless and "spoon fed" and the audience. The 1970s film "The Network" warned us (check out scenes from it).
"Father Knows Best" didn't make it into the 1960s, where some "snap" of the 1920s reappeared: Alexis de Redé's "Bal Oriental", world travel, music was swinging with Elvis, Oscar Peterson and the Rat Pack (leaving stiff Arthur Murray behind), and faster cars like tuxedoed James Bond's. People suddenly realized that they had more potential and cried, "Stop the world! I wanna get ON!"
Unfortunately, it was the beginning of "buying on credit (card)", which toppled/drowned the masses, just as reckless stock speculating had done in the 1920s and 2000s. History repeats. In addition, Hollywood--and many more standards--dissolved in the psychedelic 1970s. The ho-hum 80s featured comedic anti-conformity films: "Caddyshack", "Big", "Ghostbusters", "Police Academy", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Trading Places" and "Crocodile Dundee". Eventually, films got more sophisticated and artistic. 1999 was probably as good a film-producing year as anyone had seen since 1939.
If you explore (even online) other countries, it's amazing how they've surpassed America. America offers the least amount of vacation time: even China has more days! American students rank extremely low on the global scale. Instead of America, better federal healthcare is found in Canada, Cuba, Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Visit Puerto Rico, or Brazil, or Virgin Islands, or Italy, or Turkey, or Vietnam. People in other countries ENJOY LIFE, even if it's less urbane. They have a lot less STUFF: less debt, less interest fees, less student loans, less repairs, less pharmaceuticals.
If you look at old home-movies, postcards, photographs, letters, diaries, and films, it's amazing to see what kind of culture/service/experiences that this modern America is missing... from a time ONLY 60 YEARS AGO.
Did society learn a lesson? I'm in favor of "progress", yet my personal motto is that we shouldn't eschew some things that are "tried and true" in favor of something of lesser quality--simply because it is new. Also, true "progress" benefits humanity; "technology" doesn't necessarily do that. (Remember the polluting/humanity-abusing Industrial Revolution. The heirs of its fortunes--and "cog in a wheel" business mentality--are still running a large portion of the world). People should also demand, and thusly resurrect, quality. That's how you get Walmart to feature only hormone-free food products.
Thankfully, there's a resurgence of great TV and great films (many are Independent), as well as Good Customer Service experiences and higher standards of Quality. In many areas of life: organic/farm-raised/small-batch foods, Hospitality, "going green", health/fitness/diet awareness, sense of community pride/preservation, and the arts). The pendulum swings. But that's another story!
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