The Fifties

The Fifties, based on the acclaimed best selling book by David Halberstam, is an in-depth examination of the decade of the 1950s. Blending interviews with archival footage, it creates a vivid portrait of an era that defined the image of the American way of life. Fraught with nostalgia and a yearning for a simpler time, memories of the 1950s evoke an idealistic, innocent image of a time before the turbulence of the 1960s. The Fifties looks beyond the image of the 1950s to the realities of the decade. In doing so, it reveals the 1950s as an era as turbulent as any other, one that portended the explosion of the 1960s. From hula-hoops to McCarthyism, split-level tract houses to atomic anxieties,The Fifties provides a comprehensive study of a fascinating era in American history.

This program would be useful for classes on American History, Women's History, The History of Science and Technology, Economics, and Cultural History. It is appropriate for middle school, high school and college.

Selling the American Way

Selling the American Way focuses on the impact of television and advertising on America. With the introduction of television into private homes, advertisers' dreams came true. Here was a machine that commanded a captive audience, and combined visual product recognition with name brand recognition. With the prosperity of the decade producing higher incomes for a larger segment of the American populace, manufacturers turned to ad men to garner market shares. The power of television advertising not only revolutionized consumer spending, it changed the American political system. As ad men realized the potential of television to shape public opinion, they marketed candidates in same fashion as any other product.

• Apocalypse
• bourgeois
• coup
• covert
• eradicated
• imbue
• operatives
• propaganda
• rectitude
• red herring
• residual
• unbridled

Discussion Questions

1. While the invention of television has expanded the horizons of the American people, has it also narrowed their visions? Explain.

2. The best selling book, with the exception of the Bible, from 1952-1956 was Rev. Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. How did this book help dispel the residual fears of the Great Depression?

3. Advertising in the 1950s was science; ad men thought of themselves as intellectuals, applying new scientific principles. How did the Motivational Research Company help advertisers to understand, and to manipulate, American consumer behavior using psychology?

4. Do you think advertisers in the 1950s tried to "brainwash" consumers? How about advertisers today?

5. Are television ads of the 1950s any more or less ethical than television ads of the 1990s? Explain.

6. How were gender roles used in the 1950s to sell products? How are they used today?

7. The job of an advertiser is to create consumer desire, and then convince the consumer that their product will satisfy that desire better than any other product. How do advertisers play on a consumer's anxieties and self-image to create a desire for a product?

8. How did television transform American life in the 1950s?

9. How did television transform the American political system?

10. How did television sell American Cold War foreign policy to the American public?

11. How did television and the tactics of advertising distort the events of the coup, and the role of the American government, in Guatemala?

Extended Activities

1. Cigarette ads, although now banned from television, were once a staple of television advertising. Create a story board for an anti-cigarette television commercial.

2. Research the story of the Guatemala coup of the 1950s and the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. What do these two events have in common? How did both events use television and the media? What did both events assume about the American public?

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