Popular Culture of the 1960's

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Popular Culture of the 1960's Popular culture changed a lot during the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties as during the fifties the average weekly wage of an employed adult doubled. This meant that people had more money in there pocket for leisure spending. More people had cars and could take day trips to the coast and the doubled wages meant people could take week or two week holidays during the year. The invention of the television was an overnight success. As the average amount of time spent watching television was five hours in the winter and three hours in the summer a day. Television programmes were not very realistic however, only the emergence of z cars and coronation street brought any social realism to the television. Magazines made a big explosion in 1938 "woman" sold seventy eight thousand copies a week. In 1952 that figure was up to two million and two hundred and fifty thousand and still increased until in 1957 when it sold three and a half million copies. By 1960 it was being read by more than 50% of woman in Britain. Also for the first time there was magazines that were specifically targeted at teenagers. By 1959 British teenagers were spending eight pound a week on clothes, records, cosmetics and entertainment. By 1961 the first teen magazine successes, "Honey" and "19", they provided advice and information about style, fashion, and music. The British "pop star", Cliff Richard, was the "guy next door" type and many parents and adults had no problem with there daughters/ sons going to see him live. However music copied styles that were popular in the USA, in the forties and fifties using typi... ... middle of paper ... ... any parent what the best era was they would say the one when they were teenagers, however on the other hand if you asked a parent were many things in society went wrong they would say the era when there children were teenagers its just something that teenagers are oblivious to they don't realise what is going on in the world until they go into to it for themselves this when they realise that things have gone wrong. If you asked my parents what the best decade was they would say the 1960's as this is when they were teenagers. And if you asked them were it all went wrong they would say now. Alternatively if you asked any teenager would they like to go back to when there parents were younger they would say "no" as they have know got used to the technology of there generation and now the 1960's to them is prehistoric.

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