THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES PROGRAM YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: YOUTH POP CULTURE AND COMMERCIALIZATION IN 1950s ENGLAND MATTHEW TRIFAN Spring 2011 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in History and Political Science with honors in History Reviewed and approved* by the following Sophie de Schaepdrijver Associate Professor of History Thesis Supervisor Catherine Wanner Associate Professor of History Honors Advisor *Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College i ABSTRACT This paper explores England‘s youth culture in the 1950s and analyzes the interplay between British adolescents and the pop culture industry. This is done within the context of the age-old debate over the agency of consumers—was youth culture, in other words, manipulated by profit-hungry commercial industries, or did these industries develop at the whim of youth desires and demands? In the case at hand, what we find is youth pop culture and pop-culture industries often growing in tandem, leading to a situation that defies the simple label of cause- and-effect. In this paper, therefore, I offer a combination of these two modes of thought— stipulating that, while some industries worked earnestly to streamline youth consumerism, others developed as a consequence of a self-perpetuated youth culture. I look at the development of youth spending trends and emerging ―pop culture industries‖—namely, the music industry, the ―sex‖ industry, subculture fashion, rock‘n‘roll, and television—in order to support the notion that British teenagers created their own unique and unprecedented youth culture. I argue that the social and economic changes of the post-war generation helped England‘s youth create a market of goods, looks, and ideas that embodied elements of rebelliousness, sexual liberalization, and musical autonomy. At the same time, I also acknowledge that the commercial industries of the era played a significant role in shaping much of this ―pop image‖ and marketing it back to teenagers, thereby creating demand. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….i Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..iii Introduction …..……………………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 1. A Beginning: Youth Culture and Emerging Post-war Trends…….…………………5 Chapter 2. Baby You‘re a Rich Man: Youth Spending and the Music Industry……………….15 Chapter 3. You Never Gave Me Your Money: Class Structure and Youth Culture……..……..23 Chapter 4. Nowhere Man: Youth Subculture and Counter-Culture……………………….........34 Chapter 5. Sexy Sadie: A Teenage Sex Culture?........................................................................47 Chapter 6. You Really Got a Hold on Me: The Advent of Television……………………….....59 Chapter 7. Roll Over Beethoven: Youth Music and Rock‘n‘roll…………………….……........68 Chapter 8: Come Together: The Beatles………….…………………………………………….79 Conclusion…….………………………………………………………………………………..89 Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………..92 Bibliography……….…………………………………………………………………………...97 iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to extend my most profound thanks to Professor de Schaepdrijver for her patience and her constructive criticisms. Without her support and tireless insight, this project would have rendered a very different outcome. I would also like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Wanner, as well as my secondary reader, Dr. Cross, for their comments and scholarly contributions. The same should be said for Eric Novotny, our resource librarian, who frequently pointed me in the right direction when searching for primary sources. I was in very good hands all through the year-long assembly of this paper, so thank you all, and kudos to Penn State‘s History Department. Finally, a nod to my family and friends, who were only too enthusiastic to discuss the Beatles with me. 1 Introduction There has long been a debate among historians of consumer culture as to the interaction between the agents of commercialization and their consumers. The issue offers two alternative scenarios. In the first, the corporate world is seen as a manipulative ―puppet-master‖ which forges an artificial popular culture—be it through music, cinema, literature, games, fashion, etc—that can be easily marketed to a more-susceptible, less-suspicious youthful audience. The second view offers that young consumers are, in fact, well aware of what they are getting themselves into—that the exchange of money for goods is willing, and moreover dictated by consumer whims and desires. This is a debate that leads us to wonder whether consumer culture is ultimately a degrading phenomenon, or a natural and creative exchange of goods and ideas. The first of these scenarios upholds the cynically-tinged ―Frankfurt School‖ theories of ―neo- Marxist paradigms,‖ offering that consumers (particularly younger ones) are ―dupes, easily manipulated by capitalist corporations into false desires and mindless purchasing.‖1 The second scenario is reflective of a more optimistic school of cultural studies that emphasizes ―the pleasures, agency, and resistance of consumers (even as children).‖2 My research has revealed the difficulties of arguing either end of these two extremities. This paper explores England‘s youth culture in the 1950s and analyzes the interplay between British adolescents and the pop culture industry during this decade. What I found during this period is that youth pop culture and pop-culture industries often grew in tandem, leading to a commercial situation that defies the simple label of cause-and-effect. Rather, it reflects an interactive dynamic that simultaneously creates and responds to consumer demand, while reacting to new corporate marketing initiatives. As such, I offer a combination of these two modes of thought—stipulating that, while some industries worked earnestly to streamline youth 2 consumerism, other industries developed as a consequence of a self-perpetuated youth culture. I look at the development of youth spending trends and emerging ―pop culture industries‖— namely, the music industry, the ―sex‖ industry, subculture fashion, rock‘n‘roll, and television— in order to support the notion that British teenagers created their own unique youth culture as a means of defining themselves. I argue that the social and economic changes of the post-war generation helped England‘s youth create a distinct market of goods, looks, and ideas. At the same time, I acknowledge that the commercial industries of the era played their own role in shaping much of this ―pop image‖ and marketing it back at teenagers. Why Britain? More than any other westernized democracy in the Post-World War II era, Britain embodied a cultural revolution of breath-taking depth and scope. Here was a country which, for decades, had entrenched itself in Victorian traditions, in routine lifestyles and unshakable family values. Yet, the post-war years—particularly those of the 1950s—witnessed massive changes in the British public‘s perception of a wide host of issues, including youth culture and counter-culture, classes and castes, music and modernity, and education and ethics. This paper examines a handful of those transformations over the pivotally-defining era of the 1950s, and their interplay with the emerging admass mentality of the times—the increasingly acceptable desire to spend liberally on material goods to satisfy one‘s material impulses. It is this very ―admass mentality‖—borrowing the term from the English novelist J.B. Priestley in the mid-century—that would come under fire by traditionalists and adults in England, as we will see over and over in each of these chapters. I selected this particular time period for several reasons. First, this era epitomizes the deafening boom of the ―age of affluence,‖ a phenomenon which inexorably goes hand-in-hand with the commercialized metamorphosis of British culture. Secondly, these years marked a 3 remarkable transformation and de-compartmentalization of the traditional British class-lines for England‘s youth—as well as the heralding-in of a new set of mainstream values and customs among those same youth. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, this time frame helped structure the rising sensation of the ―teenager.‖ We see the homogenization of teenagers into an increasingly synchronized body of consumers during the course of the decade. It is this study of British youth— the synergy between youth and class, youth and affluence, youth and pop culture—that ultimately binds together the elements of this work. To explore these topics, I draw upon the work of several of the predominant scholars in the field of 1950s British and youth culture. Richard Hoggart‘s The Uses of Literacy, a classic hallmark of the Fifties, offers a nuanced and colorful depiction of England‘s working classes and family life. His work at once praises the emerging socio-economic autonomy of the working family, while critiquing the manipulative and degrading influence of newly-founded commercial industries. Offering a more optimistic approach to youth consumer autonomy is Dominic Sandbrook‘s Never Had It So Good—the exhaustive and titanic history of England from 1956- 1963. Sandbrook‘s sweeping history allows us to grasp some of the larger political and social changes that inevitably influenced British youth, while articulating the impact of music trends like skiffle and rock‘n‘roll in defining a new form of ―youth.‖