Description
Book SynopsisSex, Drugs, & Rock n' Roll analyzes the cultural, political, and social revolution that took place in the U.S. (and in time the world) after World War II, crystalizing between 1955 and 1970. During this era, the concept of the American teenager first came into being, significantly altering the relationship between young people and adults.
As the entertainment industries came to realize that a youth market existed, providers of music and movies began to create products specifically for them. While Big Beat music and exploitation films may have initially been targeted for a marginalized audience, during the following decade and a half, such offerings gradually become mainstream, even as the first generation of American teenagers came of age. As a result the so-called youth culture overtook and consumed the primary American culture, as records and films once considered revolutionary transformed into a nostalgia movement, and much of what had been thought of as radical came to be
Table of ContentsContents: Toward a New American Cinema: Three Films That Altered Everything – Shake, Rattle and Rock: The Big Beat on the Big Screen – Bad Boys, Dangerous Dolls: The Juvenile Delinquent on Film – I Lost It at the Drive In Movie: An All-American Outdoor Grindhouse – The Tramp Is a Lady: Mamie Van Doren and the Meaning of Life – Surf/Sex/Sand/Spies: The Battles of Bikini Beach – The Last American Virgin: Sandra Dee and the Sexual Revolution – Formulating a Feminine Mystique: The Emergent American Woman on Film – «The British are Coming!»: When Bob Dylan Met the Beatles – Go Ask Alice: The Drug Culture on Film – Revolution for the Sell of It: The Beat Generation and the Hippie Movement – Lonesome Highways: Of Car Culture and Motorcycle Mania.
