Crime and Postwar Culture

1
Crime and Postwar Culture

• I. Post-war Affluence Anxiety
• A. Happy Days
• B. Fears
• II. Drug wars
• A. Prior law
• B. The Pharmaceutical Revolution
• C. Clampdown
• Juvenile Delinquency
• A. Problem
• B. Causes
• IV. Family
• A. Sexual Knowledge
• B. Cultural Revolution
• Repression
• A. Censorship
• B. Changing law

2
Happy Days

• Economic growth
• Great compression
• Domesticity
• Baby boom, 1950-59
• 18.6 pop. growth
• 10 teen pregnancy rate
• Political consensus
• Anti-communism
• Social safety net

3
Anxiety

• Economy
• War
• Individuality
• Race
• Gender

4
Juvenile Delinquency

• Baby boom
• Youth culture
• Anxiety about crime

Elvis
5
Causes

• Missing men
• WWII
• Culture
• Comic books

6
Prior drug law

• Tariffs
• 1870s first local laws barring opium smoking
• 1914 Harrison Act
• 1922 Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act

7
Pharmaceutical Revolution

• 1950s
• One of every three prescriptions was for a
  tranquilizer

8
Clampdown

• Regulatory mindset
• Pharmaceuticals versus narcotics
• But emphasis on seizure, arrests, not treatment

Federal narcotics agents seize 500,000 in drugs,
Memphis 1954
9
Sexuality

• Science
• Kinsey (1948)
• Pop Culture
• Playboy (1954)
• High art
• Joyce
• Lawrence
• Miller
• Burroughs

10
Censorship
Postmaster Summerfield
Dr. Frederic Wertham
Steve Allen
11
Freedom of Speech

• Redeeming social value
• Intent of writer
• Difference between speech and action
• Effect on reader