I was going to live blog 1949 but had trouble doing that. Instead I will gather up notes I make along the way and post them from time to time. It is now Day 9. Here is the first batch:
The thing I miss most about 2017 media is good colour photography! They did have colour photography in 1949, but the colours are off. Or something. See the picture above. Most photography is in black-and-white – and it is not for artistic purposes either!
Pin-up girls: No black pin-up girls!
Film: Sayeed Qutb was not joking about all the police and cowboy films!
The New Yorker: I am surprised at how little the New Yorker has changed. Here is their “Talk of the Town” masthead from 1949:
and here it is from 2017:
Here is this week’s cover in 1949:
and here it is for 2017:
Either one could be, say, from the eighties.
Words from the forties I need to work into my conversation: swell (not cool), jeepers (not OMG), sham (not fake), make love (not have sex), daddy-o (not sure what it means).
It seems to be a slow news month so far in 2017: I cannot remember the last time I got a New York Times news alert on my telephone. I did hear that North Korea tested a missile that can reach California. My sister assured me North Korea is still there (well, that was five days ago).
China: I am surprised the Chicago Tribune (in early August 1949) has so little about China. China is doing good to make page 8, even as the communists advance on Canton and people flee. President Truman, he who is begging money to arm Europeans against communism, seems strangely unconcerned. Even the Republicans, who are generally against spending much money, want to give China more help than he does.
The main thing I see of 2017 is Flo, the pitchwoman for Progressive automobile insurance. I see her by way of ads on YouTube. I also caught sight of the beautiful Jessica Williams. Nothing like her in 1949 from what I have seen so far.
Idealization: I saw a real birthday party from August 4th, 1949. The thing that most struck me is how real the people looked. It made me see that most of my picture of the forties comes from films and ads of the period, which presents an idealized picture, where people are mostly young, thin, white, good-looking, Nordic even, and up on all the latest fashions.
Whiteness: The media in 1949 was markedly whiter and its picture of black people is less human. Ebony magazine is an exception. Which makes me wonder how much white people have truly changed. It seems they have just become better at hiding how they feel. Why else would they complain about not being able to say the N-word, for example? It also makes me wonder how much subtle anti-black feeling and thought is woven into their media, both in 1949 and 2017.
– Abagond, 2017.
Update (August 12th): As it turns out, “make love” was not generally a euphemism for ‘have sex” till the late sixties. In the forties the more common meaning for “make love” was wooing, courtship, romance. Thanks to Solitaire and thatdeborahgirl for pointing this out.
See also:
- My 1949 media diet
- Not in H.G. Wells:
- pin-up girl
- jeepers
- fake
- blog
- television
- N-word – the term “N-word” does not appear in Wells, but “nigger” itself does: “smart and fashionable life capered to nigger dance tunes” – from “The Outline of History”.
- What Sayeed Qutb said about America
- Ebony magazine, August 1949
562
Do Shake Girls count as pinups? Marie Bryant and Sahji Jackson and probably the big band Black dancers probably had publicity shots.
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Yes to everything in the commentary about “whiteness.” No lies told there.
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“…daddy-o (not sure what it means)”
It is synonymous with “dude”, “guy”, “fella/fellow”, “chap”, “bro” or “bloke”.
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@ Abagond
I don’t think “make love” had fully shifted meaning from “to court or woo; to sweet talk” in 1949. Probably it was in transition and highly dependent on context.
See:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_love
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/making-love.html
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A lot of “color” photographs from this era are actually black and white photos that have been colorized by an artist. If the colors look painted in and not real, they probably were!
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@ tankermottind
Yes, some of it does seem colourized.
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@uglyblackjohn @Afrofem
Thanks!
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@ Solitaire
Wow, interesting. More and more I am coming to understand I live in a post-Barry-White world.
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I came to make the same point as Solitaire about the phrase “make love” or “making love”. The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” is from this same era and that phrase doesn’t mean actually having intercourse. It doesn’t even refer to physical contact. It is the act of seriously courting with intentions to move things along past friendship. Past the hearts and flowers stage and just short of getting engaged.
“Make love” is also used in a lot of songs from this era but again, it has a less than physical connotation or the songs wouldn’t have been allowed on the air.
Also, color, even now with digital printing, is still far more expensive than black and white. Having studied printing and currently working in print, it’s amazing to me at all that they used color in a lot of printing back then when even now, it can be a pain.
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I remember this from “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946). I laughed, but I took it in a post-Barry-White sense of rough sex. My sister says that not only has “making love” changed in meaning, from wooing to having sex, as Solitaire and thatdeborahgirl have pointed out, so has “violent” in regard to feelings. In Jane Austen “violent” passions meant “intense”, with no physical force implied.
The applicable clip from “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Go to the 3:37 mark:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLeMdlYN60)
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@ Abagond
LOL!
I had assumed — because I know you are a voracious reader and a lover of old books — that you were aware of the older meaning and just unclear on when it shifted to the modern meaning.
Either you mostly read nonfiction or you’ve been mightily confused about all the violent love making and ejaculating that goes on in Victorian novels!
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I think they need to bring back daddy-o, sham, and swell. I may start using those words myself.
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