For August 2017 I am on a 1949 media diet – all news, music, film, books, etc, must be from 1949 or before. Here is my second batch of notes on the experience (the first batch is linked to below):
One of the things I miss most from 2017 is a good dictionary and an encyclopedia! The ones I have are from after 1949. What I could find online is from 1911. That is not 1949’s fault, though. If I was doing this for, say, a year, then it would be worth it to buy a period dictionary and encyclopedia.
One of the things I miss least about 2017 are web pages that start playing content that I did not want!
In 1949 there seems to have been more labour strikes, more songs about trains, more stories about femme fatales.
Black people seemed to have been more self-pitying, fearful and, by all accounts, kissed up to white people more. The prejudice of white people, meanwhile, was more open. I do not think that was “better”.
Black women were not nearly as good looking, at least to me. Partly that is because they do not follow the 2017 fashions in hair or dress that I am used to. But partly I think it is because in 1949 black beauty standards were whiter, so their own natural beauty does not come out as much.
Words to work into my conversation:
- fin (five dollars),
- dame (young woman),
- B.O. (body odour),
- female impersonator (not drag queen),
- human beings (not humans),
- race prejudice (not racism),
- he (not he or she),
- melancholy,
- luncheon (not sure how it is different than plain old lunch),
- she sends me (not sure what that means but you hear it in songs).
“Dame” seems to be a white word. Blacks would say “chick” instead.
Stuff I am surprised 1949 had:
- “The Saint”,
- “Perry Mason”,
- “Dragnet”,
- Walgreen’s,
- Abercrombie & Fitch,
- Eveready batteries,
- Tide,
- the NBC chimes, which you hear now on television but heard back then on radio (listen above).
Forties people: Some people I know from the seventies or eighties who pop up in the forties:
- Dinah Shore,
- Ricardo Montalban,
- Harry Morgan (of “M*A*S*H”),
- Vincent Price.
By 1949 Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke were already the “big three” of science fiction in the United States, as they still were in the seventies.
As it turns out, in the seventies there were people from the forties everywhere! It is not that I never knew that – I certainly knew my parents and grandparents were alive in the forties – it is just that I never thought of it that way.
Historical depth: One of the big drawbacks of a 2017 media diet is that it lacks historical depth: books go out of print, libraries get rid of old books, the news is mainly about the last 24 hours, etc. I get over a hundred television channels, but over half the content is from the last five years, and only Turner Classic Movies, which shows old films, regularly shows stuff from 1949 or before. And even they rarely show anything from before 1930.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- Notes on a 1949 media diet, part 1
- my 1949 media diet
- Words not in H.G. Wells:
- dame / chick
- dollar
- female impersonator / drag queen (a man who dresses up as a woman for entertainment)
- luncheon
- radio (television without pictures)
- racism
- she sends me – ??
- television
- web page
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[…] via Notes on a 1949 media diet, part 2 — Abagond […]
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Those black women in the photo are attractive ladies even in 1949. Giving that statement about those black ladies not being attractive and trying to look like white women the side eye. Go kick rocks with that hate.
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@ Mary Burrell
I did not say they are unattractive. I think it is clear they are attractive. I said they were “not nearly as good looking” as black women now. It is relative, not absolute.
Where I said “trying too hard to look like white women”, I admit, is a bad way to put it. For one thing, it is guessing too much at their motives. I will correct that. But I do think it is safe to say that black ideas of female beauty did seem to be whiter then than they are now.
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If i had to pick a year this one is like? 1936ish?
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In “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, there’s a lyric:
“Ah, my my, what elation
I don’t know where but she sends me there
Oh, my my, what a sensation”
Maybe “she sends me” means “she sends me over the edge, making me feel like I’m in another world”.
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Have you covered the Groveland four?
Thanks for all the great posts over the years.
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Nbc/comcast
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_and_universities
http://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/best-historically-black-colleges-universities/
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@ Richard Stanley
No. Excellent suggestion. It will have to wait till after I come off my 1949 diet since the story is not limited to just that year.
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