Over the fall break, I did something I haven’t done in a long time – I watched television with my parents. It was a Sunday night, a night I usually spend riddled with homework I had never seen most of the shows. One of these shows, American Dreams, proved to be the most interesting of the night, but for all the wrong reasons.
The show is based around a nuclear family living in Philadelphia during the early sixties and follows how they grapple with the social issues of the day. Apparently, the ’60s were a time of great social upheaval and change that became a turning point in American society.
There also seemed to be great music coming from this era of American life that also shifted our view of ourselves. Like we hadn’t been told this story since birth.
I got to see two episodes back-to-back, which meant I got to see the family deal with the class system, racial segregation, the Cold War, sex, high school rumors, first dates, Women’s Liberation, contraception and inter-racial dating.
If it seems like it is a bit much, it’s because it is. It looks as though the writers of this show are trying to fit as many issues relevant to the era as possible into each show. I’m expecting to see in the second season the teenage boy joining the Marines in Vietnam, while his teenage sister gets involved with a radical anti-war gang that ends up at a rally in Washington. She gets pregnant by the leader and has to have an abortion.
Meanwhile, the mother goes to college, gets a degree and ends up as a secretary who quickly moves up the corporate ladder of some enormous business, which in turn alienates the father who only wants his dinner when he gets home from his appliance store job.
Last, but not least, the youngest daughter will join a band of hippies, get hooked up as a roadie for Jefferson Airplane and end up at Woodstock just in time to see Jimi Hendrix play “The Star Spangled Banner.”
I am sick and tired of hearing how the ’60s was the time when America lost its innocence and that our generation is a bunch of sexed-up heathens who wouldn’t understand how it was back then. As far as I know, we still have first dates, worried parents, moral dilemmas and confusing social transitions-the baby-boomers would just as soon ignore this.
To them, these are exclusive situations and emotions to their generation. I bet their parents felt the same, and their parents likewise all the way back to the dawn of civilization (more or less).
The point of rambling is that it is pointless to look to the past for innocence when it reappears with each incoming generation. All we have to do is look beyond the Nintendo games, Internet chat rooms and cable television shows to see that teenage girls are still waiting by the phone for that one boy to call her while their younger brothers dream of going into space or becoming a soldier.
The sad thing is that in 30 years, I’ll be hooked to a hologram show about a family in the ’00s (if that’s what you call it) trying to cope with the issues of the day, while archaic MTV plays our music of the past in the background. And you know what? I’ll make my kids watch it, too.
