I wasn't around then, but from a lot of things I've read and seen, it seems that the 70s, under it's disco clothed gilded appearence, was a toxic decade in America.The marches and protests of the '60s continuing and growing more intense (See the Kent State Shooting, May 1970 and the May Day March 1971, wherein nearly 20,000 civillians tried to shut down the governent and which resulted in 10,000 arrests over 2 days), the 70's began right where the 60's ended.

The Hippie counterculture, which seemed to truly be taking on a life of it's own in early 1969, was crushed, with the events of Altamont in
November 1969 and the further demonization of their values by the media in the wake of the Manson Family murders and trial. The deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison in 1970 and 1971 only further demoralized the Hippies and rocked their culture, which gradually began to dissipate and be absorbed by mainstream consumer culture.

With the American involvement in the Vietnam War escalating, continuing in 1970-1972 and finally ending in 1973, and the disasterous aftermath of us leaving (thousands of Vietnamese killed when North Vietnam broke the peace treaty and invaded in 1975), Americans lost faith in the government. Within months of us leaving Vietnam, one national crisis over, another began called Watergate, which spanned a very tense year until Nixon's near impeachment and unprecedented resignation, shaking American's trust in government even more; out of it we got Gerald Ford, who though a good man, was a man no one had voted for as President. Every aspect of the government seemed corrupt, with President Nixon, and Vice President Agnew both resigning within a year of each other; even down to the local level corruption loomed, with systemic corruptionr (including cops taking bribes, extortion, illegal gambling and drug money) in the New York Police Dept. being uncovered and made public by Frank Serpico in 1971.

America's economy langushed as well in the midst of the Watergate crisis as America underwent a first oil crisis in 1973; Inflation rose in the mid 70s under Nixon and Ford, and along with unemployment, reached a peak under the administration of Jimmy Carter, along with a second, much larger oil crisis in 1979. Add to these woes a series of plane hijckings, the Patty Hearst case and other events.

Trust in the government began to grow again with the election of Jimmy Carter, a kind, honest though perhaps ineffective leader. Internationally, while relations with the U.S. and the USSR was largely cool during the early to mid 70s in a period of detente, under Carter tensions flared up again leading to a reigniting of the Cold War in the late 70s, with the USSR invading Afghanistan. On the Middle Eastern front, Iran took our embarassy in November 1979, taking 52 hostages. Carter worked in vain to try and rescue them, sending in military forces in a disasterous rescue attempt which humiliated the US on the world stage. The hostages would not be retuerned until minutes after Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981.

Socially, traditional values radically changed (sometimes for good and sometimes for ill); divorce rates hit record highs in the '70s; gays for the first time  went public with their lifestyle with the first gay pride marches in 1970; Harvey Milk becoming the first openly gay American politician, only to be later killed in cold blood in 1978, the women's liberation movement began in earnest, Roe v. Wade was signed in 1973, and heroin addiction was epidemic among the younger generation. Even important cities such as New York City languished in crime and corruption; New York City very narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in October 1975. Waves of serial killings, such as the Zodiac Killer and the Son of Sam, were often in the 70s. While imo the music rocked, the disco culture of the late 70s was one of drug addiction and promiscious sex, which helped to contribute to the unforeseen nightmare AIDs epidemic of the 1980s.

All in all, while I love the music, clothes, movies, etc of the 70s, from everything I've read and heard it seems socially and whatnot, it was a nightmare.

Also a bad decade for animation... ("Josie & The Pussycats" were OK though)

Same for the '80's, though there's a few exception...

Ah..yes, the 70's. Loved every minute of it! We could probably go through each decade and highlight all the bad bits. The truth is the 70's were fun and with huge variety and, yes...they were changing times (coming out of the 60's).

Towards the end of the 70's I was out in the disco's every second night....I didn't take a single drug...nor did I see any taken (probably too drunk). But you got me on the promiscous sex thing!  ;) :-\\  If only I hadn't been so drunk........ ::)

With a little effort, you can find similar occurrences in any decade. Just wait and see if Obama isn't compared to Carter after his term, corruption is still rampant, and there will always be War. Unfortunately there is only one way to avoid it, and that is by offing yourself. Depressing, isn't it?

I kind of remember all those things happening but I was too young to care. I was still playing with my Malibu Barbie and pretending to be one of Charlie's Angels!
The 70's were a happy time for me because I was just a kid. If I was older, I'm sure all these events would have effected me.
Keep on Trucking!

It was like the 2000's of the 20th Century, Lol!  ::)

yeah, i actually think the toxic social environment, the bogus economy and the 60s hangover are a big part of the reason why, culturally, the 70s were so rad. probably the most brilliant cinema and popular music of the post-war era, and i think a big part of it is that people were really searching their souls after the gogo sixties led to the fiasco of vietnam etc. i mean, yes, there was disco and all that, but that almost seemed like a rear-guard action by a small minority who wanted to keep being superficial while an inordinate number of folks were talking about "looking for mr. goodbar" and "dark side of the moon." don't forget, at the time, many if not most people hated disco. it was very divisive.

so yeah, 70s, toxic and also amazingly progressive and creative. yin and yang and all that.

i know a lot of people feel retro for the 80s but i think they just kinda sucked. it was a decade when shallowness reasserted itself. as for my personal experience, it was like brigitte's; i was a lilttle kid in the 70s and a teenager in the 80s. i think if i could have somehow reversed that and been a kid in the 80s and a teenager in the 70s, i would have done it in a second.

It was like the 2000's of the 20th Century, Lol!   ::)
actually, i've benen thinking this a lot. (i guess it's not hard to, since they keep comparing and contrasting the 00s with the 70s.) although the 00s are actually shaping up to be much, much worse.

uh oh. are we decadeologizing?

Hear hear, Mr. Tia 8)

Happy days make crappy art.

See? The only thing that lasts is art, we don't look at the 70s and cry because of Vietnam,but we listen to 70's music and watch that decade movies and get moved by it. What makes a decade great is what we still can get from it, not what really happened at the time.

actually, i've benen thinking this a lot. (i guess it's not hard to, since they keep comparing and contrasting the 00s with the 70s.) although the 00s are actually shaping up to be much, much worse.

uh oh. are we decadeologizing?


Oops, sorry! Please don't shut this thread up because of my mistake!  :\'(

I didn't mean to decadeologize!

Hear hear, Mr. Tia 8)

Happy days make crappy art.

See? The only thing that lasts is art, we don't look at the 70s and cry because of Vietnam,but we listen to 70's music and watch that decade movies and get moved by it. What makes a decade great is what we still can get from it, not what really happened at the time.





I agree 100%, but even the 'rose-colored' or 'overexaggerated' perception (whether positive or negative) we have of a decade is based from fact.

For example, we all know hippies didn't even come into play until about 1965, but when we think of the 60's, a picture of a hippie in colorful clothing appears in our mind, even if the first half of the decade was still conservative.

we listen to 70's music and watch that decade movies and get moved by it.

http://artvoice.com/issues/v5n7/film_reviews/stranger_in_a_strange_land/passenger 8)

The "sixties" were already a halcyon memory by 1975.  There were more "hippies" than ever in 1975 but everybody sensed the establishment had won.  I saw this give away to cynicism.  The Human Growth Potential Movement jumped from Ginsberg to Janov to Erhardt.  Individualism and aggression got the groovy stamp via EST, Scientology, and Primal Scream Therapy.  Pot took a backseat to cocaine.  As a denouement, we elected Ronald Reagan and murdered John Lennon.  The hippies who were going to lead us to universal oneness snuffed out their reefer and went and got MBAs. 

And they wondered why I was such a cynical kid!
::)

The "sixties" were already a halcyon memory by 1975.  There were more "hippies" than ever in 1975 but everybody sensed the establishment had won.  I saw this give away to cynicism.  The Human Growth Potential Movement jumped from Ginsberg to Janov to Erhardt.  Individualism and aggression got the groovy stamp via EST, Scientology, and Primal Scream Therapy.  Pot took a backseat to cocaine.  As a denouement, we elected Ronald Reagan and murdered John Lennon.  The hippies who were going to lead us to universal oneness snuffed out their reefer and went and got MBAs.  

And they wondered why I was such a cynical kid!
::)


  You make with the wordstuff real good, dude.  You should write a book...

  You make with the wordstuff real good, dude.  You should write a book...


The funny thing is, my sister did write a memoir about growing up in a hippie family in the sixties and seventies...and then she rewrote it...and she rewrote it again...and again.  She's had trouble boiling it down to what she really wants to say.  I say if she wants to get it published she needs to stop shying away from the true dark weirdness of my parents and their friends and incorporate more of the cultural shifts and their significance. 

For instance, Linda Kasabian was a friend of my parents.  At the time, she was living under her married name.  My sister plays it like my parents didn't know Linda was Linda Kasabian until after the FBI drove her back into hiding in the mid-seventies.  The truth is my parents knew damned well who she was.  OK, she was just a confused young girl, uh, four years ago, and she didn't kill anybody...she just drove the car to Roman Polanski's house and then testified against the others.  Still, would you let Linda Kasabian babysit for your children?  Would you let her kids play with yours? 

Anyway, that's the story I grew up with.  Linda was just got caught up with some really bad people, but she didn't do anything really bad herself, and she also helped the police put those really bad people in jail. 

My mother let it slip a few years ago that, in fact, when Linda got back to town in 1972, my parents assumed she had fibbed to the courts, and that she probably had killed people under Manson's tutelage.  I was stunned.  At the age of 35 the dystopian counterculture I grew up in was still revealing itself to be even darker than I thought.  "Well, mom," I asked, "why the hell did you befriend her?  Why did you let her into our home?"  She said she knew Linda was a good soul and not dangerous anymore.  My jaw dropped.  She chalked it up to being young and naive back then.  It seemed to me to show a lack of self-preservation instinct!  I still can't get my head around that one!

Ironically, Linda was a very nice girl.  She was always gentle and kind.  I never got any scary feelings from her, as little kids will often get from adults suffering from post-trauma.  She seemed like any of the other free-spirited flower children that flocked around older hippies like my parents.  If you research her name on the Internet, you come up with a different picture of Linda Kasabian.  She never lived down what happened to her out in the desert with Charlie's Family.  She could never regain acceptance and was chased out away from wherever she went.  For instance, even before the FBI started snooping around Milford, the local yokels used to go down to the sandwich shop where she worked and gawk at her.  "Let's go down to the Depot and get a Kasabian," went the joke.  She and her children have lived gypsy lives of drugs and petty crime.  Last I heard Linda was in the Seattle area, but a couple of her kids were still leading troubled lives in New Hampshire. 

Residuals of the misery Manson caused live on 40 years later.  I've seen it first hand.