1952-1955 THE BIRTH OF COOL
In this quick, three-year span, three huge pop culture events blew up the teenager and made him into, what Kim Gordon would call, a “Kool Thing.” First, Bill Haley made a clean split from adults by saying “big band sucks” and creating a new kind of music. Then The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause came out. All of a sudden teenagers knew what to like and more importantly, what to act like.
1952-1955 THE BIRTH OF COOL
In this quick, three-year span, three huge pop culture events blew up the teenager and made him into, what Kim Gordon would call, a “Kool Thing.” First, Bill Haley made a clean split from adults by saying “big band sucks” and creating a new kind of music. Then The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause came out. All of a sudden teenagers knew what to like and more importantly, what to act like.
1957 THE BEATNIK TANGENT
Then a third group appeared. Most old people like to think of this pre-hippy tangent as the true definition of cool and they’re kind of right. The two tough-guy rebels groups of the early 50s and jazz-loving bon-vivants of the late 50s were all lumped together and were all equally valid. This all changed forever in the early 70s however, when Henry Winkler took the Brando thing to mainstream television and banished our striped-shirt wearing, Kerouac-reading, Sonics-loving, bongo-playing hepcat friends from the public eye forever. The word cool wasn’t the same for almost 20 years.
1974 THE FONZ TAKES OVER
When Happy Days first began, Henry Winkler decided to go with the softer approach to cool and be a James Dean kind of cutie with a baby blue windbreaker and a soft spot for the ladies. Then he got the role of Butchey in a very, very, shitty movie called Lords of Flatbush and decided to change the character of The Fonz completely. From that moment on, Richie Cunningham’s best friend was a tough, horny, perpetual teen, from Brooklyn who got in your face and hated books.
It was around this time marketing companies started to figure out they could skip adults and go straight to the kids they needed so badly. Saturday Morning Cartoons were coming into their own and the demand for what youngsters like was insatiable.
What do kids like? Cool. Who’s cool? The Fonz. Fine, all our products are going to be an illiterate goombah from Brooklyn.
The same way Coca Cola solidified one particular type of Santa for generations to come, Winkler’s Butchey took over the meaning of cool and the dictionary didn’t change for years.
How strange must it have been to be living in Southern California and see some chocolate bar in a TV commercial dressed like a 50s biker and talking like a mob enforcer with a learning disability? It would be like a Canadian in B.C. today being told John Gotti’s grandson is the shit instead of a piece of.
(part 1)
You write as though you’ve been perpetually reading Nancy Drew books.
Wow you did a half-written piece on the 1950s and skipped everything until fonz?
Why did you guys write this?