The Swingin' Sixties hold a special place in popular culture, mostly because the people who came of age in that decade cannot stop talking about how great it was.
The Theme Park Version of the Swingin' Sixties includes: "free love" and beehive hairdos, hippies and southern sheriffs, Psychedelic Rock and girl groups, marijuana and the pill, sexy male spies in tuxedos and sexy female spies in leather catsuits (or in miniskirts, or in leather miniskirt catsuits), the Charlie Brown Christmas special and Peter Fonda dropping acid in a graveyard, prim newscasters speaking in clipped tones about those wild youngsters having too much fun. In Britain it includes the rise of Carnaby Street (inevitably accompanied by The Kinks' "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"), Mary Quant (the Mother who Made Miniskirts Mainstream), Harold Wilson, the satire boom, and a bunch of Buccaneer Broadcasters demolishing The BBC's radio monopoly.
It was all about the music: Mop-topped mods and cock-walking rockers all the rage, and the British were cool for the first time in recorded history. Except to the British, who were way into India. The Sixties gave us Woodstock, three days of peace and music. And then a little later, Altamont, roughly six hours of skull-cracking brutality set to music.
It was also all about political unrest: Escalation of the Vietnam War was met with a powerful protest movement, admired to this day for stopping the war dead in its tracks just nine years later. President Kennedy narrowly averted an end-of-the-world nuclear showdown, then was shot dead. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X gave voice to the Civil Rights Movement, and then were shot dead. Robert F. Kennedy renewed the country's spirits with a message of hope and unity, and then was shot dead. Really, the only important political figure who survived the 60s unscathed was Tricky Dick.
The Sixties were also the time of The Space Race - Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the first manned launches took place in 1961 (First Russian Yuri Gagarin in April, followed closely by Alan Shepherd in early May.) The idea of real people actually entering space for the first time led to a new fascination with Science, and a corresponding boom to Science Fiction. John F. Kennedy ordered the seemingly impossible - putting men on the Moon. After his death, America's resolve was steeled, and the course was set. The route to the Moon was very nearly derailed by the disastrous Apollo 1 fire, claiming the lives of 3 American astronauts in a test. Over a year of unmanned testing went on, trying to repair the mistakes that had caused the fire. A return to space flight in late 1968 led to an epic Christmas flyby of the Moon by Apollo 8, one of the most watched television broadcasts in history. Finally, at the end of the decade, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, fulfilling Kennedy's mission and marking the first time a human being had walked on another celestial body.
That's what you learn watching TV and movies about the Sixties. No Sixties Montage is complete without them. If not set to Hendrix playing "All Along the Watchtower," then "Get Together" by the Youngbloods.
But if you watch TV and movies from the Sixties, it's as if half of that stuff never happened. Some of the Sixties' landmark events, such as the Stonewall Riots in 1969 that kicked off the gay rights movement, were barely acknowledged until the 1990s. Our cultural memory has selected the Grateful Dead and Aretha Franklin from a musical landscape that had a lot more Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass than seems sonically possible; and the squares of the first half of the decade actually dressed a lot cooler than the hippies of the latter half, who frankly come off as a little grimy. A standout example of this is The Andy Griffith Show whose title actor portrays a Southern sheriff and in which not a whisper of the civil rights movement is mentioned.
Nonetheless, the sheer volume of memorable songs, shows, books, and movies from the Sixties is testament to the creativity of its artists. The decade did give us Star Trek: The Original Series, Doctor Who, James Bond (the films, anyway), Spider-Man, Woody Allen, The Graduate, The Prisoner, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Motown the list goes on. Their continued popularity ensures the Sixties will be around for a long time.
See Also: The Forties, The Fifties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, Turn of the Millennium and The New Tens.
Dangerously Short Skirt: Initially knee-length during the dawn of the decade, then rose to 'mini' by mid-decade, then alternatives like 'micro', 'midi', and 'maxi' arrived late in the decade. The rising hemlines reminisced the The Roaring Twenties, when skirts rose or fell just as economy rose or fell.
China Beach was a War/Medical Drama that ran on ABC from 1988 to 1991. It featured a group of characters serving at the real China Beach Rest and Recreation (R & R) station and the fictional 510th Evacuation Hospital during the Vietnam War.
Jimmy Macdonald's Canada, which dealt with the mental breakdown of one of the aforementioned newcasters]] in the face of change
Mad Men, which sort of charts the transition from the '50s to the '60s. The series starts in March 1960, when Dwight D Eisenhower was still President and the cultural vibe was very much '50s. At the end of Season 3, JFK gets shot, and Season 4 (starting on Thanksgiving 1964 and going into 1965) features SCDP in a very Sixties office (much of the furniture and interior design looks like it was done by Eero Saarinen) with at least one character doing some very Sixties things.
Not to be outdone, DC Comics revived many of their characters in this era as well. The Barry Allen Flash, Hal Jordan Green Lantern and Ray Palmer The Atom were new characters sharing only the names and powersets of their predecessors, but many other DC characters were simply retooled for the new era, including their Long Runners like Superman and Batman.
