U of Ideas of General Interest ó June 1998 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor
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AMERICAN HISTORY
The year 1948 spawned prosperity and affluence, scholar says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ó 1948 ìset the engines goingî for the rest of 20th century America, according to George Douglas, the author of nine books dealing with U.S. culture and history.
In ìPostwar America: 1948 and the Incubation of Our Timesî (Krieger), Douglas, a professor of English at the University of Illinois, paints a vivid portrait of what he views as a year that became ìa gateway to a new era of prosperity and affluence.î A sudden shifting of gears after World War II into a period of boundless commercial activity and a national ìsupreme self-confidence,î Douglas explains, produced consumerism, and along with it such major cultural markers as television, the transistor, the LP record and suburbia. 1948 was, in fact, the ìseed yearî of the sexual revolution, the civil-rights movement, witch hunts, the military-industrial complex and the ìmeî culture, the professor argues.
ìThe world in which we are now living took shape very rapidly, almost as if by combustion, in the few years that immediately followed World War II,î Douglas wrote. ìWe were a much different people before the war, hounded by completely different demons, bound to a wholly different social order. What we are today we became with great suddenness in those years of boundless optimism and material prosperity. One of our problems perhaps has been that the postwar world burst upon us so suddenly and so powerfully that we never had an opportunity to reflect upon it.î
Douglas devotes chapters to the age of affluence, the communications revolution, the American society, the sexual revolution and the political realm. Among other things, he explores the rise of civil aviation, the decline of womenÃs status, and the role of the Kinsey Report in opening up ìa kind of free marketplace of sexual ideas and practices,î making sex ìa kind of consumer product in America.î
To be sure, not everything the year produced was positive. Inflation was ìlike a pebble in the shoe,î Douglas wrote. In fact, there were several undercurrents of angst. Douglas likens the fruitful but skittish and unstable time to human adolescence.
ìWhat we experienced was the shock of recognition, like an adolescent first discovering his body. It is a shock to the system, a pleasant shock, but still traumatic. People felt that things were going well, that the United States of America was the greatest country in the world. There was euphoria.î
But that euphoria was laced with another anxiety, Douglas said ñ ìthe idea that great power is a tremendous burden. Perhaps this was the time when it sank into our collective consciousness that there was no easy management of the new America. Where once we seemed to manage our own destiny it now seemed to be slightly beyond our grasp. I think thatÃs what weÃve lived with ever since.î
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