Popular Culture
Music
Popular music shaped the culture of the 1960s, with artists like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones expressing young people's spirit of rebellion. Motown and R&B musicians like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown made some of the era's most enduring music, and the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane reflected the counterculture's psychedelic elements. Of course, other musical styles also flourished, whether it was the surf rock of the Beach Boys or the country music of Glenn Campbell and Johnny Cash.
Although the 1960s is especially remembered for its protest music, one of the decade's most popular singles was the pro-Vietnam War "Ballad of the Green Berets." In the 1970s, a greater variety of genres topped the charts, from singer-songwriters, hard rock, funk, and country to disco, which emerged as a major trend later in the decade.
1970: The Doors are scheduled to play at Fairfield U, but under pressure from the town, the administration cancels the performance, fearing crowd disturbances
1970: Powder Ridge Rock Festival in Middlefield, Connecticut – planned as a major event featuring Sly and the Family Stone, Fleetwood Mac, Melanie, Mountain, James Taylor, Joe Cocker, the Allman Brothers, Little Richard, Van Morrison, Jethro Tull, Janis Joplin, Chuck Berry, among others - was cancelled by a legal injunction. 30,000 ticketholders showed up anyway and a few bands, including Goodhill from Fairfield, entertained the crowd, using a generator from an ice cream truck for power. Drug use was rampant at this “people’s festival.”
Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives (1975) used the genre of a horror film to question resistance to women’s changing roles at the height of the women’s movement. Moving with her husband and children from New York City to the “postcard pretty” suburban town of Stepford, the main character discovers that the women of the town are unusually contented housewives who seem to have few interests beyond cleaning, baking cookies, and pleasing their husbands. These “Stepford wives” turn out to be robots who are acting the part of the happy suburban housewife better than the real women could.
The film was based on the 1972 novel by Ira Levin (who had already achieved success with the horror movie Rosemary’s Baby). It warned of how easily men could turn against women’s increased freedom and power, and of the appeal of the unreal ideal of the happy housewife depicted in the era’s advertisements.
The Stepford Wives was filmed on location in Fairfield (Greenfield Hill Congregational Church is featured), as well as in Westport, Weston, Redding, Darien, Norwalk, and New York City. Visit "Creating Community" to watch an excerpt from the film on the display.