Here it is, the start of a new year—a perfect time to talk about a different year: 1968! It isn’t just an arbitrary choice of a year. It came up because my partner and I finally made it to the Boulder History Museum to see the exhibit, "1968," which ended yesterday. Sorry if you missed it. The pictures below (except the cover of Time magazine) were taken there.
 |
| Boulder History Museum |
We’re both amateur historians anyhow, and we’re especially intrigued by this era and this amazing year. Anyone who experienced it can’t help but remember, and it all happened during our "coming of age" years. So seeing it displayed in the museum was sort of nostalgic and sort of painful. Just like the year 1968: complicated, expansive, and difficult.
As I was writing this, I found myself reflecting on the meaning of 1968. That took me on a rather long cultural / historical jaunt that you may or may not want to join me for. If you do, you’ll find that part a few paragraphs down (“1968 … Reminiscing”). If you don’t, the next few paragraphs are about the Boulder History Museum exhibit—which is its own good story.
Visiting the museum exhibit about this remarkable year was … well, remarkable. The walls were full of memorabilia from that time—informational signs were posted alongside album covers and posters, newspaper articles and classic photographs. (Interestingly some of the iconic photos weren’t there: Martin Luther King’s aides leaning over him and pointing in the direction of his assassin; Bobby Kennedy lying on the floor of a Los Angeles hotel kitchen; the “police riot” outside the Democratic Party convention in Chicago). The mix was what you'd expect. But I had forgotten some things, or forgotten that they happened in that year (how many thing can happen in one year?). It was strangely poignant viewing it all in one space and time, from the perspective of over 40 years.
In addition to the materials I anticipated, there was quite a lot of information about Boulder in 1968 (and the years right around that). This city was home to a lot of activism, as were most university towns around the nation. Boulder had its share of sit-ins and occupations, its share of roadblocks and protests, and its share of the “counter culture” buzz. This isn’t surprising, of course. Boulder already had a liberal reputation in the 1960s. Still, it was fun to see how this pivotal year played out right here.
 |
| Allen Ginsburg calms an anti-war crowd in downtown Boulder |
 |
| Boulder anti-war protesters block US 36 |
So, here at the start of 2012, I find myself wondering: if people did a museum exhibit about "2011," what would they include? Roadblocks again, but this time in the halls of Congress. Space trips, but this time saying goodbye to the fleet of shuttles that were born of the space program (which was launched by President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, with the explicit goal of reaching the moon in that decade). Human rights movements, this time on behalf of the 99% of us against the richest 1%. Campus protests, complete with tear gas, but this time over financial inequality at the hands of the hyper-wealthy.
Nineteen sixty-eight was a perverse genius of a year: a masterpiece of shatterings. The year had heroic historical size, and everything … seemed momentous.
1968 … Reminiscing
I was in graduate school in 1968. I remember the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Bobby Kennedy. I remember the anti-war movement, the marches, the sit-ins, the teach-ins (which I participated in a bit), and the occupations of university buildings (which I didn’t). I remember astronauts orbiting the moon and the first pictures of the blue marble earth seen from space. I remember when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Especially, I remember the sense of promise and of danger. Youth were on the move, and that was good. The society was in upheaval, and that was scary. I was in graduate school, and I missed much of it.
But I was very aware of the mood of the times. Things were different; I was sure of that. We were different. We had a different vision, a better one. If the old guard would just get out of the way, we could change the world. It was the classic, idealistic, and self-affirming conviction of adolescents. But this time, we had an advantage: we were the baby-boom generation. Our sheer numbers gave us huge visibility. It was easy to believe that what we wanted would finally prevail.
It is true that this generation was extremely visible and vocal. Boomers were also extremely active. They swelled the ranks of the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the modern environmental movement, and the movements for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, disability rights, Chicano/Hispanic/Latino rights, and elders rights. Most who didn’t participate in these things in 1968 knew about them. Of course, lots of folks didn't pay attention. Others knew, but were preoccupied with their own lives. Many of these people, too, were sure that their generation was special, was uniquely idealistic and daring.
But 1968 was not only about political activism. It was also a cultural whirlpool, drenched in ambivalence. Dreams of a better future stood side by side with longing for a safer, stable, known past.
 |
| The rock musical "Hair" promised "the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" |
 |
| "The Graduate," where we heard "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio..." |
The rock musical “Hair,” whose soundtrack was released that year, promised “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”—the voice of youth imagining a new and far better age, if only because we would inhabit it.
That same year, on the soundtrack for the movie "The Graduate," Paul Simon lyrics pleaded, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you”—the voice of those yearning for the certainty, the stability of some vaguely defined past moment, past hero.
In 1988, the cover of Time magazine recalled the iconic year. A sense of simultaneous terror and promise weaves through the cover article by Lance Morrow:
1968: Like a knife blade, the year severed past from future
Nineteen sixty-eight had the vibrations of earthquake about it. America shuddered. History cracked open…
Nineteen sixty-eight was more than a densely compacted parade of events … [It was] to some extent a war between the past and the future, and even, for an entire society, a violent struggle to grow up.”
For years, I assigned that Time article in my Psychology of Adolescence course. Not because it talked about adolescence (although it did), but because it talked about a national reckoning, that “violent struggle to grow up.” 1968 seemed to mirror the invigorating, scary, idealistic, painful process of adolescence. The nation was seeking its identity, trying to define who it would be, what it would believe.
1968 was the coming of age of the nation. And I was there, just coming of age myself. I imagine that 40 years from now, history will have something to say about 2011. But it’s hard to imagine that it will match Morrow’s description of 1968:
One is sometimes incredulous now at 1968, not only at the astonishing sequence of events but at the intensity, the energy in the air... Revolutionary bombast [and an] elegy for something in America that had got lost, some sense of national innocence and virtue.
And the music. What message will people glean from the music of 2011?
No comments:
Post a Comment