The Mid-1970s
1974: “How to Survive a Marriage”
1975: “Ryan’s Hope”
The exact cause and time of death of the Sixties is impossible to determine, but one can pinpoint the burial. It occurred over a one-month span in 1974. On September 8th, Ford granted Nixon a “full, free and absolute” pardon for all crimes committed in office, and on the 25th of the month, A judge overturned Lt. Calley’s conviction for reasons of “prejudicial pretrial publicity”. On November 8th, the court acquitted all eight of the accused Ohio National Guardsmen of charges in the Kent State Massacre.
Boomers dropped out of the counterculture, and turned on and tuned in television. The networks offered (for the first time since “Star Trek” in 1966) decent tube fare in the Seventies. “Mary Tyler Moore” finally presented young, independent, single career women with a believable role model. With “M*A*S*H” (1972), the tube finally admitted that war in Vietnam might not be as much fun and glory as it had promised in the mid-Sixties. “All In the Family” demonstrated to Boomers that one of us could actually co-exist under the same roof with one of them. Even though generational relationships grew tense at times, Archie was a welcome alternative to Joe. Spin-off, “Maude” irritated many male chauvinistic viewers, and that was a good thing. Blacks and Latinos appeared for the first time playing normal, everyday people on “Sanford and Son” and “Chico and the Man” (1974). Television evolved, and seemed almost worth watching.
One glaring deficiency in the pages of TV Guide in the Seventies was a lack of superheroes. Little Boomer boys always intuitively surfed channels for champions to idolize and emulate… from “Captain Midnight” to “Davy Crockett” to “Superman” and “Batman”. But, in the mid-Seventies, they found only two very strange candidates: “The Six Million Dollar Man” and Kane in “Kung Fu”. Both reflected our defeat in Vietnam. Steve Astin, a typical American male, too civilized and flabby to be a superior fighting machine faced recall. Only through superior technology (specifically bionics) could America stand a chance of defeating barbarians in hand-to-hand combat. Reflecting the violent year, Astin’s powers didn’t happen as the result of a dedicated, slow development of God-given talents, but rather, as the result of a fluke accident. Science replaced his damaged flesh and bones with new and improved mechanical marvels. Ebb Tide Boomers (those born in the years 1959 to 1964) grew up wishing that they too, could trade in their inferior human parts. Hollywood took the idea a step further with no-blooded killers (like Yul Bryner) in Westworld, and in Demon Seed (where a computer mates with a human).
TV offered a second hero with Kane… an Asian who easily defeated large groups of inferior Caucasians, with complete focus of mind and body. Kane symbolized the anti-Tarzan. Boomer boys signed up for Kung-Fu and Karate classes and began to watched Kato (Bruce Lee) films with a passion.
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Had Americans become too civilized to survive in a violent world? In Zardoz (1974) and A Boy and His Dog (1975), the impotent ruling class of the near future lured barbarian men into their domain to fertilize their women. The pale, flabby, civilized no longer felt up to the task, and their groups teetered on the edge of extinction.
The big screen offered little hope. A decade of traumatic shocks, from the assassinations of JFK, RFK and King to an outrageous pardon from a non-elected President, left Boomers wondering, “How could things possibly get any worse?” Hollywood enthusiastically answered: Earthquake (1973). “Sensurround” blew off the back doors of the theatre at its premiere), Towering Inferno (1974), The Posiden Adventure, Avalanche, Meteor, Flood, The Swarm (killer bees), Phase IV (killer ants), Juggernaut, Airport sequels, and a disaster spoof, The Big Bus (1976). Movies were bigger than life again. The gang in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) dwarfed the Manson Clan. Jaws (‘76) scared Teen Utopia refugees away from the beach forevermore. Violent crime became Big Business in Godfather (‘72), legitimate Standard Operating Procedure in Godfather: Part II, and finally, in Rollerball (‘75), corporations replaced out-dated governments around the world. Conspiracy became as common as jaywalking in Klute (‘71), Shampoo (‘75), Chinatown (‘74), The Conversation (‘74), Parallex View (‘74) and All the President’s Men (‘76). In Nashville (‘76), the crowd broke out into a sing-along of “It Don’t Worry Me” after an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate, but Taxi Driver (‘76) suggested that maybe they should worry.
The popular Boomer flick genre of the-last-sane-man-in-an-insane-society grew darker in the mid-Seventies. The problem of abnormal behavior diminished, because society now owned a surgical cure for rebels. An inmate in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (‘75) refused heavy sedation and received a lobotomy as an alternative treatment. The Man Who Fell to Earth (‘76) appeared as a superior alien, so logically, and against his will, society arrested and surgically converted him into a normal human being. A final warning to closet counterculture diehards: “Repent or we’ll cut the rebellion right out of you.”
The first accurate and tragic reflection of Vietnam hit the screen in 1974 in the documentary, Hearts and Minds. Powerful images haunted the viewer. A Vietnamese mother mourned her dead baby on the screen as General William Westmoreland explained in the narrative, “Orientals so not value life as we do”. Columbia refused to release the film, but producer, Bert Schneider managed to slip the film out through Rainbow Productions. The film won the Oscar for Best Documentary, but few Americans could bear to watch it at the time. We preferred a closed casket funeral.
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