Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960-1980

432 Pages·2005·1.822 MB·English

by  Axel Schildt, Detlef Siegfried

Between Marx and Coca-Cola

Between Marx and
Coca-Cola
Youth Cultures in Changing European
Societies, 1960–1980
Edited by
Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
Sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Cologne
First published in 2006 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2006 Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried
First paperback edition published in 2007
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Between Marxand Coca-Cola : Youth Cultures in Changing European
Societies, 1960–1980 / edited by Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 10: 1-84545-009-4 (hbk.) -- 1-84545-333-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 13: 978-1-84545-009-0 (hbk.) -- 978-1-84545-333-6 (pbk.)
1. Youth--Europe. 2. Young consumer--Europe. 3. Youth--Europe--
Political activity. 4. Popular culture--Europe. 5. Subculture--Europe.
6. Social change--Europe. I. Schildt, Axel. II. Siegfried, Detlef.
HQ799.E9B47 2005
305.235'094'09045--dc22
2004055425
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 10: 1-84545-009-4 ISBN 13: 978-1-84545-009-0 hardback
ISBN 10: 1-84545-333-6 ISBN 13: 978-1-84545-333-6 paperback
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction
Youth, Consumption, and Politics in the Age of Radical Change 1
Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried
Part I: Politics and Culture in the “Golden Age”
1 Youth Culture and the Cultural Revolution of the
Long Sixties 39
Arthur Marwick
2 Understanding 1968: Youth Rebellion, Generational
Change and Postindustrial Society 59
Detlef Siegfried
3 American Mass Culture and European Youth Culture 82
Rob Kroes
Part II: Leisure Time and New Consumerism
4 Music, Dissidence, Revolution, and Commerce:
Youth Culture between Mainstream and Subculture 109
Peter Wicke
5 The Triumph of English-Language Pop Music:
West German Radio Programming 127
Konrad Dussel
6 Across the Border: West German Youth Travel to
Western Europe 149
Axel Schildt
7 Imperialism and Consumption: Two Tropes in
West German Radicalism 161
Uta G. Poiger
vi Contents
Part III: Political Protest
8 “Burn, ware-house, burn!” Modernity, Counterculture,
and the Vietnam War in West Germany 175
Wilfried Mausbach
9 Youth and the Antinuclear Power Movement in Denmark
and West Germany 203
Henrik Kaare Nielsen
10 “Youth Enacts Society and Somebody Makes a Coup”:
The Danish Student Movement between Political and
Lifestyle Radicalism 224
Steven L.B. Jensen
11 A Struggle for Radical Change? Swedish Students
in the 1960s 239
Thomas Etzemüller
Part IV: Gender Transformations
12 Between Coitus and Commodification: Young West German
Women and the Impact of the Pill 261
Dagmar Herzog
13 Boy Trouble: French Pedophiliac Discourse of the 1970s 287
Julian Bourg
14 “More than a dance hall, more a way of life”:
Northern Soul, Masculinity and Working-class
Culture in 1970s Britain 313
Barry Doyle
Part V: Cultures, Countercultures, Subcultures
15 Utopia and Disillusion: Shattered Hopes of the
Copenhagen Counterculture 333
Thomas Ekman Jørgensen
16 Juvenile Left-wing Radicalism, Fringe Groups, and
Anti-psychiatry in West Germany 353
Franz-Werner Kersting
17 The End of Certainties: Drug Consumption and Youth
Delinquency in West Germany 376
Klaus Weinhauer
Select Bibliography 399
Notes on Contributors 405
Index 409
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all those who contributed to the production of
this volume – primarily those who presented papers, chaired sessions and
participated in the discussions, at a stimulating conference in Copen-
hagen, May 2002. Furthermore, we very much appreciate those authors
who subsequently joined this project. In particular, we are grateful to the
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Cologne, for their generous financial support
without which the conference could not have taken place nor this vol-
ume been published. We are also indebted to the Goethe-Institut and
the German embassy in Copenhagen for their cooperation and hospi-
tality. Hans Sørensen was a great help during the course of organizing
the conference. Nora Helmli, Julia Kramer, Olaf Kruithoff, Birte Lotz,
Peter Pritchard, Bernd Trommer, and Wayne Yung provided essential
assistance during the translation and editing of the manuscript.
Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried
Hamburg/Copenhagen, December 2004

Introduction
Youth, Consumption, and
Politics in the Age of
Radical Change
Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried
In his movie Masculin—Féminin or: The Children of Marx and Coca-
Cola—a 1965 French-Swedish coproduction—Jean-Luc Godard depicts
the complicated love affair of two “children of the 1960s,” a young man
with social interests and a young female pop vocalist, who regularly fre-
quented Parisian coffee houses. The movie, blending fictional and doc-
umentary elements, dealt with the problem of navigating in a world in
which politics involved individuals more than before and in which con-
sumption on an unprecedented level opened up a myriad of opportuni-
ties to pursue one’s life. The movie succeeded as a political commentary
of its time and as a document of an age because, in a delightful manner,
it pointedly gave a name to one of its time central spheres of tension.
The paradigm “Marx” represented the renaissance of the political sphere,
“Coca-Cola” stood for the growing importance of consumption—both
images and icons of, above all, youth culture. In a handy title Godard
integrated what many contemporaries had discerned as an evident char-
acteristic of the time: that political transformations and changes within
the culture of everyday life were evolving simultaneously and were merg-
ing with each other. In a report of the West German news magazine Der
Spiegel, it was apparent that contemporaries were having a hard time
coming to terms with this unfamiliar combination:
2 Introduction
The spectacle is confusing. Participants are a consuming and a demon-
strating, a narcissistically self-involved and an activist engaging youth,
Chelsea-girls and Red Guards, Rudi Dutschke and Twiggy.1
The reception of medially promoted youth idols—the Beatles for
instance —and the international proliferation of new patterns of expres-
sion—the consumption of music for instance—as well as students’ new
forms of political protest (“1968”) were considered as core elements of a
new youth culture. Increasing focus on consumption and a coinciding
increase of politicization—a relationship full of contradictions and ten-
sions—were the unmistakable characteristics of the 1960s and the 1970s.
Contemporaries of the period observed a particularly striking contradic-
tion in this situation, which would play a large part in increasing social
tensions during these two decades: on the one hand, youth were striving
towards individual self-actualization like never before (because consumer
society was presenting an unprecedented variety of possibilities towards
achieving this goal); on the other hand, the rapid expansion of consumer
choices (as touted by the industry) was developing into the guiding prin-
ciple of mainstream life. This in turn was often seen as “manipulative,”
not least by the tone-setting cliques of the future elites.
Subcultures such as the hippies embodied a protest against main-
stream society, which perpetuated the endless cycle of work and con-
sumption. At the same time, members of these subcultures were using
elements of consumer culture in the creation and promotion of their
own styles. Many of these elements were in themselves neither political
nor apolitical, but rather simply ingredients of a lifestyle revolution; as
such, however, they became loaded with definite political subtexts. The
consumer industry would then co-opt these subcultural impulses, mak-
ing them available to a much larger audience of young people. In this
way, subcultures infiltrated mass culture; but the subcultures regarded
this as a commercial appropriation of originally oppositional styles,
which destroyed their revolutionary potential. Therefore, new deviant
styles had to be developed, to stand outside the established ones. This
confrontation between mass culture and counterculture fostered an
ongoing process of innovation. This contradictory state, which is still
characteristic today, was particularly pronounced during its initial phase
of evolution and, in numerous countries, it was at the center of vehe-
ment and controversial debates. Therefore, within this tense relationship
between consumption and political interest—between overbearance by
the cultural industry and self-realization—a transnational scope of prob-
lems becomes discernable, which is suitable as a backdrop for a compre-
hensive assessment of the various societies.