Something Really Happened: Rethinking the Seventies

Bruce J. Schulman. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001. xvii + 334 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00

According to Bruce Schulman, the American public largely views the 1970s as a "lost" decade, remembered more for cultural icons such as pet rocks, Saturday Night Fever, and platform shoes than for any events of significance. In The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, Schulman aims to correct that view, arguing that the decade was more than a wasteland of silly pop culture fads caught between the social activism of the 1960s and the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Instead, Schulman, the director of American Studies at Boston University, draws from a wide range of primary and secondary sources to argue that the decade transformed American politics and culture in two critical—and several lesser—respects. Most significantly, the South "rose again." During the 1970s, Schulman explains, the balance of political power shifted to thriving Sunbelt states in the South and the West and "the South's historic policy prescriptions—low taxes and scant public services, military preparedness and a preference for state and local government over federal supremacy—came to define the national agenda"
(p. 255). An explosion of public spirituality accompanied this political and ideological shift, especially as conservative Christians emerged as an effective influence outside time-honored denominational spheres. In addition, a wide array of popular forms of entertainment, all of which had their roots in southern culture, gained broad appeal outside the region. According to Schulman, this "southernization" of the United States was closely related to the second great shift of the decade: the triumph of the market as "the favored means for personal liberation and cultural revolution" (p. 257). The 1970s saw a marked decline in trust in the federal government, as many Americans turned instead to the private sphere and what Schulman calls "an unusual faith in the market" (p. 5). In addition to these two major shifts, Schulman also identifies several other important developments during the decade—such as the rise of feminism, the development of new voices in music and film, the growth of identity movements around ethnicity, sexuality, race, and age, and the rise of New Age religious ideas and personal growth—that do not always jibe with his larger conclusions. To his credit, however, Schulman creates a coherent and lively synthesis without ignoring the sometimes messy contradictions of the period.

The Seventies is divided into three sections: "We're Finally on Our Own," 1969-1976, "Runnin' on Empty," 1976-1979, and "Hip to Be Square," 1978-1984. Each section title refers to a popular song lyric of the era: the first to Crosby, Still, Nash and Young's "Four Dead in Ohio," a 1970 paean to the students killed at Kent State; the second to Jackson Browne's 1977 album documenting the weariness of being a musician on the road; and the third to Huey Lewis and the News' Top Ten single from 1986. While Schulman anchors each of these three sections with an excellent chapter on presidential politics (Nixon, Carter, and Reagan, respectively), the popular song lyrics demonstrate his eagerness and his ability to tell a synthetic story that includes cultural and social developments. "We're Finally on Our Own," in addition to the chapter on Nixon, includes chapters on the shift in national discourse and public policy from integration to diversity, the search for spiritual and personal meaning—what Schulman terms "plugging in"—and an examination of the growing cultural and political importance of the Sunbelt on a national level. "Runnin' on Empty" starts with the Carter election and the growing "crisis of confidence" the president and the country faced in the late 1970s. Then, Schulman looks at rebellion and authority in popular culture, before closing the section with a chapter on the "battle of the sexes," including a discussion of the impact of feminism. "Hip to be...