Western Kentucky University - Talisman Yearbook (Bowling Green, KY)

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T 4 GODDBYE ing the myriad problems confronting the country. And what of the culture? Were the '70s a time of exuberance and vitality in the arts or of garishness and sensory overload? You could call it either way, but with numbers, -L ratings and sales always the immediate detenninant, a Jacqueline Suzanne usually won out over a Saul Bellow. It was a decade which saw such forgettable movies as The French Connection and Rocky earn Academy Awards as best pictures. Then, so did such innovative films as The God- father and Annie Hall. In theater what was startling was off-stage, not on: the move was away from New York and Broadway ,.-. 'Q 2 ' THE PICTURE of Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese national police chief, as he executed a Wet Cong officer with a single shot, is a grim reminder of Wetnam. American military involvement there came to an end during the Nixon administration. 4 +int, Press BODIES of Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicide victims, including that of leader Rev. Jim Jones, left, are stacked for loading aboard U.S. aircraft for shipment back to the United States. Religious cults like the Peoples Temple were evident in the last part of the 70s. 24 Decade In review theaters to a lively regional theater circuit ranging from the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to the Kennedy Center in Washington. The quality of what played on these stages was, once again, a matter of conjecture. The fare ranged from spritely Neil Simon comedy to sure-fire hits in revivals of The King and I and My Fair Lady, to some original work like A Chorus Line and Equus The comparisons could go on and on. From Alex Haley and Roots to the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever, entertain- ment and the arts hopscotched from the good to the not so good to the very bad. Perhaps the biggest mystery of the culture and the '70s was yet to be resolved by 1980. As television and computers and a society increasingly used to thinking in terms of technology became more intertwined, the possible results were interesting. Already by the end of the '70s a type of design known as high tech had gained attention. ln homes, games were played on television screens, and computer games like Space Invaders fascinated kids and adults alike. Sound quality became an obsession for some of those with FM radio receivers and record players. Television continued to boom, and offshoots like the Los Angeles Times' Home Box Office were in demand. If the '70s lacked dynamics in the arts in the traditional sense, this blending of technology with entertainment- for good or bad - may be the contribution that historians will trace to the decade of Star Wars and Monday Night Football. Probably the decade's biggest surprise, at least for many Americans, was energy. More than by politics or war or entertainment, Americans were changed by the energy crisis in the '70s. Suddenly OPEC -the Organiza- tion of Petroleum Exporting Countries - became as well known as the FBI or the VFW. Such basic elements of living as warm- ing a house or taking a trip involved much more money than most would have suspec- ted in 1970. Though Americans remained the most mobile people in the world, their style of living was being changed, bit-by-bit, in the decade of gasoline lines, Three-Mile Island and solar houses. Still, it would be misleading to say the country - whether it be Bowling Green, Ky. or San Jose, Calif. - was very different in 1980 than it was in 1970. When the nation celebrated its two hundredth birthday July 4, 1976, the red, white and blue was on display even in more variety and extremes than in 1876. Extremes. Sometimes it seemed that was how we acted in any part of living: at church, at work, outdoors. Some would counter that the '60s were the decade of extremes. But a closer look would find the '70s were in much the same manner. The difference was that the extremes did not clash as often or as visibly in the 1970s as before. The surprises, the tensions, the thrills were all evident in the '70s. Perhaps they had more of a selfish tinge - the disco dancer is probably a better symbol than a civil rights demonstrator - but they were evident nevertheless. Contrary to the early obituaries, the 19705 were an ex- citing period in which to live. Whether the excitement - selfish or collective - was justified, remained to be seen. II

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man of the people, having worked in a fac- tory in his youth. As Life magazine explained soon after John Paul's impressive visit to the United States in 1979, Americans were delighted by a pope who looked as though he could coach the Chicago Bears, but who spoke to them of love. But talk of love was often overshadowed in the '70s, as always, by talk of hate. After the sit-ins and riots of the '60s, confrontation between blacks and whites most often bub- bled to the surface in the next decade over court-ordered busing of children in order to establish racial balance in the schools. ln cities as vastly different as Boston and Louisville, demonstrations against busing deteriorated into violence. With busing came an increase in so-called seg academies - private schools that usually had overwhelmingly white enrollments. It would be no exaggeration to say that Americans became more minority conscious in the '70s. When Allan Bakke applied for admission to the medical school at the Un- iversity of Califomia-Davis and was tumed down, he sued, charging that less-qualified minority applicants were accepted ahead of him. He won his case. ln 1972, members of the American lndian Movement staged a protest takeover of Wounded Knee, S.D,, as a symbol of In- dians' increasing frustration with the dis- crimination they endure in the U.S. Even women, constituting just over half the U.S. population, were a minority in the '70s, so govemment officials scurried to fill jobs with qualified applicants. By decade's end, the most prominent remaining bastions of male supremacy were the U.S. Supreme Court and the presidency itself. The growing clout of women and the transformed roles of men and women together were probably the biggest changes in the 1970s and maybe the century. By 1980, women were serving as govemors fElla Grasso in Connecticut, Dixie Lee Ray in Washingtonl, mayors fJane Byrne in Chicago, Diane Feinstein in San Franciscol and top-flight network TV news correspon- dents fBarbara Walters at ABC, Jessica Savitch at NBCJ. Women had been admit- ted to the military service academies, to astronaut training and, in greater numbers than ever, to the ministry. By decade's end, there were thousands of women firefighters, beat police officers, telephone repairers, train engineers, stockbrokers and airline pilots. The FBl even reported a rise in the number of crimes committed by women. Few of these gains by women occurred with ease. If anything, the women's move- ment spavlmed at least two side battles that remained into the '80s. One was the push by some for a legitimising of women's rights through an amendment to the Constitution. Another even more emotional battle was over a woman's right to control her body. This led to action in such areas as abortion rights, birth control and protection from rape. But much was left unresolved by New Year's Day 1980. Likewise, Americans' long, wrenching in- volvement in Southeast Asia was something few, if any, were able to come to grips with in the '70s. When the decade opened in 1970, a play about a blind Vietnam veteran by David Rabe called Sticks and Bones was still shocking enough to be censored by some CBS television affiliates when a taped version was to be shown. Nearly 10 years later, a spate of war movies - 'The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Apocolypse Now - generated more controversy about the wounds left by the war in Wetnam, Cam- bodia and Laos. From the death of the first American ad- viser in 1961 to the Tet offensive in 1968, Americans associated the Vietnam war with the '60s. But Americans were present and sometimes fighting in Vietnam and Cam- bodia for half the '70s. After personnel at the U.S. embassy in Saigon fled by helicopter in 1975, we tried to forget. But then there was Mayaguez, the fall of Phnom Penh, the inva- sion of Vietnam by China, the fleeing of Viet- namese refugees - the boat people - and no forgetting. At home, into the '80s, were reminders of Vietnam -and the war: the frustrations of veterans, especially those confined to Veterans Administration hospitals, criticism of those who escaped the infamous draft through college defemrentsg the resettle- ment of thousands of Indochinese refugees in towns and cities across the United States. Whether any lessons were learned or any issues resolved by the whole bloody thing remained to be seen. Whether American politicians leamed any lessons from Richard Nixon also remained a question. Just as Vietnam disrupted American politics from abroad, dividing everybody regardless of age, group or label, the scandals, Congressional hearings and court cases that came to be known collec- tively as Watergate left govemment in tur- moil at home. Though the growth of presidential power was only altered, not halted, by Nixon's resignation in August 1974, a numbed dissatisfaction with presi- dents, legislators and politicians in general remained. Nixon's successors, Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter, were unable to capture enough of the public spirit necessary to make any strides in solv- continued on page 24 23 Decade In review

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