America in the Seventies

Around the early 1990's, there began a nostalgic mania for everything 70's. Bell-bottoms, seen as a joke in the 1980's, were back in style. Disco, once the butt of jokes, was popular again. Perhaps the movie "Dazed and Confused" inspired it? But since nobody born after 1975 could remember the 70's, could young people really understand the issues of the time? This book about 1970's America offers fresh and disturbing angles on the decade. One of the examples is the movie "Looking for Mister Goodbar" with Diane Keaton. The author uses this to show a side of the "Sexual Revolution" that college professors and horny college guys speak of frequently. Discussions of the 1970's attitude towards "free sex" is usually positive; it was a decade where consenting adults had the new freedom to explore sexuality. But the author has a darker view. Women could easily put themselves in a dangerous situations, in a decade before AIDS made us wary. He also wonders if the sense of rebellion among American women led them to make poor judgments with men, as does the character in the movie. The protagonist has a respectable job, and by night she seeks dangerous relationships. Is she rebelling against her "good girl" persona? Did rebellion lead naive girls into dangerous lifestyles? Is this a topic we can discuss without looking like male chauvinists? Some look back fondly at the "good old days." Others say there were never any "good old days." 1970's New York was a crime-ridden hellhole, which is why my parents moved to Queens in 1980. But people still look at the 70's as a decade of color, fashion, music, and culture. Sometimes we even feel nostalgic for the grimy, dirty, New York City streets from "Taxi Driver" and "Deathwish," although at the same time you can't disappreciate the reduction in crime in the last 20 years. Today, you see retro-80's clothing in the stores, but for me it brings back no fond memories. Someone born after 1985 won't remember the AIDS scare, Iran, the Cold War, the Crack epidemic, and the things that me feel NO nostalgia for the era. Perhaps nostalgia sometimes blinds us to reality.