[...] the Western cultural revolution of the late 1960s. That decade was also the coming of age for the first generation born after 2 world wars. [....] my fellow high-school students were members of the corresponding U.S. generation, known as the Baby Boom.
Television back then was only
black-&-white technology for families of ordinary means, and its programming was limited for people of all means to no more than a
handful of channels, received as radio signals of independently varying quality. Altho' its programs were produced and shown, then as now, primarily to provide eyeballs for commercial messages from sponsors, they did provide masculine role-models that were presumably satisfactory to the U.S.
World-War II Generation, whose great majority had long been back from the war, finding new employment as national prosperity returned, and had settled into rearing young families. The great majority of those families were eager to watch the new electronic wonder.
The t.v. role-models of the time often came with catchy theme songs that many Baby Boomers would recognize, even if not remembering their lyrics, including Francis(?) "
Swamp Fox" Marion (a Southern hero of the War for American Independence);
Davy Crockett and
Jim Bowie (both 19
th-Century U.S. frontiersmen);
The Great Adventure (patriotic treatment of episodes in American History);
Wagon Train; long-running
Gunsmoke,
Bonanza, and numerous other "westerns", loosely "cowboy shows"[
*]; and
Combat (W.W. II U.S. Army in Europe). There were a variety of "cop shows", notably
Dragnet, famous for the admonition to crime-witnesses: "Just the facts, ma'am". The Sheriff Taylor played by Andy Griffith was about as gentle a leading man as was shown on 1960s t.v., but his folksy law-enforcement, years before informing arrestees of their legal rights by-the-book, always resolved the episode's challenges.
The new t.v. genre that would be known as
confrontation comedy was still a short distance off in the future, so none of the leading men were ever portrayed as buffoons, fools, or otherwise socially clueless, unlike on t.v. shows nowadays. Such characters never appeared in more than supporting roles, including Dep. Barney Fife, Gomer Pyle, and Otis the drunk (
Andy Griffith Show) and Festus (
Gunsmoke).
On t.v., re-runs of serials or full-length movies could be viewed, notably those featuring
Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller had won 5 Olympic gold medals total--1924 & 1928--in swimming),
Buck Rogers, and
Flash Gordon (Clarence Linden "Buster" Crabbe (II) won only 1 Olympic gold medal total--1932--in swimming, but he did get to play all 3 of the fictional heroes in 1 film or another). It's arguably an insult to the latter 2 to credit them with leading the way for some uniformed-man-in-space programs on t.v. whose low budgets were embarrassingly obvious. But they, along with 1 of the westerns, served as forerunners for
Star Trek, whose concept was pitched to t.v. executives as "
Wagon Train to the stars".
So keeping in mind that the topic is the "Western European Men [... of ...] like
50 years ago", I wonder: What male role-models could be watched on Western-European t.v. by the young sons of survivors of the World-War II Generations of Germany, Italy, France, or Britain?
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Note
*: "Cowboys" except the Indian scout Tonto, partner for
The Lone Ranger. "Cowboys & Indians" was a popular outdoors role-playing game for boys, esp. when able to don appropriate costumes and use toy weapons.
Topic: Why are Western European Men so Effeminate? (Read 4521 times)