Seen as a land of sunshine and opportunity, the Golden State was a
mecca for the post-World War II generation, and dreams of the
California good life came to dominate the imagination of many
Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Nowhere was this more evident
than in the explosion of California youth images in popular
culture. Disneyland, television shows such as
The Mickey Mouse
Club,
Gidget and other beach movies, the music of the
Beach Boys--all these broadcast nationwide a lifestyle of carefree,
wholesome fun supposedly enjoyed by white, middle-class, suburban
young people in California.
Tracing the rise of the California teen as a national icon, Kirse
May shows how idealized images of a suburban youth culture soothed
the nation's postwar nerves while denying racial and urban
realities. Unsettling challenges to this mass-mediated picture
began to arise in the mid-1960s, however, with the Free Speech
Movement's campus revolt in Berkeley and race riots in Watts. In
his 1966 campaign for the governorship of California, Ronald Reagan
transformed the backlash against the "dangerous" youths who fueled
these actions into political triumph. As May notes, Reagan's
victory presaged a rising conservatism across the nation.