After Aquarius Dawned

Almost since the 1960s, participants, commentators, and historians (and those who are all three) have been revisiting the legacies of the 1960s. Part of this revisionism has been a timely surge in scholarship of the 1970s. Bruce J. Schulman, Robert Self, and Jefferson Cowie, among others, have ably demonstrated that the 1970s are worthy of consideration—that many of the developments we attribute to the 1960s (social movements) or that we experienced in the 1980s (neoliberal economic policies and their attendant politics) either emerged or were solidified during that decade. Cultural developments are critical to understanding the sea change and are difficult to track. Natasha Zaretsky and Susan J. Douglas, whom Judy Kutulas cites as models for her own scholarship, have laid important groundwork, and After Aquarius Dawned is a welcome addition to this body of literature, taking up inquiries begun by Zaretsky and Douglas, and by Thomas Frank (Conquest of Cool, 1997), Sam Binkley (Getting Loose, 2007), and Fred Turner (From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 2006). Kutulas traces “attitude shifts ... accompanying liberation” (p. 11). The book begins by examining how the popularity of singer-songwriters such as James Taylor and Carole King reflected changing attitudes toward love and sex. Subsequent chapters consider men's leisure-suit fashion and television (the Mary Tyler Moore series [1970–1977], the Roots series [1977] and television programming with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender themes and subjects). With each case study, Kutulas shows how 1960s ideals of independence and equality (gathered together as the titular “Aquarius”) were refashioned and reworked for mainstream consumption

Art history · Counterculture · Lesbian · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Scholarship · Sociology · American Political and Social Dynamics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies