Monday 17 December 2012


‘The media love publishing stories on different generations of humans. Every time a new set of teenagers comes of age, countless authors expound upon what makes this one different from the last. Gen X, the disenchanted, have been replaced by Gen Y, hard workers who don’t remember a world before the Internet. Yet the baby boomers are always discussed as a thing of the past, not a force that shapes the present, let alone the future. Why should we care about them?’

Youth Culture Vultures >>> Check out this review of my book BOOM! - A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022 at 

http://popanth.com/review/boom-a-baby-boomer-memoir-1947-2022-by-ted-polhemus/

And for the best Culture Soup and Hot Buttered Humanity bookmark the excellent popanth.com for a truly global view of contemporary lifestyles.

 Popular anthropology for everyone. Exploring the familiar and the strange, demystifying and myth busting human culture, biology and behaviour in all times and places. Myths, music, art, archaeology, language, food, festivals, fun.’

>>> http://popanth.com/

Tuesday 4 December 2012


This is interesting. A crate label from 1940s America reminds us that the notion of 'teenagers' pre-dates the 'youth culture' revolution of the 50s and 60s. I'm guessing that 'Western Vegetables' were those grown in the sunny climes of California and that were new to old school, East Coast cooking. Interesting too that here we have evidence that there were Don Draper pioneers even in the 40s making a connection between adventurous teens and 'new' products - here even striving to make vegetables trendy.

I was born in the USA in 1947 so have no memories of advertising or youth culture in the 40s but my book BOOM! - A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022 has much to report about the further development of youth culture in the 50s, 60s and 70s. As well as some ruminations on Gen X in the 90s and Gen Y today

News flash >>> The Amazon Kindle version of BOOM! will be free to download on Thursday Dec 6 and Friday Dec 7, 2012

>>>For the free download go to the url below and check that the Kindle price is marked as $0.00


This new Kindle version of BOOM! - as well as the timewarping 1947-2013 Timeline - has 125+ links to the best films, music, TV and documentaries explored in this social history of popular culture + 10 iconic images not available in the print version.

*Don't have a Kindle? Me too. No problemo: get a free Kindle For PC/Mac reader download at Kindle For PC or Kindle For Mac. Works great and as well as books like BOOM! there are lots of free books available at Amazon every day.

More info about BOOM! >

Sex, drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll 
. . . and vanilla cream pie served by that waitress in The Neptune Diner who lives on in so many Tom Waits songs. 

Straight from the fridge – I Love Lucy meets The Sopranos in The Twilight Zone. 

From Elvis to Johnny Rotten, Neptune, New Jersey (with Greetings from Asbury Park) to Swinging London, Hipsters to . . . today’s, er, Hipsters. 

Some say ‘it all happened in the 60s’ but in
BOOM! anthropologist and social historian Ted Polhemus shows how the roots of our (post) modern age penetrate back to the heady years just after WWII.

If you like Mad Men, Blade Runner, American Graffiti, Blow-up, The Wild One . . . wish you’d caught Monk at Minton’s Playhouse in 1947, Springsteen at The Stone Pony in 1975 or The Pistols in London 1976 (or not) . . .

Includes 
- Sources & Inspiration: Music, Film, TV, Fiction, Non-fiction
- Do the timewarp with the 1947-2012 Timeline
-
Fire up your Kindle: 125+ music/film/TV/doc video links throughout

 


Tuesday 18 September 2012


??? TO PUT THE HIP CAT AMONGST THE HIPSTER PIGEONS 
. . . A QUOTE FROM MY NEW BOOK BOOM! >>>
‘I suspect that those who would scoff the loudest at such a questioning of the intrinsic and eternal value of ‘youth culture’, are not themselves young. From what I see and hear there is nothing which puts off and irritates today’s adolescents more than when they are specifically targeted as ‘youth’ – when products and advertisements are all too cack-handedly directed at some magic kingdom/ghetto fenced in by age. No, here again what seems to be the case is that presumptions written in conceptual concrete during the Golden Age of Youth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, have been placed beyond doubt by Oldies who themselves cannot conceive of life defined by any parameters other than age.
The evidence of this inability to move beyond the presumed glories of youth and to grow-up litters the landscape of life at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st. Media pundits and market researchers have identified the ‘Kidult’ as a (if not the) decade defining figure of the Noughties: middle-aged-plus grown men and women who pounce on any and all innovations favored by the young and, like those who would steal candy from babies, make them their own. Oldies who ought to know better on skateboards, wearing back to front baseball caps, wolfing down tabs of Ecstasy, their iPods blaring the latest Grime or Lady Gaga. And it’s hard to find an ad for pensions or life assurance which doesn’t feature leather-clad Boomers roaring past on Harley Davidsons or bungee jumping grannies wearing Hip Hop approved upmarket label tracksuits. In the 21st century youth culture is everywhere – except perhaps amongst those who are actually not yet old enough to be Kidults (but then, as they always used to say, youth is too good to be wasted on the young).’

More BOOM! for your bucks > My new book BOOM! - A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022 is now available in an Amazon Kindle version >Buy it  at BOOM!
or check your local Amazon site.

Only $6.00 this new Kindle version of BOOM! - as well as the timewarping 1947-2013 Timeline as previously - has 125+ links to the best films, music, TV and documentaries explored in this social history of popular culture.

Don't have a Kindle? Me too. No problemo: get a free Kindle For PC/Mac reader download at Kindle For PC or Kindle For Mac. Works great and as well as books like BOOM! which you can buy cheaply and instantly and then keep and read as you want there are lots of free books available at Amazon. 

Friday 8 June 2012


Worn through: My jeans from 1969 + wanted to let you know that there is a really interesting review of my new book BOOM! - a baby boomer memoir, 1947-2022 on the always-worth-a-look website wornthrough.com >>>  Check it out at >>>

Friday 4 May 2012

Always worth a look, www.wornthrough.com has served as a hub for ideas from those who, like me, look at dress, style and appearance from a social and cultural perspective. Monica Sklar founded wornthrough.com way back in 2007. Now there's an interview with me which touches on youth culture, streetstyle and much else besides. Have a look at http://www.wornthrough.com/2012/04/30/editors-interview-ted-polhemus/

Wednesday 25 April 2012

'Street style anthropology' is what it says on the tin and that's what you get at http://urbanfieldnotes.blogspot.com - Philadelphia style. As told in the 'Sex', 'Drugs' and 'Rock 'N' Roll' chapters of my book BOOM! I spent the last of my teenage years in Philly while studying anthropology at Temple University. As well as documenting street style in Philly, Brent Luvaas' site also provides a fantastic listing of and links to street style blogs from around the world . . . and an interview with me, Ted Polhemus. What more could you want?

Thursday 19 April 2012

The dazzling, dynamic and delightful DJ duo Amber and Nisha who together make up Broken Hearts (surely the world's most stylish DJs) have invited me onto their weekly JazzFM radio show 'Peppermint Candy'. This goes out on JazzFM tonight April 19 between 6-7pm (GMT) but after that it is available whenever you want to listen on the JazzFM site.
Nisha, Amber and I will be talking about Zooties, the 40s, Jazz (natch), influence of the baby boom, street style, Hipsters, and, as always on this show, there's some great music including 'Swing' gems to get your foot tapping. 
Be there or be square.
http://www.jazzfm.com/peppermintcandy

Monday 16 April 2012

Does 'youth culture' still exist? The creation of middle-aged ad men in the mid 50s, perhaps it was always more fiction than fact. Discussion about this and more in Eve Dawoud's new interview with me at ......http://isysarchive.tv/boom/

Thursday 22 March 2012
















DON DRAPER AIN'T NO BABY BOOMER

by Ted Polhemus

I don't often go to the pub but the other night I did and someone I know vaguely, aware that I have just written and published a book about baby boomers, remarked 'You must be excited that that ultimate baby boomer Don Draper is coming back on the tele'. 'Yes', I replied, 'looking forward to the return of Mad Men but whatever gave you the idea that Don D is a baby boomer? The man was born in the 30s or even the 20s!'

1926 according to Wikipedia - I just checked. The post war 'baby boom' began in 1946 and really exploded in 1947 - the year I and a heck of a lot of other 'Boomers' were born (3.9 million of us in the USA alone to be more precise). Don Draper was what might be called a 'Pre-Boomer'. When series 1 of Mad Men kicks off in 1960, Don would have been in his 30s (like my father) while I and the other first wave of Boomers would be just entering our teenage years.

The distinction is important because, ironically, as it turns out so much of what we Baby Boomers are given credit for/slagged off for was actually down to Pre-Boomers like Don Draper.

Indeed, the amazing thing is that virtually everyone who razzled and dazzled in the infamous 60s was born during or before - often, like Don, long before - WWII: John Lennon (born 1940), Frank Zappa (born 1940), Bob Dylan (born 1941), Jimi Hendrix (born 1942), Brian Wilson (born 1942), Mick Jagger (born 1943), Pete Townshend (born 1945), Jack Kerouac (born 1922), Timothy Leary (born 1920), Andy Warhol (born 1928), Ken Kesey (born 1935), Elvis Presley (born 1935). So, interestingly, a demographically small generation (especially tiny for those born in the war years) had a huge, disproportionate impact. Even at Woodstock in 1969, all those zillions of Boomers who claim to have been there would have been sitting on their blue-jeaned butts in the audience rather than up their on stage changing the world.

As Hippies we Boomers chanted 'Never Trust Anyone Over 35' yet, in truth, most of our heroes were approaching or well past that age and, even more importantly, all those things which we Baby Boomers like to see as our generation's unique invention were, in point of fact, created before we were born or during the 50s when we were pre-teen children: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Modern Jazz, Surfing, Recreational Drugs, Let It All Hang Out Do It In the Road Sex, The Electric Guitar, Same Sex Sex, Oral Sex, Experimental Cinema, Streetstyle, Subcultures, Gender Bending, The Counter Culture and so forth and so on, were all rolled out of the factory in the 50s (or long before that) by lone, courageous/mad pioneers who were themselves born long before WWII had even started let alone finished.

Some months ago a student of mine in London exclaimed 'It must have been so cool in the 60s - everything happened in the 60s'. Well, actually, all the really world-changing stuff happened in the 50s - that decade which is so universally dismissed as boring, staid and uneventful. Perhaps most importantly, that 'youth culture' with which we Boomers are forever associated was actually rock & rolling and being target marketed to by the likes of Don Draper and his Madison Avenue predecessors by the mid 50s when even the oldest Boomers like me were still selling Boy Scout/Girl Scout cookies.

There's a slick video doing the rounds at the moment ('We All Want To Be Young' - on Youtube - do we? Not me thank you) which sings the praises of 'youth' as the inevitable wellspring of all things with it, innovative and happening. It's fun - lots of cool looking kids in tight jeans with designer tattoos doing groovy stuff on skateboards and laptops. There's a historical element which argues that my baby boom generation 'invented what came to be known as 'the youth lifestyle'')The implication is that thus it was always - and will always - be: with the hip kids leading the way and the middle aged and oldies trying to keep up as best they can.

Yet when we actually go back to the birth of 'youth culture' in the mid 50s we find (shockingly) that this Brave New World was being forged by adults. When 'Rock Around the Clock' leapt to #1 in both the US and UK music charts in 1954 Bill Haley was 29. Jack Kerouac was 27 when he started writing On the Road in 1949. Even when the Baby Boomers did, finally, become the future of Rock/Rock & Roll - David Bowie in 1972, Bruce Springsteen in 1975 - they were in their mid twenties.

In the same year as 'Rock Around the Clock' exploded onto the pop charts - 1954 - Don and Betty Draper had their first child - the (sometimes) lovely Sally. So it's Sally rather than Don or Betty who is the Baby Boomer and, now as series 5 shifts gears into the second half of the 60s, the interesting thing will be to see how cool dude Don will deal with the freaky, far out, freak out, psychedelic, wear flowers in your hair era which is about to explode in his bunker like that bomb in Korea. For the 60s were two very distinct decades for the price of one: 1960-1966 were cool school, modern and suited the like of Don Draper to a tea. But '66 was the pivotal year of a pivotal decade - when I traded my Modern Jazz Quartet style suit for bell-bottom flairs and a hand-knitted Native American style headband; when I and a zillion other Boomers smoked our first joint; when we resolved to 'Make Love Not War'. Somehow I don't think Don is going to like it.

So just to be clear and to put the cat amongst the pigeons:

- it was the 50s rather than the 60s which changed the world

- these changes were brought about by Pre-Boomers when Baby Boomers like me, David B and Bruce S were still kids

- while there are exceptions (early Punk, early Hip Hop, arguably a lot of computer/internet/gaming stuff today), teenagers have typically been passive consumers rather than wellsprings of pop culture creativity.

There, I said it.

Or do you disagree?

(BTW, the real, fictional 'ultimate baby boomer' would be Tony Soprano.)

Good News - My new book BOOM! - A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022 is now available in ibook digital format (for iPad, iPhone, iPod)from iTunes [search: Ted Polhemus] and the print version is now also available from www.amazon.com.

So . . .

if you want the paperback print version

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus

or www.amazon.com [search: Ted Polhemus] or your local Amazon site (e.g. www.amazon.co.uk)

if you want the digital download for Adobe Digital Editions http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus

[note: Adobe Digital Editions is a free download from http://www.adobe.com/ap/products/digitaleditions/ and in my experience works very well. Download and install the free Adobe Digital Editions before you purchase and download the book]

if you want the ibook digital version for use on your iPad/iPhone/iPod >> Apple iTunes [search: Ted Polhemus]

Sunday 19 February 2012


Good News - My new book BOOM! - A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022 is now available in ibook digital format (for iPad, iPhone, iPod)from iTunes [search: Ted Polhemus]

So . . .

if you want the paperback print version http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus

if you want the digital download for Adobe Digital Editions http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus

[note: Adobe Digital Editions is a free download from http://www.adobe.com/ap/products/digitaleditions/ and in my experience works very well. Download and install the free Adobe Digital Editions before you purchase and download the book]

if you want the ibook digital version for use on your iPad/iPhone/iPod >> Apple iTunes [search: Ted Polhemus]

Also . . . 2 extracted stories from BOOM! can be seen at http://www.babyboomers.com/boom-by-popculture-anthropologist-ted-polhemus/14172/ and http://www.babyboomers.com/orbiting-neptune-by-popculture-anthropologist-ted-polhemus/14233/