1970s Van
Arleen Jerdee
Many movie critics consider the 1970s a golden era of socially conscious filmmaking, after the studio system in Hollywood completely broke down and restrictions on violence, obscenity and sexual content loosed.
In 1978, Harvey Milk was elected mayor of San Francisco, becoming the first openly gay man elected to office in California. And in 1979, more than 100,000 people took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
But as his term in office wore on, President Nixon grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. Though he won reelection by a landslide in 1972, he resented any challenge to his authority and approved of attempts to discredit those who opposed him.
In April 1974, a Congressional committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon: obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies and defying the authority of Congress. Before Congress could impeach him, however, President Nixon resigned in disgrace and left office in August 1974.
In the 1976 election, former Georgia governor and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter ran as a dark-horse Democratic political outsider and defeated Ford. The same year saw a burst of patriotic pride as the United States celebrated its bicentennial, 200 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The popular video game Pong, for example, arrived in 1972, with controls and graphics that now seem laughably primitive. And the first ATM was introduced to Americans in September 1969. By 1971, ATMs were able to perform multiple functions, such as providing account balances and dispensing cash, and within the decade the machines would be common worldwide.
Apple Computer Company came into existence in 1976, and the Apple II was released one year later. Through much of the 1970s, listening to music required an extensive (and expensive) home stereo system, but when Sony released the Walkman in 1979, it introduced the idea of portable personal music, a previously unheard-of concept.
Other fashion designers began mass-marketing clothing lines to moderately affluent shoppers, ushering in an era of designer clothes. Halston, Gucci, Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent and others soon became household names to middle-class consumers.
Soon, stadium-filling rock bands like the Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Queen, with frontman Freddie Mercury, dominated the airwaves and ushered in an era of blockbuster concert tours.
But partly as a reaction to glossy, mass-marketed music, a punk-music culture emerged in Great Britain, the United States and elsewhere during the 1970s. Punk bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Stooges with Iggy Pop and others channeled rage into loud, energetic music, with outrageous clothes and hairstyles to match.
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz dominated the games by bringing home seven gold medals. But the events were marred when Palestinian terrorists stormed the Olympic Village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine others hostage. In a shootout later at the Munich airport, all nine hostages, five terrorists and one policeman were killed.
Throughout the decade, heavyweight Muhammad Ali dominated boxing in much the same way that Jack Nicklaus dominated golf and the Pittsburgh Steelers dominated the NFL, winning the Super Bowl in 1975, 1976, 1979 (and 1980).
In general, by the end of the decade, many people were using their hard-fought freedom to simply do as they pleased: wear what they wanted, grow their hair long, have sex with whomever they wanted or do drugs to help them feel better. The liberation of the so-called Me Generation, in other words, was as intensely personal as it was mass-marketed.
1970s America. Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
List of 1970's Major News Events in History. The People History.
The Oil Shocks of the 1970s. Yale University: Energy History.
Timeline: 1970s. Securities and Exchange Commission: Historical Society.
In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals[1] that followed the end of the postwar economic boom.[2] On a global scale, it was characterized by frequent coups, domestic conflicts and civil wars, and various political upheavals and armed conflicts which arose from or were related to decolonization, and the global struggle between NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Many regions had periods of high-intensity conflict, notably Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.
In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. In the United Kingdom, the 1979 election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal government coming to power with the 1973 Chilean coup d'tat.
Africa saw further decolonization in the decade, with Angola and Mozambique gaining their independence in 1975 from the Portuguese Empire after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Furthermore, Spain withdrew its claim over Spanish Sahara in 1976, marking the formal end of the Spanish Empire. The continent was, however, plagued by endemic military coups, with the long-reigning Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie being removed, civil wars and famine.
The economies of much of the developing world continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s because of the Green Revolution. However, their economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis, although it boomed afterwards.
People were deeply influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonized and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure.
The Green Revolution of the late 1960s brought about self-sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class.
Another common global ethos of the 1970s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the workforce. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a breadwinner. The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes toward and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s.
The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, in a world increasingly polarized between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression.[18] Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. U.S. manufacturing industries began to decline as a result, with the United States running its last trade surplus (as of 2009[update]) in 1975. In contrast, Japan and West Germany experienced economic booms and started overtaking the U.S. as the world's leading manufacturers. In 1970, Japan overtook West Germany to become the world's second-largest economy.[3] Japan would rank as the world's second-largest economy until 1994 when the European Economic Area (18 countries under a single market) came into effect.
Great Britain also experienced considerable economic turmoil during the decade as outdated industries proved unable to compete with Japanese and German wares. Labor strikes happened with such frequency as to almost paralyze the country's infrastructure. Following the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 with the purpose of implementing extreme economic reforms.
In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a growing dependence on food imported from democratic nations.
On the other hand, export-driven economic development in Asia, especially by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), resulted in rapid economic transformation and industrialization. Their abundance of cheap labor, combined with educational and other policy reforms, set the foundation for development in the region during the 1970s and beyond.
Economically, the 1970s were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and 1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the United States was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days and weekends. In the United States, customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The realization that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable[citation needed] without potentially harming the environment ended the belief in limitless progress that had existed since the 19th century.[citation needed] As a result, ecological awareness rose substantially, which had a major effect on the economy.