Rock And Roll Music In The 1950's

Issue 1: The deployment of the atomic bomb in World War II was an unfortunate necessity for the United States. In a total war situation, using nuclear weapons was a solution that made the best of a bad situation. American leaders recognized the opportunity cost in terms of American lives versus the consequences of dropping the bomb. As Maddox writes, the Japanese “meant to fight the war to a finish” (5). As the Japanese began to adopt more kamikaze fighting styles, towards the end of the war, the allies came to understand the lethality of their further conflicts with the Japanese. The fear of massive casualties caused by the US experience on Okinawa was fully in the considerations of the decision makers. There was an estimated 31,000 three day casualty total (11). Taking this into consideration, it was

The teenagers of the 1950s gained something that no other generation had ever experienced: a culture all to themselves. Rock and Roll music, as well as the culture that surrounded it, was marketed purely to teenagers. It was something they could call their own. As an alternative to the conservative values of their parents, Rock and Roll music engulfed the 1950s teenage mind with a sense of rebellion. As Altschuler writes, “Although rock ’n’ roll was a commodity…it continued to resist and unsettle ‘mainstream’ values” (119). The teenagers who were listening to rock and roll took the messages of figures such as Bill Haley to heart. While some may argue that the teenage generation maintained its conservativism throughout the 1950s, it was not until this generation got away from their parents that they began to fully live out the culture of rock and roll music. Essentially, the values of the rock and roll culture were fostered in the minds of 1950s teenagers and brought to fruition in the 1960s, when those same teenagers began their lives on their own in