Frank Rich, the liberal New York Times columnist, pointed out the 30 minute video below shot by a Connecticut family that documented their “dream trip” to Disneyland in 1956:
The running time is about 34 minutes, but I promise you’ll be spell-bound as you watch it. It’s from another world, a time when Disneyland was fresh and new, Southern California (and the US) was alive with hope and progress, a time when (perhaps) people weren’t so cynical and the culture wasn’t so commercialized and banal.
Watching this video is like taking a Rorschach test. Frank Rich sees the video as evidence that regular Americans have lost the ability to move upward from one economic class to another. He asks how we went from having great, American-based companies like the Scotch Brand Cellophane Tape company (that funded the Disney trip) to a country which rewards success and fame to “financial engineers,” bankers and others who don’t create real products or value. Rich sees Disneyland as a great egalitarian monument for America, a place anyone could go and feel like royalty.
Conservatives will look at the video and pine for the mythic 1950s, a time of prosperity (for whites at least), innocence and simplicity. A time when a blue collar man could hold a job and support an entire family while his wife stayed at home. They’ll look at it and say that it shows what was right for the country then is right for us now. In their minds they’ll contrast the relative tranquility of the 1950s with the chaos of the 1960s, and think, “This is where we went wrong.”
I see both sides. America was a more simple (but less fair) place. A man could support his family on his job alone, and, with hard work, he (but not she) had economic mobility and an expectation that his kids would do even better than he did. America then was a more thrifty country; the Barstows don’t take out an exotic HELOC or refinance to pull equity out of their house to fund their trip; instead they had picnics together to save money. A family could buy an affordable home, a car, and enjoy a modest lifestyle without having to worry about a debt crisis in Greece & Ireland, the value of the Chinese yuan, or the price of a barrel of oil.
Anyway, enough blathering, enjoy this time capsule from 1956.
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