I watched the first episode of Life On Mars earlier tonight and was surprised to see how dark, dim, dismal, dingy and dated the '70s appeared to be, especially in regard to the interior of houses and shops. That's not how I remember things at all. Surely the '70s were bright and colourful, and furnishings were more modern and not quite so old-fashioned looking? Is it my memories of the era that are mistaken, or have the show's makers gone overboard in trying to reproduce their perception of what the '70s were like?
What do you say, readers? To me, the '70s still (mostly) feel like fairly recent history, not something that happened in the far distant past. How does the period seem to you when you think back on it? (If you're old enough to have lived through it at the time.)
26 comments:
I must admit that the '70s do seem like a long time ago but I was born in 1966 so the '70s were my childhood years and I feel very nostalgic about them (well, up until my 13th birthday in Feb '79 anyway). Unfortunately I think there has long been a deliberate attempt to make the '70s seem far worse than they really were in order to justify the Thatcherite economic policies that both Tory and Labour governments have followed ever since. So the '70s are portrayed almost like the 1930s era of the Great Depression which is totally ridiculous but that explains why everything is made to look so drab in shows like Life On Mars (which I've never watched by the way).
Kid - My father's old colour-slides include many from the 70s. Our old house's kitchen was painted a cheerful yellow (circa 1974!) The media's Winter of Discontent & 3 day week nonsense becomes tiresome, without any counterargument. In many respects, the 70s was a great time to be young!
Phillip
What prompted my post, CJ, was the dingy interior of the young cop's flat, which looked nothing like anywhere I ever knew in the '70s. Everything seemed bright and clean to me back then, but maybe that was because I lived in a New Town.
Kid - To play devil's advocate for a second, people do say brown's a very 1970s colour. And, to a certain extent, that's probably true. Today, modern cars' paint schemes rarely seem to be brown. Likewise, clothing. Admittedly, in once sense, brown's a drab colour - yet certain shades of brown are also wistful autumn colours, as the year shifts to winter. Waxing lyrical might be easier, after a snack! In the 70s, people were more credulous, too - Uri Geller, etc - possibly in a good way. Also, music had more range. You had types of music - melancholy music, for example - which, today, wouldn't even get played.
Phillip
Yes, exactly right, Kid - why would the young cop's flat be any dingier in the '70s than it would be today? Most peoples' houses and flats in the '70s were just as clean, tidy and bright as most peoples' houses and flats nowadays but we are continually led to believe that the '70s was a terrible decade full of poverty and strikes which Saint Maggie saved us from. As Phillip mentioned, you'd think the 3-day week and Winter of Discontent had happened all the time if you believed the biased Tory media when, in fact, both those events only lasted for a few weeks five years apart. A couple of years ago I heard some idiot on the radio claim that the '70s were "full of strikes and the dead weren't getting buried" and I thought, oh no, not the old unburied dead line yet again - that infamous incident only happened in one city, Liverpool, and it only lasted for a few days before the gravediggers went back to work.
On the plus side - when I watch YouTube videos of songs from the '70s there are always comments underneath saying things like "the '70s were a great time to be young" or "I miss the '70s" etc so maybe people are getting tired of the anti-'70s media propaganda especially as modern Britain seems to be going downhill pretty fast and the '70s seem not so bad after all.
Well, I think all kinds of music are still available, P, though whether all types are still played on the radio is beyond my ken. It's just that when I saw the inside of the young cop's flat, his living-room seemed very dated and dingy, and that's not my impression of the '70s at all. Like I said though, I grew up in a New Town where everything seemed clean and bright - it might've been different in other places. I note that 'colourists' are included in the credits of TV shows these days (though don't know about 'Life On Mars'), and their job is to subtly alter the mood of the footage, depending on which decade it's supposed to be set in.
I must confess that I've never been aware of any anti-'70s propaganda, CJ, but then I'm not as politically-minded as you seem to be. Whether that's the case or not, though, I was thinking only of the way things looked in the first episode of 'Mars', and it was quite a shock to see images that didn't tally with my impression of the decade. I suppose there must've been some dingy places back then, but that's not my overriding memories of the period.
Kid, when Jeremy Corbyn was the Labour leader he was continually denounced as a crazy Marxist who wanted to "drag us back to the '70s" which just shows how the '70s are demonised by modern politicians and the right-wing press. They assume the public has a similar biased opinion of that decade otherwise they wouldn't keep saying how terrible it was.
Maybe for some people the '70s were terrible, CJ, but I was only commenting on the fact that my impression of them was of a much brighter, more modern-looking decade than often appears in contemporary productions set in the period. But come on - you're not seriously saying that Jeremy Corbyn wasn't a tosser?
I left the UK in 1974 amidst political strife and moved to NYC. Therefore I have memories of both London and NYC in the 70's. I saw some of the UK series of Life on Mars and remember that there seemed to be an exaggerated look between the eras that I took to be for dramatic effect. There was a US version of the show set in NYC where there seemed to be little difference between the eras depicted except for motor vehicles. Like you Kid, to me time between eras does not seem that distinct, wasn't the 70's just yesterday?
Certainly seems like it to me, T47. Last week at the most. Ah, life - just a wisp of smoke at the end of the day, eh?
Can you actually give a reason why Jeremy Corbyn was a tosser, Kid? You admitted in your earlier comment that you aren't politically-minded but somehow you've decided that Corbyn was a tosser nonetheless. He was demonised on an industrial scale by the Tories, the Tory press and even plenty in his own party like Blair and Mandelson. I voted for Corbyn's labour in 2019, an election won by a genuine tosser Boris Johnson who lied through his teeth about the "benefits" of Brexit which has turned out to be a miserable failure and Bojo himself was so appalling he got forced out of office by his own MPs.
Yes, I can. He and his deputy referred to terrorist groups as 'friends'; he wouldn't sing the National Anthem, and he seemed incapable of doing up his tie. He also lied about watching the Queen's Speech on Christmas day, and he didn't do enough to stamp out anti-Semitism in his party. And I hardly think you can claim Brexit is a miserable failure when it hasn't yet been fully implemented because of those determined to sabotage it. And it wasn't because Boris was so appalling that he was forced to resign, it was because those with vaulting ambitions sensed an opportunity to ignite their own career prospects. However, if it makes you feel any better, Boris was a tosser too. And when I say I'm not politically-minded (like you), I mean I don't try to force everything through a political 'prism' and accord party beliefs the distinction of being the cause for just about everything under the sun.
Being born in 1959, I was a teenager during the 70s and recall those years with great clarity. I had a great time. The decor in our house was a lot brighter than that on Life On Mars, but I spent a lot of time visiting friends in dingy rented accommodation around Portsmouth in the late 70s that look very much like the decor on Life On Mars.
Meant to add - what do you think of the new facsimile edition of Detective #27, printed in actual Golden Age size with flimsy browning pages? I love it.
I daresay there were places like that, B (though late '70s seems even more recent to me), but 'Life On Mars' sort of gave me the impression that everything was dingy during the decade, which of course wasn't so. Don't know anything about that facsimile - details please?
Yeah, my recollection of the 70s is of a bright, colourful, energetic and optimistic decade, even though for the first half I was a high school and consider those years the worst of my life, but on the other hand the second half of the decade I was at art college and I consider those years the best of my life up to that time. We had a feature wall in our house, as was the style of the time, that was burnt yellow, and everything from furniture to curtains to ties had bright patterns on it, sort of like a holdover from the 60s but in a different colour scheme.
The movies, music, TV series, comics, art books and pop culture at the time was just so creative and diverse and was so engaging to me and shaped the tastes that I still have to this day.
I think that whatever lens the production designers of Life on Mars were looking back at that decade through needs a good clean!
Philip Crawley
Got there in the end, eh, PC? Thank goodness for 'cut & paste'. Yeah, I remember the '70s (as I've said) as bright, clean, new, colourful, etc., and 'Mars' view of the decade didn't quite gel with my own. Maybe many of the production crew weren't old enough to have experienced the '70s first hand? Whatever, I agree with you - their lens needed a good polish. And thanks for bringing us back on track. Who wants to talk about politicians! Well, apart from CJ, obviously. (Don't worry, Col, your comments are appreciated nonetheless.)
In my defence, Kid, I only mentioned Corbyn because I wanted to give you an example of anti-'70s propaganda by modern politicians and the media which you'd said you hadn't been aware of. I wasn't trying to say Corbyn was any good or not, merely that the threat of him "dragging us back to the '70s" was constantly trotted out as a terrible thing because the '70s are so often portrayed in such a negative way.
Never mind that ol' pish, Jones - it's 10 years hard labour (no pun intended) for you this time, and if you appear before this court again, we'll have to deal with you very seriously. Kidding aside, CJ, you know you're free to say anything you like on this blog, because comments like yours usually inspire others to comment as well. To reiterate, though, my main point was just how visually different contemporary portrayals of the '70s are to my own memories of them. Having said that, however, some adults with a family in the '70s might've found some aspects rather negative. I suppose it's swings and roundabouts at the end of the day. Like I said, speaking mainly from a visual perspective, I thought they decade was modern, clean, bright, etc., and not as dull and dingy and dated as it appeared on the 'Mars' TV show.
Re the new Detective #27 facsimile...I just blogged a bit about it over at the SuperStuff blog, Kid. It's great. https://superstuff73.blogspot.com/2024/10/detective-27-facsimile.html
Looks great, B, I must get one. Left a comment on your blog.
Left another comment - just bought two on eBay. Can't wait.
Other than the sets, did you like the series? I thought Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were great. So few good sci fi series that actually get to have a proper conclusion.
Haven't seen the full series, LM, only a few episodes when they were first shown, plus the first one which prompted this post. I'll try and watch some more if I can remember which nights they're repeated. I think I read somewhere that they're going to do a new series - unless I imagined it.
I just seem to recall the '70s as a much cleaner, brighter, and more modern-looking place than it often seems to be in new movies and TV shows set during the period, P. Not sure why. (Reply to 2nd comment.)
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