2018: A year of looking backward
If you pick up a magazine or scan an internet feed in this frosty first week of the new year, you will no doubt come across a list of noteworthy 2018 anniversaries to be properly commemorated as the months roll by. The more ambitious pieces will dredge up pop culture tidbits from five and 10 year intervals over the last century, while others — aware few readers care to venture back before the ’80s — will stick closer to home.
But if they were being honest, most of these historical surveys would hover over one year: 1968.
Not only does it bear an uncanny similarity to 2018, it’s the year when pop culture exploded, a time of disruption and discontent, innovation and exhilaration, change and transformation.
Back then it was young vs. old, hip vs. square, monochrome vs. Technicolour.
Today it’s the division between men and women, the powerful and powerless, progressive and conservative.
And then as now, you could see pop culture straining at the bit to accommodate the cross-currents.
For every progressive TV upstart like “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” there were stolid throwbacks like “Green Acres” and “Hee Haw.”
For every cinematic outlier like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” there were old-fashioned crowd-pleasers like “Funny Girl” and “The Love Bug.”
For every timely anthem like “Born to be Wild” or “Mrs. Robinson,” there were stuck-in-the-’50s dirges like “Love is Blue” and Bobby’s Goldsboro’s cringe-inducing “Honey.”
Change was happening but — like today — it wasn’t instantaneous. And it wasn’t without pushback. Following are highlights from that tumultuous year, along with a few more recent anniversaries.
50 years: Zombies feast on human flesh in George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”
Until 1968, horror films revolved around alien invasions and creatures from the black lagoon, otherworldly adversaries with clear motivations in their war against humankind.
George Romero’s flesh-eating zombies were different.
Implacable, emotionless, without logic or purpose, they were a metaphor for the social turbulence rocking late ’60s pop culture.
And as they tore the inhabitants of an isolated farm house limb from limb and feasted on their entrails, the sense of creeping dread resonated in a way no one expected.
Not only did this low budget indie flick rank No. 10 on the year’s box office hit list, it kick-started a legacy that continues today with TV powerhouse “The Walking Dead.”
50 years: “Yummy Yummy Yummy” hits No. 4 on Billboard (No. 1 in Canada)
There were bubblegum songs before and after, but 1968 was the year studio concocted groups like 1910 Fruitgum Company, Ohio Express and Lemon Pipers honed their sights not on fullfledged baby boomers, but on their younger sibs, a larger, less sophisticated demo that sent these AM radio hits soaring. “Chewy Chewy,” “Simon Says,” “1-2-3, Red Light” — these candy coated earworms indicated that beyond the maverick charms of psychedelia and art rock were songs for kids who just wanted to lip sync in front of their bedroom mirrors with a hair brush.
50 years: Simon & Garfunkel release “Bookends”
“Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping,” croon the wistfully downbeat duo on “America.” “And I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
If you were a frustrated teenager in the late ‘60s, constrained by your parents, rebelling against societal norms, this was the album that set your existential questions to music.
No. 1 for seven nonconsecutive weeks, it captured a moment, a perfect time capsule of a culture in transition.
50 years: Tiny Tim sings “Tiptoe Through The Tulips”
Ah, Tiny Tim, you freak show vaudevillian with the quivering falsetto and poofy ringlet hair.
It wasn’t until you strummed your ukulele to this Jazz Age oldie that the hippie counterculture found a non-threatening emissary to infiltrate North American living rooms, gab with Johnny Carson and put the older generation at ease.
While student protesters rumbled in the streets and armed guards stormed college campuses, you put a kitschy face on rebellion that rendered it toothless — and safe — for the Middle American masses.
My grandparents, may they rest in peace, thank you.
50 years: The Rolling Stones release “Jumping Jack Flash” (it’s a gas, gas, gas). By 1968, The Rolling Stones had had it. After going head to head with The Beatles iconic “Sgt. Pepper’s” album — and falling flat on their faces with their trippy psychedelic bookend, “Their Satanic Majesties Request” — they were adrift in a sea of sonic sludge, with Brian Jones on sitar, running on fumes.
Keith Richards, keeper of the group’s blues-rock legacy, wasn’t going to stand for that.
Rallying the troops, he unveiled some hardcore blues riffage on the single that revitalized their career, kicked off their five year “golden period” and turned them from Beatles also-rans into eternal rock legends. “I was born in a crossfire hurricane/ And I howled at my ma in the driving rain.”
It not only summed up the group’s renewed focus and fury, but — given the era’s social chaos — the moment of its cultural inception.
50 years: The New Yardbirds morph into Led Zeppelin
As hippies ruled the pop culture roost and psychedelia became flavour-of-the-month, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham were creating the blueprint for the decade ahead with a combination of stinging blues riffs, folky interludes and whisper-to-a-scream vocals that would form the basis for heavy metal.
Critics hated them because their music was loud, belligerent, unrelenting.
But with a rock and roll attitude that steamrollered over conscientious objectors, they went on to become the biggest band of the ’70s, boasting a raw urgency that has made their songs a staple on movie soundtracks 50 years later.
50 years: Kirk Kisses Uhura on “Star Trek.”
It wasn’t the revelatory breakthrough pundits have declared. The steadfast captain, after all, didn’t
want to kiss his African-American communications officer — he was compelled by an alien force.
But it sparked controversy, moved the needle on race relations — I can only imagine the outraged letters — and if it wasn’t the first interracial kiss, it was certainly the most high profile.
The fact Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner could barely stand each other was entirely beside the point.
50 years: lean and hungry, Elvis Presley stalks the stage on his ’68 comeback special “Elvis” like a man with nothing to lose.
After a decade of cheesy Hollywood flicks and novelty songs that painted him as a ’50s punchline, he really did have nothing to lose.
And as he steps back into the ring, singing as if his life depends on it, you can feel the visceral thrill as this underdog has-been eagerly reclaims his title.
It paid off in spades, rejuvenating his career and proving that, as pop culture spun on its axis, even its most stalwart participants could change gears and reinvent themselves.
It wasn’t quite Ali vs. Foreman, but as the year’s highest-rated television special, it was close.
50 years: Richard Nixon says “Sock it to me?” on “Rowan & Martin’s LaughIn.”
It’s been said that Tricky Dick’s narrow win in the ’68 presidential race can be traced to the flubbery-cheeked gasbag poking fun at himself on this hipsterific comedy showcase. Nixon with a sense of humour? It was the edge he needed over Democratic rival Hubert Humphrey and — ironically — the green light for the antiwar protests, generational discord and Watergate chaos that was to follow.
Those who believe there is direct link between Nixon and Donald Trump can blame this five second clip for giving a man whose presidency would provoke social divisions and end in disgrace a populist TV forum from which to preach.
50 years: Pete, Linc and Julie form “The Mod Squad”
Pete was the spoiled white rich kid. Linc was the streetwise black hipster. Julie was the runaway flower child.
They were disaffected youth working as undercover cops for The Man. And The Man reciprocated with grudging paternalistic affection.
Subversive? Unconstitutional? Outrageous? It was a hit with 11-year-olds, I can tell you that.
50 years: Trudeaumania sweeps Canada
Never mind his youthful facsimile parading around Ottawa today.
In 1968 it was Pierre Trudeau — the original model — who had pulses racing and passions rising as he taunted Separatists, flipped the bird and dragged the country kicking and screaming out of its midcentury doldrums.
“Just watch me.” (uttered during the 1970 October Crisis).
They were fighting words, indicating a leader — and country — whose time had come at last.
50 years: “2001: A Space Odyssey” tops the box office.
So let me get this straight: a philosophical sci-fi flick that explored existentialism, evolution, artificial life and extraterrestrials was the year’s No. 1 box office hit?
It’s true — the world was changing. Young people were finding their voice.
Films like “Funny Girl” and “The Odd Couple” still made up the bulk of major studio releases.
But “2001” — buoyed by a counterculture who embraced innovation — pointed to a new type of blockbuster, rooted not in Hollywood convention, but in the murky experimental fringes.
It was, as advertised, “The Ultimate Trip.”
40 years: “Superman” is released with the catchphrase “You’ll believe a man can fly!”
There had been superhero movies before — 1966’s campy “Batman” comes to mind — but Richard Donner’s big budget origin story about the Man of Steel upped the ante and created a template for the franchise blockbusters of today.
In the late, great Christopher Reeve, the genre also found its patron saint.
40 years: John Belushi yells “TOGA! TOGA!” in “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Oh boy, was this movie obnoxious. But after a decade of edgy, boundary pushing films, John Landis’s gross-out college comedy spoke to a generation of hormone-addled adolescents who flocked to its chaotic rhythms, made it a megahit and kick-started an industry of frat boy flicks that continued with “American Pie,” “The Hangover” and the current Owen Wilson misfire, “Father Figures.”
40 years: Five songs written by the Bee Gees become hits at the same time.
It’s a milestone — March 25, 1978 — but not one I care to remember.
Every time you would turn on the radio, there they were: The Bee Gees or one of their musical stand-ins — Samantha Sang, Andy Gibb, Yvonne Elliman — crooning in their wispy falsettos to a percolating disco baseline.
“Night Fever,” “Stayin Alive,” “Love is Thicker Than Water,” “Emotion,” “If I Can’t Have You.”
In March 1978, it was like “War of the Worlds,” but instead of aliens destroying Earth, they were going to sing us to death.
In retrospect, this talented sibling act never got the respect they deserved.
But if you had to live through their radio dominance in the pre-Internet age — when everyone listened to the same top 40 stations and there was no escape — it was a matter of survival.
25 years: nothing memorable happened in 1993.
OK, “Jurassic Park” was No. 1 at the box office, “The Bodyguard” soundtrack and Kenny G’s “Breathless” topped the album charts, David Letterman moved his show to CBS, “Beavis and Butt-Head” debuted on MTV and “The Chevy Chase Show” aired for five weeks on FOX.
Like I said, in the world of mainstream entertainment, nothing memorable.
20 years: Carrie Bradshaw writes a newspaper column on “Sex and the City.”
It was a gauntlet, a line in the sand, a post-feminist beacon that reclaimed sex as the purview of hip single women in New York City. No guilt, no apologies, no inhibitions. When Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda hopped from one bedroom to the next, it sent the message that women were allowed lives of their own, independent of men, yet inextricably tied to them. A provocative message? You bet. But it didn’t prevent the show from becoming a massive hit and sparking conversation — and debate — through the length of its six-year run.
20 years: Britney Spears perfects her Lolita pout on the video for “… Baby One More Time.”
Determined to avoid the one-hit-wonder fate of wholesome shopping mall crooners like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, the 16-yearold former Mouseketeer — like Madonna before her — blurred the lines between prim and provocative, wholesome and hellacious.
In an iconic video that saw her parading about in a Catholic school uniform, belly button exposed, she begged her discarded boyfriend, “Give me a sign ... hit me, baby, one more time.”
The outrage was palpable. So were the record sales.