THE WAY WE WERE
High-waisted flares, disco dancing, rosary beads and sex: a fascinating pictorial record of not-so-old Ireland
Brand New Retro: Vintage Pop Culture & Lifestyle
Brian McMahon
Liberties €29.99
★★★★★
Ah, The Way We Were. This theme gets a surprisingly original and evocative treatment in this handsome coffee table book by Brian McMahon, Brand New Retro: Vintage Pop Culture And Lifestyle.
In his youth, McMahon was an avid hoarder of magazines and photos, and a few years ago his personal archive, along with his late parents’ collection of magazines and material, became the basis of his popular blog brandnewretro.ie.
This is the print version of McMahon’s treasure trove of advertisements, problem pages, vox pops and articles from the Sixties and onwards, aimed at those who still have a fondness for thumbing through pages at their leisure rather than scrolling down computer screens.
Purists might argue that old-style print is the most appropriate format for surveying material produced long before the internet age and for an audience whose world view was anything but sophisticated.
The groovy images of men in Bri-nylon shirts and highwaisted flares taking to the dance floor with the studied grace of John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever promised sheltered Dubliners that the impossible glamour of New York’s Studio 54 could be had every night in Zhivago Night Club or Barbarellas for £3 at weekends, or £2 on weekdays.
For readers of a certain age this walk down memory lane has obviously a nostalgic appeal, but the variety of material, covering everything from pop icons to sport stars, fashions and brands, makes it an entertaining read for younger readers also. Zeitgeisty publications like In Dublin and Hot Press as well as current affairs magazine
Magill show a society slowly emerging from its insular, Church-dominated cocoon into the tentative embrace of a more cosmopolitan and liberal era.
Magill’s cover in April 1978 must have been considered terribly risqué in its day, displaying a semi-naked couple frolicking under the swinging headline of ‘Adultery Irish Style’. The January 1979 cover is a photograph of a pair of rosary beads framing a packet of contraceptive pills with the headline ‘Send Us Not Into Temptation’.
Extracts from the problem pages, however, show the flipside of the new permissive society and the long, uphill battle faced by champions of social change. Letter upon letter to the agony aunts from Woman’s Way, the now-defunct New Spotlight and Woman’s Choice, betray a surprising level of class snobbery, an astonishing level of ignorance about sex and reproduction, and attitudes about women that could only be described as antediluvian .
In the late 1960s, for instance, the most popular question asked by teenagers was about French kissing – what it entailed and whether it could result in pregnancy. A letter to a women’s magazine written between 1964 to 1972 describes the preoccupations of Mrs JL from Portlaoise.
She writes: ‘My five pet hates are: tealeaves in the sink, cooked potato jackets on the dinner table, unwanted milk bottles on the doorstep, a hearth covered with ashes and cinders when the fire has gone out, and trying to dry dishes with a wet tea cloth.’
We get a peep inside Mrs JL from Portaoise’s typical home through adverts for an abundance of labour-saving mod
cons like twin-tub washing machines, stainless steel sinks and imitation coal fires.
Social life in suburbia seemed to revolve around drinking glasses of golden lager. From the late 1970s the drinks companies were clearly working overtime building a new female market. They produced acres of Mad Men-style colour ads of glamorous blondes clutching glasses of beer, always in the company of a clean-shaven, dependable-looking man.
There are also plenty of lavishly produced cigarette ads,
sans health warnings, and only the coyest reference to gay life in the capital.
Prior to the arrival of the pink pound and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts, advertisers stayed away so the handbills and posters promoting gay nightclubs and the Irish Gay Rights movement seem, in contrast with the lavishly produced ads for motorcars, like apologies in black and white.
Ah, the way we Were – it’s fun to look back... but no regrets.