All Shook Up

Watching the newly released movie, Elvis, last week, caused me to start thinking about the extreme cultural shift our country has gone through since the 1950’s. When Elvis Presley hit the scene in the mid-1950s, American culture looked a lot different, much more constrained, and there was a lot of push back against the type of music he was singing, and the way he performed on stage – swinging his hips and gyrating his body. A certain faction of society was in a complete moral panic of the societal change that Elvis’ type of music would bring. They feared that his music would denigrate our culture beyond repair, so they tried to prevent him from performing, and in some cases, they had him arrested while he was onstage.

The explosion of “rock ‘n’ roll” music in the 1950s, led, in part, to the counter-cultural revolutions of the 1960s. One of the most evocative mantras of the 1960s was “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”. Rock ‘n’ roll music was tied to our changing attitudes toward sex and drugs which led to the sexual and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, and Elvis Presley was the “King of rock ‘n’ roll”. Most historians looking back on the 1960s, would say that those revolutions were good for our country because people were liberated from the restricting moralistic attitudes of pre-1960s. They view the people who spoke out against rock ‘n’ roll music and the breaking down of social mores as close-minded puritans imposing their moral fascism on the rest of the nation.

It goes without saying that the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement of the 1960s were positive advancements in America, but it’s fair to ask whether the other revolutions that greatly shifted our culture, most specifically the changing attitudes toward sex and drugs, brought on by rock ‘n’ roll music were good for our society, our culture, our world? The best way to answer that question is to look at the results of those revolutions. The sexual revolution of the 1960s which upended the Judeo-Christian prohibitions against pre-marital sex and promiscuity resulted in grave consequences for our country and our world? Over 35 million people died worldwide from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, and the AIDS virus is spread primarily through promiscuous and premarital sex which had become normalized through the sexual revolution of the 1960s.