Golden State, Golden Youth: The California Image in Popular Culture, 1955-1966

Seen as a land of sunshine and opportunity, the Golden State was a mecca for the post-World War II generation and dreams of the California good life came to dominate the imagination of many Americans in the 1950s and 60s. This was evidenced by the explosion of California youth images in popular culture, from Disneyland and television shows such as The Mickey Mouse Club to beach movies and the music of the Beach Boys. All broadcast nationwide a lifestyle of carefree, wholesome fun, supposedly enjoyed by white, middle-class, suburban young people in California. Tracing the rise of the California teen as a national icon, Kirse May shows how idealized images of a suburban youth culture soothed America’s post-war nerves while denying racial and urban realities. By the mid-1960s however, May notes, unsettling challenges to this mass-mediated picture began to arise with the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus and race riots in Watts. In his 1966 campaign for governor of California, Ronald Reagan transformed the backlash against the dangerous youths who fuelled these actions into a political triumph. His victory presaged a rising conservatism across the nation.