Shorthand for the 1970s: Pop Culture Artifacts from the Me Decade

Shorthand for the 1970s for Hollywood tends to mean little more than disco, platform shoes, sideburns and the dry look. In fact, the 1970s underwent substantial changes in pop culture minutiae and creating shorthand for narratives taking place in the Me-Decade means more than disco attire which, though you wouldn’t know it from movies set during this period, occupied the country’s attention for only three or four years.

Leisure Suits

Watch “The Bob Newhart Show” to learn all about leisure suits. That would be the Newhart show where he plays the shrink. The leisure suit actually originated during the 1800s in Europe as a more fashionable yet informal fashion choice suitable for riding horses. Shorthand for the 1970s is the leisure suit that traded heavy wool fabrics for much lighter polyester and boring blues and grays for pastel colors. The stark lines of business suits gave way to an absence of lapels and pockets where pockets did not used to be found. The legacy of the leisure suit still lives on today in the sportswear design of retirement communities in warm climates.

Macramé

Macramé was a mainstay of the early 1970s; kind of a leftover of the hippie generation of the 1960s. Macramé is shorthand for the 1970s found in everything from baskets suspended from the ceiling to hold plants to sweaters. The more brilliant the colors of the yarn, the more appealing to a 1970s sensibility.

Hacky Sack

Just in case you are thinking that those guys playing hacky sack on the school campus invented this type of fun, you are in a for sad surprise. Hacky sack first came to popularity in the United States during the 1970s. The commercial enterprise behind what seemed to be an organic outgrowth of faddish excitement was Wham-O. The same company that turned the Frisbee in an iconic piece of American culture managed to do the same to Hacky Sack. Shorthand for any 1970s narrative taking place on a hip college camp has to include some long-haired guys in short shorts kicking around a sack.

Yellow Ribbons around Trees

Amazingly enough, almost no movies about the mid-1970s shorthand in the form of yellow ribbons. Tony Orlando and Dawn had an era-identifying hit song with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” The song became identified with the 1990s when ribbons appeared en masse in America in support of Gulf War I. The song itself places the yellow ribbon as a symbol of acceptance back into the fold after being away in prison. Yellow ribbons around oak trees were not omnipresent, but if you want to make sure you hit things right with someone who lived through the 1970s then a single yellow ribbon tied around a tree could do more than anything else to create authenticity.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

You want to set the stage immediately for the 1970s? Slip a copy of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” into somebody’s hand. The book is a meditation on nonconformity, discovering your secret gift and following your dream. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” is to the early 1970s what disco was to the late 1970s.