(13-12-2023, 02:30 PM)Praktica Wrote: I didn't watch it all...all I have is my own experience. My parents were born before the depression, and lived through the war - Dad served in the Royal Navy, right at the end of it. The "social conformity" of the 50s and 60s was just how things were - we didn't know we might be deprived of anything. My parents were careful with money - there wasn't much to go round, but they weren't miserly. In the 1950s, living in suburban Dunedin, questions of racism or sexual orientation were never considered - what were they?
There's a lot of bullshit spouted about boomers, and any other named generation you can think of.
Much the same for me, in central Auckland. My parents each left school at 14, we were always just getting by with money and my mother got a part time job to pay for my piano lessons. It was the way almost everyone we knew lived; no complaints from me as I learnt at an early age how to be frugal and to set spending priorities. The downside was that my parents had little education, and their horizons and finances were so limited that neither of them ever set foot outside of the North island.
As for racism and homophobia - absolutely everyone I knew until I was at high school was casually racist and homophobic. My father used expressions like "hori" and "poofter". I rebelled against everything my parents stood for, including their ignorant bigotry, and I'm eternally grateful for Bob Dylan and the American Civil Rights movement for giving me ethics and moral courage.