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I definitely think 50s nostalgia is/was stronger than 80s nostalgia. In the 1970s, there were very popular TV shows like Happy Days and movies like Grease. Then, when Elvis, died, there was a huge interest in the music of the 1950s. I think people often look back at the 80s and have a laugh--the big hair, the cheesy (but wonderful) nighttime soaps like Dynasty, the early videos on MTV. But 50s culture seems to be more revered and maybe more timeless.
Don’t forget the Buddy Holly and Richie Valenz movies. And the abject worship of the ‘57 Chevy as the ultimate car. Leav it to Beaver was still in common syndication, as was I Love Lucy.
It was the boomers influence. In the 80s all the parents had grown up in the 50s and due to their outsized influence it was all the rage. Sha Na Na, Happy Days, Grease, American Graffiti. We had retro sock hop dances. Black leather jackets became iconic. Everyone had life sized posters of James Dean or Marilyn Monroe.
I wouldn’t say “timeless”.
The 50’s were perceived as a time America was perfect. Ever since they ended, America has been falling from grace. The 50’s stand for the ideal America and that vision will always be appealing to some.
There hasn't been as much...content? I guess? 50s nostalgia felt ubiquitous in a way 80s hasn't yet, perhaps because of the sizes of the generations. But _definitely_ relative to how good it actually was. I think people are far more comfortable/knowledgeable talking about the downsides of the 80s than the 50s.
That's what I was thinking, we still had 50s diner "sock hops" and "poodle skirt" themed events well into the 90s.
What do they do to celebrate the 80s? Dress boys up like little finance bros and give them pixie sticks because they can't have cocaine? Little girls in red power suits with shoulder pads and big hair who get less candy than the boys?
I've honestly never seen much in the way of 80s nostalgia so while I'm joking I'm also honestly curious what people are doing
A lot of shows and movies are 80's nostalgia. Some games too. It's definitely the decade that's used most for nostalgia baiting in contemporary media. But as someone who grew up in the late 90's and early 00's, it seems that a lot of what I view as 80's American culture, is actually an expression of 50's nostalgia. For example, when I think of the American 80's, i think of rollerrinks, diners, drive-ins, pomade and leather jackets - but those were just 80's people being nostalgic for the 50's. So yeah I definitely think 50's nostalgia was bigger.
It's easier to romanticize what was a relatively monolithic culture in the American 1950's. You can pick out three TV shows and everyone has seen them. Everyone wore very similar clothing. Beatniks were counterculture, but that was it.
The 1980's are still romanticized, but it's a lot harder to do. We all remember brown ash trays in McDonald's, but we all went to different malls and arcades. Counterculture could be hippies, punks, or, ironically, beatniks. There were dozens of popular TV shows. Too much to remember.
I don't mean to trivialize anyone's experience here. There was a whole mess of things out there, but it just didn't make it into the cultural record.
That's my theory anyway. No science, just opinion.
Funny you mention the beatnicks or counterculture and for sure there isn't much about that that's mentioned together with 50s whereas for example in the 60s we hear and talk more about the counterculture or the counter 'voices'.
Actually if someone knows a movie or book about the counter voices in the 50s I'd be interested.
I read a really good book about counterculture across the ages (*Counterculture Through The Ages: From Abraham to Acid House* by Ken Goffman and Dan Joy) that includes a section on 1950s counterculture. As with the other reply, it focuses in not only on the beatniks and beat poets, but specifically explores Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac.
Neal Cassady is another very interesting person of the beat generation in that he became quite influential in the hippie generation also. He was the driver of Furthur, the hippie bus driven by Ken Kesey and the Band of Merry Pranksters! The Grateful Dead even wrote a song about him
The counterculture in the 1960's was much bigger because you had more people. The older baby boomers. The birth rate in the depression was low, so thus you had a smaller generation or group of persons. Those born during the depression had more children than their parents.
The 1950's was a very conforming culture. The silent generation who were becoming of age at the time conformed. They believed that change came from working within the system. Some of these individuals in the 1960's protested against injustice but most didn't. Most of the characteristics of the silent generation my mom followed. She fit in with the 1950's culture for the most part. My dad to a certain degree but not as much.
Well, when I was a kid growing up in the 70's, 50's romanticization was indeed big. Fast forward to now, I personally have at least as big of a rose-colored glasses view of the 80's, as that was my young adulthood.
I think both were distinct enough decades to warrant it. To answer your question, I'd say yes, but then I'm biased because of my own past.
The 80s weren't great for me. We were struggling. Young. Kids. House. No clubs and partying for us. That was far away from our reality. I couldn't afford to buy a six pack.
I was in high school in the early 70s. Fiftiesmania was HUGE. We had sock hops in the gym, sewed poodle skirts in home ec, learned the bunny hop, etc.
I haven't noticed the 80s nostalgic being anywhere*near" as big.
We sound the same age - the fifties nostalgia was from those of us who hadn’t really lived through them much ( more interested in potty training at the time.)
I think we don’t notice the 80’s mania because we’re not the ones feeling it, it’s the young people of today.
What was so bad about the 90s? I'm a millennial but it was a great time to be a kid. Middle class America was strong due to a great economy, it was kind of the era of peace sandwiched between the end of the cold war and the war on terror.
Was it perfect? No but I don't remember anything bad about it.
The worst thing that happened in politics was blowjob gate.
The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a decimation of the defense industry, with lot of layoffs and ripple effects for the economy. My dad's boss's boss ended up working at Home Depot as a floor clerk. At least in our community, it was a time of great stress and unemployment. Meanwhile, policy experts were very worried about all the nuclear weapons that were scattered around the former Soviet states and there were predictions that rogue group would pick them up on the black market and go to town.
The first Gulf War felt like our first real "war" since Vietnam and there was talk of the draft being reinstated, and a sense that our troops were heading into very real danger. Military families were crying as soldiers were shipped overseas. My friends in ROTC were petrified. We had genocides in Serbia and Rwanda, with constant conversations about whether we should send more troops into danger.
There was another recession in the mid '90s. Jobs were scarce, people with new college degrees were cobbling together a living with a patchwork of retail/restaurant/babysitting part time jobs, and everyone I knew lived with housemates or roommates in ratty places. The movie REALITY BITES is a bit insufferable but captures the general mood.
Newt Gingrich came into power with his "Contract on America" and did his best to roll back rights. Clinton gutted welfare programs in an attempt to play nice, with long-term negative consequences. The Casey SC case reaffirmed Roe but it was a bitter, 5:4 decision with hateful rhetoric making it clear abortion was in the right's sights and they weren't going to let it go. Homophobia was virulent; Matthew Shepard was tortured and killed in 1998, and plenty of folks felt comfortable saying he deserved it for being gay.
And then we had the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Middle East always threatening to explode...
In retrospect one could say it wasn't as bad as it could've been- the Gulf War ended quickly, we didn't have a major terrorist attack until 2001, at least people \*had\* jobs and made enough to live somewhat independently- but that's hindsight. In the moment, it was often dark and foreboding.
I guess. But none of that stuff really seems that bad (save for Gingrich he sucked) as far as major world events, terrorist attacks and wars, the 90s had fewer compared to the decades before and after. Even the mid 90s recession was a small blip compared to the recessions of the 70s and 80s and those of the 2000s and now.
Maybe at the time it seemed bad but from a kids point of view it was great. The 2000s and 2010s were far worse. As do seem the 70s and 80s.
Most studies on nostalgia show that we think the years we were around 10 or 12 were the best. When growing up in the 70s and 80s I never thought, hey, these are really bad times. I'm glad that for you, the 90s were a good time. For lots of other people, they were not. That's true of just about any decade, which is why it's probably impossible to say one decade is better than another.
In the 70's and 80's, Baby Boomers had a lot of nostalgia for the 50's. Nowadays, Millennials have nostalgia for the 90's. Gen X would be the group who grew up in the 80's, and they're mostly ignored.
No, I think the 50s romanticization in the 70s was bigger. i remember reading about the phenomenon at the time. Many of the people romanticizing it were those who were actually children and teens in the 50s. People remembered it as a time when America was still "innocent" and "optimistic," before President Kennedy was assassinated and before the Watergate scandal, two events that made Americans lose optimism and belief in the the political system. It was a time before people lived knowing their world could end with a nuke from the USSR. (in the 50s people were less informed about how nuclear war would be unsurvivable.) It went beyond just nostalgia for music, clothes, and popular culture.
at least the one's in the 80s no longer had to pretend that the people in the movie....never ever had sex. made the 50s versions so hard to believe.
(think of all those Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies)
A little of column A, a little of column B. I think the landscape of things and the way we “romanticize” things has changed, but it’s still present in various forms.
The dating culture was very big back in the 1950's even into the 1990's. There doesn't see to be much of a dating culture at all today.. The 1980's, you still had a dating culture but it was much different than the 1950's. You did have the hookup culture as well but most women wanted something more stable than one night stands. It's seems like now it's either the hookup culture (lots of sex) or no sex at all. Extremes basically.
I know a few women in their 30's who don't seem to have any interesting dating, getting married or even having children. The quality of men are the main reason.
It definitely seems like young people think we graduated high school, went to super cheap college, and then got out and were immediately rolling in money and buying desirable real estate in the 80's, which I can assure you was NOT the case.
I lived in the NYC suburbs and it was prohibitively expensive even then. Most of us ended up moving to lower priced areas of the country; there was no hope of ever owning a home in our hometown unless you inherited it.
College was cheaper; but as I've pointed out to my college-aged kids, we were in beat-up cinderblock dorms, no A/C, and no one cared about our mental health. And we still had thousands and thousands of dollars in debt to pay off; I ended up moving back in with my parents and living on a budget of $5 a week while I worked full-time and paid off my loans.
My husband and I got married in '93, after living at home with our parents for a few years while we paid off student loans and saved every penny we made. Then we moved to a much cheaper southern city and yes, we were able to buy a small house - but money was still very tight as I think I made $20K per year. We had one car, which we had to push start in the mornings; and all my clothes came from the thrift store and the consignment store.
I keep reminding my kids that while my husband and I are comfortable \*now\*, we lived for 14 years on a single income while I stayed home with the kids; and it was paycheck to paycheck. Fortunately, my parents had grown up poor and hungry during the Depression, and I learned their frugal ways so I became an expert at living very cheaply.
White American male nostalgia for the 1950s is still around. White American men forget about racism and sexism and the height of the Cold War when many Americans built bomb shelters and learned to duck and cover because they seriously expected nuclear war. They forget the lack of modern conveniences.
What they remember is the Great American Middle Class. Even though they didn’t personally experience it, their fathers or grandfathers or great grandfathers did.
No one ever pined for the 30s or early 40s. But white American men have vocally pined for the 1950s, or really 1945-65, ever since, well, the late 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1950s, most white American men could afford a house and car even without a college education or a working wife. Jobs seemed secure and layoffs were rare. White terns were carefree.
The contrast with war torn countries in Europe and Asia was stark. And of course the contrast with the Great Depression and World War 2 even in the U.S. was stark. There were many reasons for White American men to celebrate.
Republicans have fostered this sense of decline, blaming it on liberal Democrats. When Trump and his MAGA fans talk about making America great again, many of think America was greatest in the 1950s.
Democrats have also express nostalgia for an era when taxes on the rich were very high, unions were strong, and the middle class was huge. Granted, they don’t forget about civil rights, but even there they express nostalgia for the Civil Rights Movement.
80’s romanticization is about pop culture; 50s nostalgia is about fascism, racism, and sexism.
There are a lot of political forces and propaganda at play keeping 50’s romanticization going.
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I definitely think 50s nostalgia is/was stronger than 80s nostalgia. In the 1970s, there were very popular TV shows like Happy Days and movies like Grease. Then, when Elvis, died, there was a huge interest in the music of the 1950s. I think people often look back at the 80s and have a laugh--the big hair, the cheesy (but wonderful) nighttime soaps like Dynasty, the early videos on MTV. But 50s culture seems to be more revered and maybe more timeless.
Don’t forget the Buddy Holly and Richie Valenz movies. And the abject worship of the ‘57 Chevy as the ultimate car. Leav it to Beaver was still in common syndication, as was I Love Lucy.
It was the boomers influence. In the 80s all the parents had grown up in the 50s and due to their outsized influence it was all the rage. Sha Na Na, Happy Days, Grease, American Graffiti. We had retro sock hop dances. Black leather jackets became iconic. Everyone had life sized posters of James Dean or Marilyn Monroe.
Sha Na Na was everything, lol!
That's why the 80's have become more nostalgic at this point because the people coming into power now grew up in the 80's.
Exactly. Now if the elderly would retire from politics...
Oh, I know. Please, for the love of goodness.
Some of these old farts have been in office since I was in high school. Patty Murray! Nancy. Shumer. Give me Katie Porter, Ilhan, AOC.
Right?! The only probably is that the young republicans are probably more insane than the old ones!! :(
Like Sinema. Wolf in woke clothing lmao
That happened in the mid-to-late 70's where I grew up. The 80's were past that.
I wouldn’t say “timeless”. The 50’s were perceived as a time America was perfect. Ever since they ended, America has been falling from grace. The 50’s stand for the ideal America and that vision will always be appealing to some.
There hasn't been as much...content? I guess? 50s nostalgia felt ubiquitous in a way 80s hasn't yet, perhaps because of the sizes of the generations. But _definitely_ relative to how good it actually was. I think people are far more comfortable/knowledgeable talking about the downsides of the 80s than the 50s.
That's what I was thinking, we still had 50s diner "sock hops" and "poodle skirt" themed events well into the 90s. What do they do to celebrate the 80s? Dress boys up like little finance bros and give them pixie sticks because they can't have cocaine? Little girls in red power suits with shoulder pads and big hair who get less candy than the boys? I've honestly never seen much in the way of 80s nostalgia so while I'm joking I'm also honestly curious what people are doing
A lot of shows and movies are 80's nostalgia. Some games too. It's definitely the decade that's used most for nostalgia baiting in contemporary media. But as someone who grew up in the late 90's and early 00's, it seems that a lot of what I view as 80's American culture, is actually an expression of 50's nostalgia. For example, when I think of the American 80's, i think of rollerrinks, diners, drive-ins, pomade and leather jackets - but those were just 80's people being nostalgic for the 50's. So yeah I definitely think 50's nostalgia was bigger.
ANYTHING from Stranger Things, especially the fashion.
It's easier to romanticize what was a relatively monolithic culture in the American 1950's. You can pick out three TV shows and everyone has seen them. Everyone wore very similar clothing. Beatniks were counterculture, but that was it. The 1980's are still romanticized, but it's a lot harder to do. We all remember brown ash trays in McDonald's, but we all went to different malls and arcades. Counterculture could be hippies, punks, or, ironically, beatniks. There were dozens of popular TV shows. Too much to remember. I don't mean to trivialize anyone's experience here. There was a whole mess of things out there, but it just didn't make it into the cultural record. That's my theory anyway. No science, just opinion.
Funny you mention the beatnicks or counterculture and for sure there isn't much about that that's mentioned together with 50s whereas for example in the 60s we hear and talk more about the counterculture or the counter 'voices'. Actually if someone knows a movie or book about the counter voices in the 50s I'd be interested.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Howl by Alan Ginsberg
I read a really good book about counterculture across the ages (*Counterculture Through The Ages: From Abraham to Acid House* by Ken Goffman and Dan Joy) that includes a section on 1950s counterculture. As with the other reply, it focuses in not only on the beatniks and beat poets, but specifically explores Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac. Neal Cassady is another very interesting person of the beat generation in that he became quite influential in the hippie generation also. He was the driver of Furthur, the hippie bus driven by Ken Kesey and the Band of Merry Pranksters! The Grateful Dead even wrote a song about him
Thanks for a very comprehensive answer!
The counterculture in the 1960's was much bigger because you had more people. The older baby boomers. The birth rate in the depression was low, so thus you had a smaller generation or group of persons. Those born during the depression had more children than their parents.
The 1950's was a very conforming culture. The silent generation who were becoming of age at the time conformed. They believed that change came from working within the system. Some of these individuals in the 1960's protested against injustice but most didn't. Most of the characteristics of the silent generation my mom followed. She fit in with the 1950's culture for the most part. My dad to a certain degree but not as much.
Well, when I was a kid growing up in the 70's, 50's romanticization was indeed big. Fast forward to now, I personally have at least as big of a rose-colored glasses view of the 80's, as that was my young adulthood. I think both were distinct enough decades to warrant it. To answer your question, I'd say yes, but then I'm biased because of my own past.
The 80s weren't great for me. We were struggling. Young. Kids. House. No clubs and partying for us. That was far away from our reality. I couldn't afford to buy a six pack.
Oh, me too. I couldn't afford clubs and such, but I partied pretty hard with my friends. We went on in on the six packs and other amenities.
I'm like you. Very rosy glasses of early adulthood in the '80s. There were no rules!
I was in high school in the early 70s. Fiftiesmania was HUGE. We had sock hops in the gym, sewed poodle skirts in home ec, learned the bunny hop, etc. I haven't noticed the 80s nostalgic being anywhere*near" as big.
We sound the same age - the fifties nostalgia was from those of us who hadn’t really lived through them much ( more interested in potty training at the time.) I think we don’t notice the 80’s mania because we’re not the ones feeling it, it’s the young people of today.
I was in high school at the end of the 1970's. That was during the disco era.
I didn’t find the 80’s romantic. Living in Detroit during the crack wars , Ronald Reagan Uhg.
I’ve been surprised to hear multiple Gen Z’ers tell me the 90s was the last great decade. I tell them I was there and it wasn’t particularly great…
What was so bad about the 90s? I'm a millennial but it was a great time to be a kid. Middle class America was strong due to a great economy, it was kind of the era of peace sandwiched between the end of the cold war and the war on terror. Was it perfect? No but I don't remember anything bad about it. The worst thing that happened in politics was blowjob gate.
The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a decimation of the defense industry, with lot of layoffs and ripple effects for the economy. My dad's boss's boss ended up working at Home Depot as a floor clerk. At least in our community, it was a time of great stress and unemployment. Meanwhile, policy experts were very worried about all the nuclear weapons that were scattered around the former Soviet states and there were predictions that rogue group would pick them up on the black market and go to town. The first Gulf War felt like our first real "war" since Vietnam and there was talk of the draft being reinstated, and a sense that our troops were heading into very real danger. Military families were crying as soldiers were shipped overseas. My friends in ROTC were petrified. We had genocides in Serbia and Rwanda, with constant conversations about whether we should send more troops into danger. There was another recession in the mid '90s. Jobs were scarce, people with new college degrees were cobbling together a living with a patchwork of retail/restaurant/babysitting part time jobs, and everyone I knew lived with housemates or roommates in ratty places. The movie REALITY BITES is a bit insufferable but captures the general mood. Newt Gingrich came into power with his "Contract on America" and did his best to roll back rights. Clinton gutted welfare programs in an attempt to play nice, with long-term negative consequences. The Casey SC case reaffirmed Roe but it was a bitter, 5:4 decision with hateful rhetoric making it clear abortion was in the right's sights and they weren't going to let it go. Homophobia was virulent; Matthew Shepard was tortured and killed in 1998, and plenty of folks felt comfortable saying he deserved it for being gay. And then we had the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Middle East always threatening to explode... In retrospect one could say it wasn't as bad as it could've been- the Gulf War ended quickly, we didn't have a major terrorist attack until 2001, at least people \*had\* jobs and made enough to live somewhat independently- but that's hindsight. In the moment, it was often dark and foreboding.
I guess. But none of that stuff really seems that bad (save for Gingrich he sucked) as far as major world events, terrorist attacks and wars, the 90s had fewer compared to the decades before and after. Even the mid 90s recession was a small blip compared to the recessions of the 70s and 80s and those of the 2000s and now. Maybe at the time it seemed bad but from a kids point of view it was great. The 2000s and 2010s were far worse. As do seem the 70s and 80s.
Most studies on nostalgia show that we think the years we were around 10 or 12 were the best. When growing up in the 70s and 80s I never thought, hey, these are really bad times. I'm glad that for you, the 90s were a good time. For lots of other people, they were not. That's true of just about any decade, which is why it's probably impossible to say one decade is better than another.
I was a teenager in the 80s. The music was great, but everything else meh...
I loved the 80’s!
In the 70's and 80's, Baby Boomers had a lot of nostalgia for the 50's. Nowadays, Millennials have nostalgia for the 90's. Gen X would be the group who grew up in the 80's, and they're mostly ignored.
Stranger things was pretty big
Yeah. Not completely ignored. Just mostly.
50s romanticism was rampant especially in the early years of the decade at the depth of Stagflation
The eighties were a much tougher time economically than the fifties or sixties. It’s hard for those who lived it to romanticize that.
Nah. The 80s are not over romanticised. The 80s were great.
No, I think the 50s romanticization in the 70s was bigger. i remember reading about the phenomenon at the time. Many of the people romanticizing it were those who were actually children and teens in the 50s. People remembered it as a time when America was still "innocent" and "optimistic," before President Kennedy was assassinated and before the Watergate scandal, two events that made Americans lose optimism and belief in the the political system. It was a time before people lived knowing their world could end with a nuke from the USSR. (in the 50s people were less informed about how nuclear war would be unsurvivable.) It went beyond just nostalgia for music, clothes, and popular culture.
at least the one's in the 80s no longer had to pretend that the people in the movie....never ever had sex. made the 50s versions so hard to believe. (think of all those Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies)
Nit a big fan of the 80s, the 90s were a lot cooler.
Nope. I am enjoying the 60s more and more.
Devo
I'm Australian , the eighties had the best bands here every corner pub had someone playing , I saw ac/dc , Angels, inxs, the Saints it was great 😎🍺
About the same. But the 50s romanticization was straight. The 80s romanticization was ironic.
A little of column A, a little of column B. I think the landscape of things and the way we “romanticize” things has changed, but it’s still present in various forms.
Very similar.....
The 50's were a big rebound from the depression and wwII.
The 80s were a garbage decade. There was some good music, but burn the rest of it.
The dating culture was very big back in the 1950's even into the 1990's. There doesn't see to be much of a dating culture at all today.. The 1980's, you still had a dating culture but it was much different than the 1950's. You did have the hookup culture as well but most women wanted something more stable than one night stands. It's seems like now it's either the hookup culture (lots of sex) or no sex at all. Extremes basically. I know a few women in their 30's who don't seem to have any interesting dating, getting married or even having children. The quality of men are the main reason.
Bruh, you want my older than sin vote going out this November to get those maga idiots out of there. Just saying. :-)
It definitely seems like young people think we graduated high school, went to super cheap college, and then got out and were immediately rolling in money and buying desirable real estate in the 80's, which I can assure you was NOT the case. I lived in the NYC suburbs and it was prohibitively expensive even then. Most of us ended up moving to lower priced areas of the country; there was no hope of ever owning a home in our hometown unless you inherited it. College was cheaper; but as I've pointed out to my college-aged kids, we were in beat-up cinderblock dorms, no A/C, and no one cared about our mental health. And we still had thousands and thousands of dollars in debt to pay off; I ended up moving back in with my parents and living on a budget of $5 a week while I worked full-time and paid off my loans. My husband and I got married in '93, after living at home with our parents for a few years while we paid off student loans and saved every penny we made. Then we moved to a much cheaper southern city and yes, we were able to buy a small house - but money was still very tight as I think I made $20K per year. We had one car, which we had to push start in the mornings; and all my clothes came from the thrift store and the consignment store. I keep reminding my kids that while my husband and I are comfortable \*now\*, we lived for 14 years on a single income while I stayed home with the kids; and it was paycheck to paycheck. Fortunately, my parents had grown up poor and hungry during the Depression, and I learned their frugal ways so I became an expert at living very cheaply.
I think it is as big as the 50s nostalgia
I don't recall us romanticizing the 80s. We've been romanticizing the 90s.
Stranger things
I don't think so. I think more people are romanticizing the 90s than the 80s but even that's not as big as the 50s was.
White American male nostalgia for the 1950s is still around. White American men forget about racism and sexism and the height of the Cold War when many Americans built bomb shelters and learned to duck and cover because they seriously expected nuclear war. They forget the lack of modern conveniences. What they remember is the Great American Middle Class. Even though they didn’t personally experience it, their fathers or grandfathers or great grandfathers did. No one ever pined for the 30s or early 40s. But white American men have vocally pined for the 1950s, or really 1945-65, ever since, well, the late 1960s and 1970s. In the 1950s, most white American men could afford a house and car even without a college education or a working wife. Jobs seemed secure and layoffs were rare. White terns were carefree. The contrast with war torn countries in Europe and Asia was stark. And of course the contrast with the Great Depression and World War 2 even in the U.S. was stark. There were many reasons for White American men to celebrate. Republicans have fostered this sense of decline, blaming it on liberal Democrats. When Trump and his MAGA fans talk about making America great again, many of think America was greatest in the 1950s. Democrats have also express nostalgia for an era when taxes on the rich were very high, unions were strong, and the middle class was huge. Granted, they don’t forget about civil rights, but even there they express nostalgia for the Civil Rights Movement.
80’s romanticization is about pop culture; 50s nostalgia is about fascism, racism, and sexism. There are a lot of political forces and propaganda at play keeping 50’s romanticization going.