How Did Culture Affect Pop Culture In Postwar America

The culture in Postwar America was heavily influenced by the second Red Scare, the promotional fear surrounding the upswing of communism. The cold war shaped American lives almost entirely and it did so by pushing our nation to make every effort to heighten our tech, stimulating the promotion of freedom, and increasing our economic growth. The competition of space exploration between the United States and U.S.S.R. led to the United States increasing spending on science related education throughout the nation. Along with the call for advancement in our sciences, pop culture was affected by all the propaganda of plotting the leader of the free world, the U.S. overcoming the Communists usually literally or in many cases symbolically; chiefly movies

The increased interest occurred because the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, which was the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth. After the launch of Sputnik, the general public was shocked and alarmed that the “enemy” had the capability to do so before the United States, and to make matters worse, President Eisenhower had been reassuring the public that the United states was technologically superior. Public fear of the soviet union’s ability to go to space led to the fear of them possibly turning this space exploration know-how into weapons. This aspect of the Red Scare induced enough fear that there were calls for increased defense spending but the president established that doing so would be going against what the United States was fighting against in this cold war (Mindtap, 13.2). What ended up passing was the National Defense Education Act and the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA with the Space Act (Mindtap, 13.2). The first of which increased funding for those who were pursuing science and math related courses in school and the latter created a designated government space exploration agency thus starting what is known as the Space

The people of America had been saving the whole wartime and now it was time to have fun. Although the red scare was relevant America still sought to combat it and this was by being extreme consumerists. This was not every person’s fault, but the increase in advertising at the time had a major impact on society. The contemporary show, Mad Men demonstrates the life of men in advertising in the 1950’s and all that came with that power. The women and youth of the era were the biggest spenders of the time with the sale of over twenty-five million home appliances and a nine billion dollars annually spent on consumer goods and entertainment, respectively (Mindtap, 13.1). The housing boom was supplemental to the amount of economic growth occurring in postwar America. So many consumer goods were purchased mostly because of all the new homes being built and the enormous amount of new families that were a result of peacetime