Popular culture in the 1960s did more harm than good

Use the sources and your own knowledge to explain whether you agree with this view

Popular culture in the 1960s did more harm than good because there were more crimes being committed especially for organised (gang) crime and London’s ‘crime rate’ increased by 124% and in 1964 indictable crime figures reached 1 million for the first time, this shows that something went wrong in the 60s and I believe that it was the pop culture that caused this with music like the Beatles, Janis Joplin, Rolling Stones and jimmy Hendrix that influenced drug use and therefore people committing crimes to pay for the drugs that they’d heard from the Beatles and Janis Joplin, who didn’t sing about drugs but she was well known for taking drugs. That was a bad influence in itself. Crime rates may have increased heavily because the police were better in the 60s and caught more people red handed or they found out who did it. Pop culture also did harm, because people were more into music than they used to be and if anything bad happened to a band that everyone liked there would be riots and their concerts were getting bigger and more people were starting fights with each other because they had different views, but pop culture was doing good as well because everyone liked the Beatles and they had a big impact on the 60s and their influence was good in the way that people, rather than spending money on drugs were saving up to see the Beatles live this was good because it stopped people buying drugs but some of their lyrics didn’t help the drug problem like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was apparently a song about an LSD trip but in fact it was about a drawing john Lennon’s son bought home about a classmate called Lucy and she was in the sky with diamonds, but it was in reality about drugs because when they wrote it they were on drugs and it explains that in the lyrics like “picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies” there were more lyrics like that that made it seem like a drug trip.

Gambling was a big problem in the 60s that wasn’t helped by the fact that gambling had been legalised and the only radio station teenagers actually listened to was encouraging gambling (radio Luxembourg) this was extremely bad for teenagers because they were gambling and turning to crime to get more money for gambling, but gambling was not the biggest problem in the 60s it was mainly drugs and alcohol, so in reality here was a big circle for the reasons the crime rate had gone up.

1. For money to buy drugs and alcohol.

2. Money for Beatles concerts

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1. For money to buy drugs and alcohol.

2. Money for Beatles concerts

3. To get money for gambling, basically to get money for anything really.

Another bad influence was TV because there were indecent thing on TV that some people like Mary Whitehouse didn’t want on TV these were scenes of a sexual nature, language and some unnecessary fooling around. Mary Whitehouse wanted this to stop so she started up a campaign called “the women of Britain clean up TV campaign.” She was a good influence because she was trying to get young authors to write plays about “established Christian faith and plays which inspire a sense of purpose and hope” and she would try to get them shown on the BBC because it was extremely difficult for young people to get work on TV.

There was a good influence in the 60s and that was school the figures for amount of students in full time education had almost doubled from 200,000 in 1961 to 390,000 in 1969, this was good because they would have learned about how to do things, like for the boys carpentry and metal work and for girls touch-typing, sewing and cookery, this was good because rather than spend all day doing drugs they were at school learning vital skills for everyday life. This was also a place for friends to talk, about music after lessons, and about where and when they could meet to take drugs, or even to sniff glue, which was also rife in the 60’s

So in reality yes the popular culture did do more harm than good, but that what made the 60s what it was, and is remembered, as being the best time to be a teenager for the music and drugs. And as with most things that happened to people, most were only phases, which thankfully, did not have any lasting effects on most of the people concerned.

Ben Pharoah