Opening the Floodgates...

What year did everything change...? When did the floodgates open? What were the changes exactly? Changes in attitude, changes in culture...,forbidden topics no longer forbidden, a shift in manners and morals... Was it because of JFK's death and the aftermath of that or before? A reaction to the cold war, the atom bomb, the H-bomb? the anxiety that was the 1950s? People gradually speaking more openly, candidly, cursing in public, reading Freud, Kinsey, Kerouac, wearing their hair longer (men) or shorter (women)? Indulging, unwinding, breaking loose from convention, rebelling against parents (the older crowd),  shedding inhibitions, breaking molds, getting rid of  hang-ups, a post-war middle-class sampling bohemian trends seeping downward from the upper classes or upward from the working classes...Was it a seed planted by the dream factory of Hollywood, a subliminal advertising ploy, the power of suggestion, collective hypnosis, mass media? Was it from articles in Cosmopolitan and Esquire...from the new cinema:  Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Blow-Up, The Wild Bunch... Trends in literature, perhaps....Ulysses, Henry Miller, Peyton Place, Norman Mailer...or was it all that rock music, Chuck Berry (?), Elvis (?) Beatles (?),  Dylan (?) James Brown (?) Bossa Nova (?)  Jimi Hendrix (?),  the decline of puritan morality, changes in the work force, birth control, the decline of colonialism, civil rights, liberation movements across the globe, the old sinking empires ...? Did people just grow tired of  repression, of paying lip-service to, of keeping up appearances, of double-standards, of formal rhetorical pieties...raised eyebrows, hushed whispers, closeted pursuits? You had to dress up back then just to go out in public, polished shoes, ties, jackets, plaid skirts, white gloves? You had to marry the girl if...A gentlemen would never...A young woman must not live alone...Those topics were not discussed except in psychology class or as part of medical training...Whatever it was was always there, under the brown paper bag...until the decision got made... Because after the war had ended...and people found room again for pleasure seeking... like never before... unapologetic adventures... teenagers and beatniks, corporate men, career women, the new professional class... decline of old traditions, of "clean living" and "church-going"...Was the old time religion somehow involved? Public education, the new psychology...the new humanism....a discrediting of fear, guilt, shame... Was it more a function of the political unrest, protests, riots, marches media coverage, the new mediums, television, film, the new voyeurism of current events...? Guilt over racial injustice...the new awareness of women in the workforce, the new feminism...the sexes mingling...Was there a simple letting-go of the past born of guilt or a subverting of dominant paradigms courtesy of the radicals or a burying of heads in the sand courtesy of reactionaries... Celebrity culture perhaps, the birth of icons...Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O....new and emerging role models,  anti-heroes - faces elevated in the headlines...drifters, schemers, criminals, underworld figures...In Cold Blood...Helter Skelter... true crime...transgression, a scary lack of boundaries...lack of limits... Did someone yell: No more secrets...Down with secrecy!....A response to clandestine operations...A thumbs down to the Cold War...to espionage and demimondes.... Was it meant to make up for something? As compensation? Did it just start like a spark...And when? Was it 1963? 1967? 1968? Or even as late as 1973? When did we start to feel it as a culture, when did the earthquake happen? Or was it happening all along for those on the other side of the tracks...?