The most recent Twitter where someone asks about something from your childhood as a way of dating cultural trends was this: Did you have posters in your room when you were in middle school? If so, what were they?
The person who posted this to Twitter answered with names like Corey Haim, Motley Crue, Rob Low, and Debbie Gibson.
This sent me down a path of both memory and cultural history.
First, middle schools were just becoming a thing when I was the appropriate age (1969–1973).
Second, I don't think posters were much of a mass-market item when I was in middle school, at least not in the part of the country where I lived. They were just starting to become that by the time I was in high school in the mid-1970s.
Third, the posters I had in high school didn't have images of real people (celebrities) on them. They were a map of Middle Earth from the Lord of the Rings:
Or they had sayings I liked on them, like this one by theologian Harvey Cox:
I also had a smallish poster with a night image of a neon-lit street accompanied by Paul Simon's lyric, "And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made."
Oh, and I had this big poster under the window in my basement bedroom:
(I remember being unsure if the middle figure was supposed to be a woman or not.)
Remembering these posters reminded me of where I got them: from bookstores in the very first shopping malls I ever experienced, also in the mid-1970s. These were fairly small, independently owned stores that later were absorbed by Walden Books. So the existence of these types of stores (plus Spencer Gifts!) provided more of an outlet for them.
I think I got at least the two "quote" posters and maybe the Middle Earth map in a shop called Friar Tuck Books in Oneonta, New York. I have no idea where I got the urinal poster.
I think the turn toward celebrities dominating posters started soon after this, copycatting the Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster, which came out in 1976.
There's probably an American Studies dissertation or two about the history of mass-market posters in late 20th century popular culture. The decreasing cost of offset printing, the increase of U.S. affluence that put money in the hands of late Baby Boomer purchasers, the building of shopping malls across the country... I can begin to imagine the factors that went into the rise of the poster.
I was there for the beginning of it, but I think I missed the main wave.
6 comments:
Maybe I was in the main wave? My bedroom was pretty much wallpapered with posters, everything from a copy of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein to glamour shots of Depeche Mode. My best one was a library READ poster of Sting (dressed as Hamlet) -- gosh I wish I still had that poster, I'd hang it in my office. I wasn't picky, and put all sorts of things up.
What years? During the 1980s (Depeche Mode... Sting...)?
Oh gosh — I had the poster, red text on white background, of words attributed to a well-known dictator and madman (I won’t write the name here): “The streets of our country are in turmoil,” it began. Also some sort of poster mocking Nixon. Also covers (just the slick paper) of albums from Yazoo Records (pre-war blues reissues). I was not a normal kid.
About the middle person in the big poster, notice one of the scrawls on the wall: “Stand up for equal rights.”
I don't think I caught that play on "stand up"... though I was fascinated by the graffiti.
Yes, I was an 80s kid -- graduated HS in 91. This would have been around 1987?
I sure wish I had a copy of that gorgeous Middle-Earth map; I love Pauline Baynes. I had a Narnia map on my wall -- we still have it, it's probably from the late 60s -- but I've never had that Middle-Earth one.
I wish I still had mine too. I had it hanging from my ceiling, used as a partial room divider, and so had hand-lettered the "Three rings for the Elven Kings" poem on the back of it in Flair pen ink. Not exactly archival, so if I did have it, I'm not sure how it would be holding up, though.
Post a Comment