Why I Hate the 60s: The Decade That Was Too Good to Be True (2004 TV Movie) User Reviews

Viewing The Past Through Blue-Tinted Glasses

[ShadeGrenade · 1/10 · 22 February 2006]

When she was Leader Of Her Majesty's Opposition, Margaret Thatcher ( remember her? ) vowed to rollback 'The Permissive Society' on becoming P.M. It was a promise that predictably resonated with the Tory faithful, but alas proved impossible to keep because it did not exist, and never had. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have told her acolytes, many of whom to this day huff and puff about the '60's, denouncing it as an era of 'moral decay'. Well, I suppose if you were around during Profumo it must have seemed that way.

Broadcast as part of the 'Summer Of The Sixties' festival on B.B.C.-4, this ludicrously one-sided programme was intended presumably as a corrective to the usual accusations that go hand-in-hand with retrospectives, namely that the past is being 'viewed through rose-tinted glasses'.

It crassly inferred that everything about the decade stank, such as 'Please Release Me' by Engelbert Humperdinck ( What? Worse than 'Agadoo' by Black Lace? ), and that we should have bypassed it and the '70's altogether and moved onto the caring, sharing '80's.

Complaints were made about beautiful architecture being demolished to make way for ugly eyesores. Excuse me? That did not only happen in the '60's. Mick Jagger being questioned about his political beliefs is hardly as embarrassing as the spectacle of Davina McCall on 'Question Time'. It was even intimated that England's victory in the 1966 World Cup was undeserved. I half-expected Ann Leslie to pop up to tell us 'The Sound Of Music' was a turkey.

It is the easiest thing in the world to cherry pick the worst bits of the past, string them together to create a fundamentally distorted picture of how things were, and this programme did just that. In that respect it was no different from those tacky 'I Love The '70's' type programmes that clog up the arteries of late-night Channel 4 schedules.

It might have been possible to take it half-seriously had the contributors not consisted of ex-'Daily Mail' hacks and noted Tory sympathisers. What a grumpy lot they were. I felt sorry for them. While the world was enjoying its new-found sexual liberation, they were stuck at home watching Malcolm Muggeridge.

a waspish and amusing take on the sixties

[secretarthur · 10/10 · 25 August 2006]

If you like the sixties, as I do, you should love the stinging wit of this documentary. It is a no-holds-barred assault on the myth surrounding the decade in Britain. With a brilliant commentary by the satirist Chris Langham the programme makes a superb prosecuting counsel: the racism, the appalling architecture, the tyranny of the car, the consumerism, the unquestioning abandoning of the old are all charges that those of us who love the decade should be able to deal with without desperately labelling it 'right-wing drivel'.

There's great fun in the commentary, and I think the send up of Warhol, the British obsession with the '66 world cup and a reminder of some of the appalling pop music of the period should win this programme an award.

crackling good fun - and serious biting stuff

[gerlad1948 · 9/10 · 17 September 2006]

I ENJOY A DOC WITH INCISIVE WIT. It was thought provoking and laugh-making. I particularly liked the attack on consumerism/ pop art. The sixties were a long-awaited break from the stuffiness that went before but change isn't all progress as this documentary so ably demonstrated. Le Corbusier did get more of his way with the suburbs of French cities and we can now see the end result of that. Many English cities were also blighted with impoverished landscapes of system-built high rise. These 'townscapes' were also designed in craven submission of the car. More affluence led to more consumerism and the fetishism of having new everythings. Pop music, the great invention of the decade, was also as bad as it was good. Still like the Kinks though...

An alternative viewpoint

[m-ozfirat · 9/10 · 21 December 2022]

Many good things happened in the 1960s such as greater tolerance and a questioning of deference, however progress and change was not all good as this documentary states.

Society became a nation of consumers obsessed with fashion and avarice as opposed to appreciating what people had and living within their means.

The Arts industry was decimated from one of decorum and high refined culture to one of nihilism and outrage that has lead to the woke music and celebrities we have today. The sexual aspects of this rebellion are being felt to this day with no sense or sensible guidelines.

Selective Education and rail transport was another factor that was dilapidated through a myopic trend of "modernity" were something that worked as fine was it did should of just been left and maintained.

The money wasted to build concrete towers that were depressing and isolating lead to a social and mental breakdown we are living with to this day when the Victorian brick architecture was fine the way it was in British cities and towns.

These are most of the points for which the side effects of the sixties have affected the western world to this day and have lead to its decline in the 21st century. One subject that they should off mentioned but did not was that of Leyland Cars, which later extinguished to British car industry.

Very true and refreshing view of the "swinging sixties", eye opening

[LaPfieffer92 · 22 January 2013]

I just watched this and I gotta say, this was a refreshing take on this popular decade. People cant seem to get away from this time period. Sure it had change but like the recent Obama debacle, not all change is good and this is what the video pointed out. As a conservative I do not have this rose colored view of the 60's and my mother, who grew up during this time, didn't either. People, usually the hippies or young wannabe's, will cite things like "ooh this decade had the best music and all the sexual revolution and stuff!" as they cough there lungs out from all the weed and drugs they took. um, thats actually why we are living in the rotting world of today. Most of the idiots who were in charge of this rebellion of the youth were the drugged out dopes who played in bands like the rolling stones, the doors etc. This doc showed the chaos of the times and that the 60's culture actually did more harm later then good. It was actually pretty depressing to see how things just got worse, from architecture to music and film, crime rates soaring, to the generally godless and material culture we have lived in ever since, and yes it was and is getting worse and worse, makes one question "when will it end and/or start getting better?". So when did the rot of the modern day start? The 40s? The 30s? I suppose you can always keep going back. But the 1960s was the first obvious symptom of nihilistic decadence in the West. Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" captures the spirit of the 60s, portraying a place that's lost all of its values. To use a metaphor: the 60s was the point when the snowball turned into an avalanche. Those left-wing hippies weren't ''innocent''. They ''infiltrated'' later on the politics, the media, government facilities, education systems, music business etc. So they had and still have an important role in the destruction and decline of todays society, moral, culture and dignity. I am glad to see that I am not the only one who feels this brief yet glorified moment in time is more a sham then anything. The "swinging 60's" was more a disturbing time then anything, one that while it may have had some, SOME decent music/films within its pop culture(the Kinks, Batman, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dark Shadows come to mind:), doesn't make up for just about every other social deconstruction it caused in its wake. Of course it was only after the fact years even decade's later that people finally started to open their eyes and went "what have we DONE" but by then it was too late, the damage was too perpetrated in our society and culture. This documentary is definitely worth checking out for a different and honest look at the 1960's that will dare you to remove the rose colored glasses your hippie parents gave you and take a real, honest look at the cultural shift that changed the world.