S.K. Presents The Seventies

Generally speaking, I hate the seventies. I'm a product of the seventies, so I like that part. I just can't stand most of it.

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Here's a list of terrible things from the 70's:

1. Politics: Nixon, Ford, Carter. Need I say more?

2. Colors. Brown and Yellow with nasty splashes of orange. Avocado green furniture and harvest gold appliances. (Just watch a lost episode of All In The Family.)

3. Movies. All of them. Except Star Wars and Carrie, okay?

4. Clothes. Polyester in particular, and bell bottoms. Butterfly collars. Oh, how about polyester leisure suits. My grandpa gave me one of those (in the 90's!) which I proudly disposed of. Ties were pretty bad, too. They looked like long ugly bibs.

5. Mobile homes. With license plates on the backs.

6. Shag carpet.

7. Sedans. I owned a 1979 Chrysler LeBaron. It was not a friendly car. And all of those things were boats! El Camino's were pretty nasty, too. Was it a car, or a truck?

8. Afros. I don't miss them, do you?

9. Disco.

10. Long side burns.

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There, aren't you glad to have that list? But I began to think about how Stephen King had given us the 70's. It wasn't that bad! In fact, if you had to offer something int he 70's, horror was definitely the way to go!

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In 1974 King gave us Carrie. It was not only a great first book, but a wonderful offering for the seventies. A girl with a wacko mom is harassed to the point of madness. Carrie's mama is afraid of the changing times. In fact, as the sexual revolution bloomed all around, Carrie's mama saw sex as sin (even in marriage). Of course, Carrie's mother is not the villain in the novel. She's part of what makes Carrie messed up, but Carrie's peers are the villains. Just a quick note on Carrie at this point; I'm not sure that girls gym classes still have open showers -- But I'm not doing an investigation!

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What about Salem's Lot? It was King's idea to bring vampires into the modern world; well, the modern world of 1975. Though maybe not immediately apparent to the reader, Salem's Lot has some political commentary. King told The Fright Report" (Oui Magazine, January 1980), " "I wrote 'Salem's Lot during the period when the Ervin committee was sitting. That was also the period when we first learned of the Ellsberg break-in, the White House tapes, the connection between Gordon Liddy and the CIA, the news of enemies' lists, and other fearful intelligence. During the spring, summer and fall of 1973, it seemed that the Federal Government had been involved in so much subterfuge and so many covert operations that, like the bodies of the faceless wetbacks that Juan Corona was convicted of slaughtering in California, the horror would never end ... Every novel is to some extent an indavertant psychological portrait of the novelist, and I think that the unspeakable obscenity in 'Salem's Lot has to do with my own disillusionment and consequent fear for the future. In a way, it is more closely related to Invasion of the Body Snatchers than it is to Dracula. The fear behind 'Salem's Lot seems to be that the Government has invaded everybody." (quoted from wikipedia)

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The Shining is a mix of horror and the psychological inner-workings of the family unit. But think about this, while many of us were watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rodgers, King was showing us what the family was really like. King's often gritty view of jack's unpinning gives us a view of what was really happening, but no one was talking about!

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The work that would crown King was his 1978 offering of The Stand. Reread the early chapters of The Stand and notice how much social commentary is there. The original is definitely dated! I like it that King writes about the time he's in. He gives us literary time capsules.

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In 1979 King gave us The Dead Zone. This is a great novel for the 70's, since it gives us a truly evil politician who must be done away with. There can be little doubt that Nixon's crimes were on Kings mind as he penned the novel. As much as Under The Dome was a commentary on the political situation America found herself in (from King's point of view) in the Bush/Chaney administration, The Dead Zone was commentary on the political situation. Under The Dome is about a group of people who are manipulated. The Dead Zone shows us one wildly crazy politician out of control. King's versions of Nixon verses Bush.

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Also in 1979, King gave us The Long Walk. This is once again mirrors the social/political mood of the country as it shows a dark future. Both this and Running man make me think of George Orwell's 1984. (Written -not published- in 1948. . . get it?)

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King acts as mirror to the times. For the 70's, it was a very dark mirror. He's said before that he enjoyed taking society apart in The Stand. And the America of the 1970's really did need Stephen King's knife taken to it.

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By the way, when you read the original version of The Stand, notice how hollow it feels. It has that same empty feeling that the 70's had. I know, King had to chop it up, and I'm sure that added to the strange feeling.

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What kind of a picture of the 1970's did King give us?

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He showed us politicians out of control. Gary Hoppenstan writes in The Gothic World Of Stephen King, "the fiction of Stephen King has special relevance to his readers by reflecting the emptiness of post-water gate 70's --"

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More than just the politician starting to lose it, King dared to rip society itself apart in The Stand. Can you read between the lines here? "Something is really wrong with our world! It would be okay if all fell apart. Then we could confront the evil in a more direct manner."

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The real horror that King digs up is the individual. Depressed, often drunk, pressured by conformist -- the characters in King novels are perfect pictures of the people we found in the 1970's. He gives us ordinary guys pushed to the edge, about to lose it. (Road work) In this sense King acts as a prophet. More than one Bachman book explores this theme. Isn't' that the theme of: Carrie, Rage and The Shining?

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We can say that King's view of society during the 70's was bleak. He pulled consistently fro the underdog, though in many cases it didn't come out all that good for them in the end. Danny Torrance made it out of the 70's alive, but he had to step over the bodies of Carrie White and Johnny Smith.