evanevanevan

One of my favorite subgenres of teen pop/teen movies of the '50s and '60s are the feeble attempts to force kids into adopting new crazes. In trying to mimic the success of "The Twist" and "The Loco-Motion," most of the pop songs had accompanying dances. The songs are always kind of pushy, because instead of simply introducing the new dance, they instead declare that the dances are already the next big thing that all the kids are doing. It's interesting also how much the songs must have depended on television appearances to ensure their popularity (though I guess I don't actually know what the "Loco-Motion" dance is). The teen films tended to exploit familiar fads (surfing, dragracing etc.), while also branching out to new ones. The Frankie & Annette Beach Party series was really good at this: Beach Blanket Bingo was all about skydiving, Muscle Beach Party had bodybuilding, and Pajama Party was about, uhh, pajamas.

There are countless examples of these, but I've been recently introduced to a couple really bizarre ones that I like a lot. One is the 1957 film Bop Girl Goes Calypso, which is about how a scientist with some fancy machine is "proving" that rock 'n' roll is on the way out, predicting that calypso will be the big new craze! There were a few films that came out at this time all with the same hypothesis, including Calypso Heat Wave which features Maya Angelou(!)

And in the music realm, how about this great song performed by Eddie Hodges, the child star best known as Huck Finn in the 1960 adaptation directed by Michael Curtiz? "Mugmates" suggests that what "everyone does" now to indicate they are going steady, instead of giving someone their pin, is simply have... matching coffee mugs.

Eddie Hodges - Mugmates [mp3]

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