When the past was the future

Tim Carmody looks back on the joyously remembered "Happy Days" era, particularly when set in opposition to the chaos and uncertainty of the Facebook generation:

It’s mem­ory as ide­ol­ogy, cre­ated (whether con­sciously or uncon­sciously) to sur­rep­ti­tiously win argu­ments about the present, espe­cially about social morés and gen­er­a­tional change.

And the Happy Days era — the real one, which was reflected in the TV show like a fun­house mir­ror — was dri­ven by tech­no­log­i­cal and social change, too! Kids had access to cars, tele­phones, TV, records and the radio, and dis­pos­able cash. Cruis­ing, malt shops, high school dances, drive-in movies, every­thing you see in Amer­i­can Graf­fiti — it might feel like part of the time­less social rit­ual now, but then, it was a rev­o­lu­tion, a set of truly rad­i­cal acts. Add the pill, civil rights, and a swelling in the ranks of col­lege stu­dents, and you’ve got fem­i­nism, counter-culture, the sex­ual rev­o­lu­tion.