British Culture Studies

In our first lesson of popular culture we were introduced to the course. In this course we will discuss British identity and how the USA has influenced British pop culture.

We discussed the year of 1956 and how it was a year of turmoil; this was the first year of pop culture. It saw Britain become second class to the US. We discussed the Suez crisis and how America stormed in and told Britain to withdraw from the Suez Canal. This resulted in a division in Britain; many believed it was the end of the British Empire. This also resulted in America infiltrating Britain’s culture, along with many other countries.

Everything was affected by this huge shift, many immigrants began to filter in to Britain, this influenced many things, for example, in 1951 there were only eleven restaurants outside of London that sold foreign food, after 1956 this all changed. Televisions became popular in the early 1950’s and many American programmes began appearing on ITV. Later BBC joined in. Consumerism rose, washing machines became widely available, however many people believed that consumerism lowered the standards of Britain. The founding fathers of ‘pop culture’ Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams disliked pop culture very much and felt that Britain’s standards were never the same. The year of 1956 changed Britain forever, in good ways and bad.