Rock Around the Clock

In Phoenix, I stop for a burger with the family at the “Five and Diner.” The food is decent, but the decor is overwhelming — the place is a fully decked out in 1950’s retro style.

Why the association of diners with a certain kind of 1950’s art deco style? You know, the glass block and formica, checkered vinyl floor, those aluminum stools and that jukebox full of upbeat, happy rock songs (with no swear words), walls decked out with posters of Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn, and Coca-Cola...

Was it the new interstate highway system and manufacturing trends that put consumers on the road and brought machine-age styling to the lunch counter?

“It was a simpler time,” someone says. What, because post-war economic boom made such a happy middle-class? Or because G.I. bill paid your father’s college tuition and subsidized his mortgage? Was it all the white, middle-class families on TV? Or because it was before the end of segregation? Gay rights? The second wave of feminism? In fairness, though, as a kid maybe you were simpler.

But the Five and Diner is not some carefully preserved historic artifact. It is a fully contemporary invention, invested heavily in the myth of “the 50’s.” In fact, those “traditional family values” are a rather contemporary idea.

Art deco trappings and its Googie spawn were once signposts towards streamlined, technology-serviced future. The former was particularly embraced by European fascist states, the latter by an American suburban capitalism.

Now, both styles seem firmly lodged in the past. But they have not lost their utopian flavor — the futurism has been displaced by nostalgia.

In the U.S., at least, it’s become the visual, aesthetic, and user experience version of “comfort food.”

And adopted by the backlash.