From 14 August 2005, Journal:

For a while now I’ve been thinking of something I read when I was following Babylon 5 back in the mid-90s. JMS had written of how formality arises in a post war period. Spent the early afternoon trying to track this down, and came up with the following messages. I think this one from 2 July 1996 is probably what I’m thinking about:

From: J. Michael Straczynski (71016.1644@compuserve.com)
Subject: Don’t wanna hear that!
To: CIS
Date: 7/2/1996 7:07:00 PM

(original post unavailable)

My sense is that these things tend to go in cycles; if you were around in the Roaring Twenties, with flappers, jazz, and (to say the least) a lapse in morals that went into the first part of the 1930s, you’d extrapolate from that to say that the 1950s, by virtue of being 20 years down the road, would be even MORE loose, more immoral, wilder. But, in fact, the 50s were extremely conservative. And most of the SF of the time looked to a future that was as button-down as the present of their writers. Then the looser 60s and 70s, and a rebirth of some extent of conservatism in the Reagan 80s and for health reasons.

The day someone perfects, and distributes, a guaranteed Aids vaccine, I think you’re going to see another sexual revolution that’ll make the 60s look like a dinner party.

So by the time of B5, we’re in a bit of a conservative swing again, in terms of sexual matters (which often tends to come about post-war).

jms

Which is two years after he posted this on 12 January 1995

From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Subject: Re: Attn: JMS. counterculture
To: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: 1/12/1995 2:51:00 PM

This to Katherine Teague…you’re among the first to pick up on a deliberate writer’s choice in the writing of the series. In looking toward the period of B5, I tried to construct a society that had to come together on a planetary scale to fight a war for simple survival. My thinking was, “Okay, let’s assume that formality has come back into vogue; clothes tend not to be revealing, lines are more streamlined or severe, people address each other or refer to each other formally (”Mr. Isogi,” “Ms. Winters,” and so on).

I suppose a conservative could derive some satisfaction from this choice…though to quote Mephistophilis in “Faustus”……”Aye, think so still, ’till experience change thy mind.”

jms

which was because Teague commented on this, posted a day earlier

From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Subject: Attn: JMS. counterculture on B
To: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: 1/11/1995 5:34:00 PM

By 2259 the “counterculture” as we understand it is absolutely old fashioned and retrograde. Seems like everybody’s working to get In, not be Out. Sort of an extreme gingrichification effect….

jms

There was also this, which seems closer to my memory

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
From: Jacob Corbin (cor…@swbell.net)
Date: Nov 14 1998, 4:00 am
Subject: Re: Civil Rights in B5? WAS: River of Souls ( *Spoilers* )
Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse

And as JMS has pointed out from time to time when people have asked why everyone in B5 wears heavy clothing and listens to old-style swing, populations generally tend to become more conservative after a major war (the 20’s and the 50’s are both good examples of this). I’m still not sure if denizens of the 23rd century would be jazzhounds or not, but it’s a fun extrapolation and one of the things that initially attracted me to B5–along with neckties.

Jacob

And there was this, from September 25 1996

[…]
(I’ve also made the mental assumption of a return to a newformality in 2260, since styles go in and out of fashion. People use the word Mr. and Ms. more often, there’s a more formal stance with people you often get when a culture comes out of a major war, as we did after WW2.) […]

And I like this from 27 October 1995:

From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Subject: ATTN JMS: Influences?
To: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: 10/27/1995 9:00:00 AM

[…]It saddens me a bit now that anybody who sounds too literate is often put down as showy or being theatrical. Listen to the speeches of Kennedy and Churchill and FDR, look to the great orators of our long history of a nation, from Lincoln to Jefferson. Their use of language, of an idea well formed and delivered, propelled this nation toward its current destiny, forged one country out of dozens of squabbling states. I listen now to politicians, hoping and waiting for the one who understands that the words have to dig into our souls and take root, must have power and the purity of language well-used. And I just don’t hear it anymore…which is perhaps why we have consensus takers and not leaders these days.

It saddens me that literacy has become suspect, and degraded, given how many millions of years of evolution spent developing the ability to create language. The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. The less precise the useage, the less clear the process of language, the less you can achieve what you want to achieve when you open you mouth to say something. We have slowly bastardized and degraded and weakened the language, abetted and abided by a growing cultural disdain for literacy, a cyclical trend toward anti-intellectualism.

So I write my characters as sharp, and as witty, and as intelligent, and as literate as I wish I would be under those sorts of circumstances, which of course I never am. Maybe to remind people of the power of language…mainly because I just love the sound of words carefully stitched together. My dramatic conceit is that in 2259, we have had a moderate rebirth of formality, and the kind of literacy you would often see in letters from the turn of the century, and the 1930s. Because it allows me to write it the way I want.

This especially makes me think of a scene in the first season, when Sinclair is listening to the room’s computer recite ‘Ulysses’ by Tennyson in ‘The Parliament of Dreams’ (1994-02-23).

Now, the question I ask – is this happening? If you look at the Conservatism of the 1980s (which Bush II & Co seem to be echoing) this follows ten years after Vietnam. So it would seem to say that the next decade will be even more conservative then this one? (Oy vey). And yet, JMS talking about needing an Aids vaccine before another sexual revolution – this was written ten years before amateur internet porn, and there’s still no vaccine (although in ‘96, antiretroviral treatments which keep people alive today were only then beginning to become available). Anyway, I guess I have my eye out for a developing conservatism.