1960s counterculture essay
It was a decade marred by social unrest, civil rights injustice, and violence abroad. These were some of the factors that lead to a revolution that attempted to bifurcate the fabric of American society. Teenagers were breaking away from the ideals that their parents held, and were attempting to create their own society. If they were to accomplish this they would turn the current system upside down. In , Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A counterculture also written counter-culture is a subculture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores.
When oppositional forces reach critical mass , countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of Late Modern countercultures in the Western world include Romanticism — , Bohemianism — , the " Jazz Age " of the Roaring Twenties , the Non-conformists of the s , the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation — , followed by the globalized counterculture of the s — , usually associated with the hippie subculture [3] as well as the diversified punk subculture of the s and s.
John Milton Yinger originated the term "contraculture" in his article in American Sociological Review. Yinger suggested the use of the term contraculture "wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture.
Some scholars have attributed the counterculture to Theodore Roszak , [3] [5] [6] author of The Making of a Counter Culture. Scholars differ in the characteristics and specificity they attribute to "counterculture". Counterculture might oppose mass culture or "media culture" , [8] or middle-class culture and values. Counterculture may or may not be explicitly political.
It typically involves criticism or rejection of currently powerful institutions, with accompanying hope for a better life or a new society. Cultural development can also be affected by way of counterculture.
Scholars such as Joanne Martin and Caren Siehl, deem counterculture and cultural development as "a balancing act, [that] some core values of a counterculture should present a direct challenge to the core values of a dominant culture". Therefore, a prevalent culture and a counterculture should coexist in an uneasy symbiosis, holding opposite positions on valuable issues that are essentially important to each of them.
According to this theory, a counterculture can contribute a plethora of useful functions for the prevalent culture, such as "articulating the foundations between appropriate and inappropriate behavior and providing a safe haven for the development of innovative ideas". Typically, a "fringe culture" expands and grows into a counterculture by defining its own values in opposition to mainstream norms.
Their life cycles include phases of rejection, growth, partial acceptance and absorption into the mainstream. According to Sheila Whiteley, "recent developments in sociological theory complicate and problematize theories developed in the s, with digital technology, for example, providing an impetus for new understandings of counterculture". The counterculture of the s and early s generated its own unique brand of notable literature, including comics and cartoons, and sometimes referred to as the underground press.
During the late s and early s, these comics and magazines were available for purchase in head shops along with items like beads, incense, cigarette papers, tie-dye clothing, Day-Glo posters, books, etc. Gandalf's Garden in the King's Road , London, which also published a magazine of the same name.
Some genres tend to challenge societies with their content that is meant to outright question the norms within cultures and even create change usually towards a more modern way of thought.
More often than not, sources of these controversies can be found in art such as Marcel Duchamp whose piece Fountain was meant to be "a calculated attack on the most basic conventions of art" [20] in Contentious artists like Banksy base most of their works off of mainstream media and culture to bring pieces that usually shock viewers into thinking about their piece in more detail and the themes behind them.
A great example can be found in Dismaland , the biggest project of " anarchism " to be organised and exhibited which showcases multiple works such as an "iconic Disney princess's horse-drawn pumpkin carriage, [appearing] to re-enact the death of Princess Diana ".
Counterculture is very much evident in music particularly on the basis of the separation of genres into those considered acceptable and within the status quo and those not. Since many minorities groups are already considered counterculture, the music they create and produce may reflect their sociopolitical realities and their musical culture may be adopted as a social expression of their counterculture. This is reflected in dancehall with the concept of base frequencies and base culture in Henriques's "Sonic diaspora", where he expounds that "base denotes crude, debased, unrefined, vulgar, and even animal" for the Jamaican middle class and is associated with the "bottom-end, low frequencies…basic lower frequencies and embodied resonances distinctly inferior to the higher notes" that appear in dancehall.
Although music may be considered base and counter culture, it may actually enjoy a lot of popularity which can be seen by the labelling of hip hop as a counter culture genre, despite it being one of the most commercially successful and high charting genres.
Many of these artists though once being taboo, have been assimilated into culture and are no longer a source of moral panic since they don't cross overtly controversial topics or challenge staples of current culture. Gay liberation considered a precursor of various modern LGBT social movements was known for its links to the counterculture of the time e.
At the outset of the 20th century, homosexual acts were punishable offenses in these countries. But even then, there were dissenting views. Sigmund Freud publicly expressed his opinion that homosexuality was "assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development". There were also bars and bathhouses that catered to gay clientele and adopted warning procedures similar to those used by Prohibition -era speakeasies to warn customers of police raids.
But homosexuality was typically subsumed into bohemian culture, and was not a significant movement in itself. Eventually, a genuine gay culture began to take root, albeit very discreetly, with its own styles, attitudes and behaviors and industries began catering to this growing demographic group.
For example, publishing houses cranked out pulp novels like The Velvet Underground that were targeted directly at gay people. By the early s, openly gay political organizations such as the Mattachine Society were formally protesting abusive treatment toward gay people, challenging the entrenched idea that homosexuality was an aberrant condition, and calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality.
Despite very limited sympathy, American society began at least to acknowledge the existence of a sizable population of gays. The film The Boys in the Band , for example, featured negative portrayals of gay men, but at least recognized that they did in fact fraternize with each other as opposed to being isolated, solitary predators who "victimized" straight men. Disco music in large part rose out of the New York gay club scene of the early s as a reaction to the stigmatization of gays and other outside groups such as blacks by the counterculture of that era.
Another element of LGBT counter-culture that began in the s—and continues today—is the lesbian land , landdyke movement, or womyn's land movement. The movement is closely tied to eco-feminism. The four tenets of the Landdyke Movement are relationship with the land, liberation and transformation, living the politics, and bodily Freedoms.
The watershed event in the American gay rights movement was the Stonewall riots in New York City. Following this event, gays and lesbians began to adopt the militant protest tactics used by anti-war and black power radicals to confront anti-gay ideology. Another major turning point was the decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the official list of mental disorders.
There was speculation that the disease would permanently drive gay life underground. Ironically, the tables were turned. Many of the early victims of the disease had been openly gay only within the confines of insular "gay ghettos" such as New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's Castro ; they remained closeted in their professional lives and to their families.
Many heterosexuals who thought they didn't know any gay people were confronted by friends and loved ones dying of "the gay plague" which soon began to infect heterosexual people also. LGBT communities were increasingly seen not only as victims of a disease, but as victims of ostracism and hatred. Most importantly, the disease became a rallying point for a previously complacent gay community.
AIDS invigorated the community politically to fight not only for a medical response to the disease, but also for wider acceptance of homosexuality in mainstream America. Ultimately, coming out became an important step for many LGBT people. In , the United States Supreme Court officially declared all sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. On both sides of the Atlantic the s "Beat Generation" had fused existentialist philosophy with jazz, poetry, literature, Eastern mysticism and drugs — themes that were all sustained in the s counterculture.
In the United States, the counterculture of the s became identified with the rejection of conventional social norms of the s. Counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, especially with respect to racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War , [2] [56] and, less directly, the Cold War —with many young people fearing that America's nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union , coupled with its involvement in Vietnam, would lead to a nuclear holocaust.
In the United States, widespread tensions developed in the s in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam, race relations , sexual mores , women's rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream.
White, middle class youth—who made up the bulk of the counterculture in western countries—had sufficient leisure time, thanks to widespread economic prosperity , to turn their attention to social issues.
The counterculture also had access to a media which was eager to present their concerns to a wider public. Demonstrations for social justice created far-reaching changes affecting many aspects of society.
Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States. Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop-art and new explorations in spirituality.
New forms of musical presentation also played a key role in spreading the counterculture, with large outdoor rock festivals being the most noteworthy. The climactic live statement on this occurred from August 15—18, , with the Woodstock Music Festival held in Bethel, New York —with 32 of rock 's and psychedelic rock 's most popular acts performing live outdoors during the sometimes rainy weekend to an audience of half a million people.
Michael Lang stated , attended, half of which did not have a ticket. Sentiments were expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period, such as "do your own thing", " turn on, tune in, drop out ", "whatever turns you on", " Eight miles high ", " sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll ", and " light my fire ".
Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology , the term " Age of Aquarius " and knowing people's astrological signs of the Zodiac. This led Theodore Roszak to state "A [ sic ] eclectic taste for mystic , occult , and magical phenomena has been a marked characteristic of our postwar youth culture since the days of the beatniks.
Both actors opposed the Vietnam War during its duration, and Fonda would eventually become controversially active in the peace movement. The counterculture in the United States has been interpreted as lasting roughly from to [63] —coincident with America's involvement in Vietnam—and reached its peak in August at the Woodstock Festival, New York, characterized in part by the film Easy Rider Unconventional or psychedelic dress; political activism; public protests; campus uprisings; pacifist then loud, defiant music; drugs; communitarian experiments , and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture—most of whose members were young, white and middle-class.
In the United States, the movement divided the population. To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech , equality, world peace , and the pursuit of happiness; to others, they reflected a self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on the country's traditional moral order. Authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD , restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media.
The counterculture has been argued to have diminished in the early s, and some have attributed two reasons for this. First, it has been suggested that the most popular of its political goals— civil rights , civil liberties , gender equality , environmentalism , and the end of the Vietnam War —were "accomplished" to at least some degree ; and also that its most popular social attributes—particularly a " live and let live " mentality in personal lifestyles including, but not limited to the " sexual revolution " —were co-opted by mainstream society.
The counterculture, however, continues to influence social movements , art, music, and society in general, and the post mainstream society has been in many ways a hybrid of the s establishment and counterculture. The counterculture movement has been said to be rejuvenated in a way that maintains some similarities from the Counterculture of the s, but it is different as well. Photographer Steve Schapiro investigated and documented these contemporary hippie communities from to He traveled the country with his son, attending festival after festival.
Australia's countercultural trend followed the one burgeoning in the US, and to a lesser extent than the one in Great Britain. Political scandals in the country, such as the disappearance of Harold Holt , and the constitutional crisis , as well as Australia's involvement in Vietnam War , led to a disillusionment or disengagement with political figures and the government.
Large protests were held in the countries most populated cities such as Sydney and Melbourne , one prominent march was held in Sydney in on George Street. The photographer Roger Scott , who captured the protest in front of the Queen Victoria Building , remarked: "I knew I could make a point with my camera.
It was exciting. The old conservative world was ending and a new Australia was beginning. The demonstration was almost silent. The atmosphere was electric.
The protesters were committed to making their presence felt … It was clear they wanted to show the government that they were mighty unhappy". Political upheaval made its way into art in the country: film, music and literature were shaped by the ongoing changes both within the country, the Southern Hemisphere and the rest of the world. One of Australia's most noted literary voices of the counter-culture movement was Frank Moorhouse , whose collection of short stories, Futility and Other Animals , was first published in Sydney As delineations of gender and sexuality have been dismantled, counter-culture in contemporary Melbourne is heavily influenced by the LGBT club scene.
Starting in the late s the counterculture movement spread quickly and pervasively from the US. Nevertheless, British youth readily identified with their American counterparts' desire to cast off the older generation's social mores. The new music was a powerful weapon. In this case, it took the form of a wholesale revolt against the class system, which was now being questioned for the first time in the nation's history.
The counterculture of the s began in the United States as a result of the conservative social norms of the s, the Cold War, and the intervention in Vietnam. in his essay “The Intoxicated State/Illegal Nation: Drugs in the Sixties Counterculture”, describes drug use in the countercultural San Francisco.
A counterculture also written counter-culture is a subculture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores. When oppositional forces reach critical mass , countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of Late Modern countercultures in the Western world include Romanticism — , Bohemianism — , the " Jazz Age " of the Roaring Twenties , the Non-conformists of the s , the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation — , followed by the globalized counterculture of the s — , usually associated with the hippie subculture [3] as well as the diversified punk subculture of the s and s. John Milton Yinger originated the term "contraculture" in his article in American Sociological Review. Yinger suggested the use of the term contraculture "wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture.
Counterculture heavily influenced popular culture, leading to an increase in the support for dugs causing a larger amount of the population to become addicted.
Special Issue edited by Prof. Sheila Whiteley University of Brighton with an introduction by Prof.
Counterculture of the 1960s
The most renowned examples of counterculture took place in the s and s and include classic stereotypes such as hippies, feminism, opposition of the Vietnam War, and, of course, Woodstock. The young people of the sixties counterculture movement were successful at awakening awareness on many causes that are being fought in modern American discourse. If not for the Revolution that the hippies began, political or social reform and the People's voice would be decades behind. Hippie Counterculture "Flower child," a name that forms in the mind an image of an innocent child, denoted the youth of the mids. These youth, otherwise called the hippies, relied not so much on innocence, but instead sought freedom to distinguish the conformity the past generations held. Before these youth, the Beats or Beatniks from the Beat Generation spread throughout the Western Worlds around the s.
Counterculture Essay
The counterculture of the s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world between the mids and the mids. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the s. As the era unfolded, new cultural forms and a dynamic subculture which celebrated experimentation, modern incarnations of Bohemianism , and the rise of the hippie and other alternative lifestyles emerged. This embrace of creativity is particularly notable in the works of British Invasion bands such as the Beatles and filmmakers whose works became far less restricted by censorship. Many other creative artists, authors, and thinkers, within and across many disciplines, helped define the counterculture movement. Everyday dressing experienced a decline of the suit and especially the wearing of hats. Dressing based around jeans , for both men and women, became an important fashion movement that has continued up to the present day , and likely into the future. Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II baby boom [8] [9] generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of the United States and other democratic societies.
The New Left.
The May Day protests against the war in Vietnam. On March 8, , two battalions of U. Marines landed on beaches of Da Nang, marking the first official engagement of American troops in the Vietnam War.
