1960s Youth Counter Culture

Movements toward feminism, sexual liberation, psychedelic drug use, and communal living marked the 1960s youth counter culture. In an attempt to descend from mainstream societal values and to achieve higher levels of political consciousness, youth rebellion gave way to a counter culture. Authors Thomas Frank and Theodore Roszak placed very different meanings on what the counter culture meant in relation to 1960s society in their books The The Conquest of Cool (1997) and The Making of a Counter Culture (1969). The two authors differed, in that Roszak saw the counter culture in opposition to society, and Frank offered a more cynical perspective that acknowledges the counter culture’s association to this society. Roszak’s 1960s viewpoint saw the

Roszak’s definition assumed that there was no connection between the dominant society and the youth’s rejection of it, to the point where youth radicalism was viewed as “barbaric intrusion” and understandings of ideologies like communal relationships and drug experience were of another language (42, 54-55). In the youth counter culture’s separation from the mainstream, it could act as savior from the conforming and consuming ideologies of Western

It was even before the counter culture took hold in the media that admen were rejecting technical expertise and bureaucracy, feuding with traditional means of advertising that put emphasis on rationality, rules, and statistics (56). Advertising reached a Creative Revolution, in which firms like Doyle Dane Bernbach lead the way in giving creative workers more say, and governed more opposition to traditional orders of power within the industry (57). It was also in advertising’s quest for creativity that it found a new understanding of consumerism. The industry recognized the need for nonconformity as an element of a shifted capitalism, and in turn rethought its ads in order to make similar products stand out and offer consumers the chance to be idolized and admired