Are You a Rebel? Or are You Just another Sheep following the Non-conformity Flock?
“It's like living on the outside of society and seeing what a crock of shit it is, but then approaching it again with a sense of humor. I mean, when you're able to see society as this sort of funky, funny illusion, it makes it easier to deal with it because there is no rhyme or reason to the way it works.”
RuPaul, on fringe culture (Genre, March '99)
Rebellion. *It's about articulating that little inner voice that's in all of us, the voice which resists being assimilated into the mass conformity that is American society. The quality of our interaction has diminished so much that we barely recognize each other as human. The “American way of life” has destroyed our individuality while pretending to cater to it, and the natural interdependence of society has been compromised by the shrieks of mass media and the cubicle farms they call workplaces. We are all gearing up for some heavy shit, all around the world. The yuppies are putting together their silly stock option plans, the Pakistanis are aching for jihad against India, the major labels are trying harder than ever to saturate our culture with Limp Bizkit bullshit and kill Napster while they're at it. To me, it fits together like a puzzle. It's all related. This is more than a complaint about social differences. It's about human nature. Stick around; I think I can prove this. The hippie and freak hordes would have us believe than they are the sole bastions of non-conformity and acceptance left in America. They are not.
I really dislike stories like Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling. Not all ugly ducklings turn into swans. Some of us turn into ugly ducks. We need to learn to accept it, and to find that being an ugly duck isn't really necessarily all that bad, because going with the flock isn't always the best or most satisfying way to go, even if it does seem like the easiest. I was never one who "fit in" with my peers. From the day I began school at the age of five, it was obvious that I was somehow different from the rest of them. Since I was hyperactive, kind of shy, and too intellectual to be popular, I rarely had many friends, and at times found myself a subject of ridicule, mocking, and outright abuse. My first ploy, which lasted for a number of years, was to attempt to conform. This was very muc...
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...tandards, but these standards were made by conformity. The union itself is some form of rebellion. By being apart of that group, he conformed to the “rebel’s” standards.
A cultural movement is a cultural movement; be it hippie, skater punk, raver trash or otherwise. Nobody wants the whole world to live in peace as one big happy family. It's contrary to instinct. We all want to be the bottisavatta in the flowing robes who dictates the gospel to the rest of the world. And that's not the way things work. This world has winners and losers, geeks and popular kids. Junior high repeats itself until you are dead. So what's a rebel to do? I don't know. Try reading. Jack Kerouac is not still a best selling author because of his cool Gap khakis. A nation of people didn't follow Lenin into almost 80 years of collectivist silliness because of his natty goatee and adorable accent. Or try remembering these simple rules:
1.) Rebellion is free.
2.) Rebellion does not come in six different colors.
3.) Rebellion does not have a soundtrack and a movie deal in the works.
4.) Rebellion is not found in a piercing store, tattoo parlor, drug store, hash pipe or a Quentin Tarrantino movie.
Another of his quotes from the DVD commentary accurately sums up the film as a whole: "On the surface it's kind of funny, but you're only laughing because you want to cry."
When life becomes overwhelming during adolescence, a child’s first response is to withdraw from the confinement of what is considered socially correct. Individuality then replaces the desire to meet social expectations, and thus the spiral into social non-conformity begins. During the course of Susanna’s high school career, she is different from the other kids. Susanna:
Up till middle school, it seemed like I fit in pretty well at school. I was decent at sports and I had a good amount of friends. Life was pretty good at the time and I was enjoying it. Once high school started, I could see a shift in my life. I had lost most friends from prior years, and I was not good at sports; I struggled to fit in.
Rebel Without a Cause is an unconventional story with a conventional, classical approach to storytelling. The film follows the seven traits of Classical Hollywood Cinema and is adapted to the hybridization of film noir, which was primarily a style of B movies, and teen drama films, which was newly emerging in the 50s.
Counterculture During the Vietnam Era With a country in shambles as a result of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men and women took their stand through rallies, protests, and concerts. A large number of young Americans opposed the war; with a common feeling of anti-war, thousands of youths united as one. This new culture of opposition spread like wild fire with alternative lifestyles blossoming, people coming together and reviving their communal efforts, demonstrated at the Woodstock Art and Music festival. The use of drugs, mainly marijuana, has become a staple in the community of anti-war youths. The countercultures’ radical views and actions caused American society to turn its head and look to the young.
Historical abolitionist Frederick Douglas famously once said “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.” Rebellion only happens because a group of individuals is dissatisfied with authority. Without this conflict between society and authority, humanity will not advance. Many conflicts occur frequently, but what is the frequency of individuals rebelling against authority? Some may choose to believe that this conflict is a rare occurrence, while many authors throughout history may believe that rebellion occurs more often than one might think. Rebellions against society can all be refined down to a rebellious action, a reason for rebellion, and a response from authority.
As any normal teen, I was nervous for the first day, mainly being that my best friend had transferred to another school. I thought I wouldn’t be able to make any friends, and such did happen. I was never fully able to “fit in.” My hair was never long enough; my body was never skinny enough I was like the jigsaw puzzle that never fit. But not only did I have to fit in with my peers, I had to also fit in at home to what I considered to be the perfect family. My dad and mom were successful business tycoons, my two sisters were very popular and always maintained a perfect g.p.a. and then there was me, struggling to even get a B+ in class ...
Music allows people the opportunity to show their true selves. During the 1960s, people used music as a way to protest against all kinds of issues. Music does this job well because it can express things that words cannot. The protest music of the 1960s can be considered a counterculture because it was a period where individuals used music to protest against the social norms as well as other pertaining issues of the day such as war and civil rights. As music has changed over time, modern protest music can be considered to be an extension of the 1960s counterculture of protest music because it is intended to drive home some type of message of the people who live in modern America today like how the people did back in the 1960s.
Music has been around for thousands of years. Music has progressed since that time and has slowly become what it is today. Though music has been around for such a long time, protest music just started to develop in the Vietnam Era, the year 1954. The war started the era of protest which, in turn, created a new form of music which incorporated a specific type of lyric that was a way of expressing protest through the song. Since music in this era was already a big thing, artists thought it would be a good idea to get their political viewpoints out there. They did it through something that affected everybody in that time and space. The artists view spread quickly through the country because of the catchy tune and the viewpoints that are listed. In the United States of America, it is a very common thing to conform to others in a group (Conformity…). Since conformity is such a common occurrence in a large group, all the artist has to do is find a couple of people in the group, group being an audience, who agree with the artist and the rest will unfold on its own. The artist will keep on performing while the word of him and his music will spread from person to person. Conformity will ultimately bring people together on the same viewpoint until eventually, there are thousands of people there with the artist to protest. These artists have grown over time along with the style of music that they bring along with them. Protest music still exists today and is one of the most effective forms of protest that we have.
society with his own sense of humor, but however it still leaves a very good
Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest Culture: Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Print.
Unlike the society before this movement, the hippie did not try to change America through violence, the hippie tried to change things through peace and love. The Hippie Movement was a moment during the mid 1960s through the early 1070s where sex, drugs and Rock-n-Roll, was at the forefront of mainstream society. No one really knows the true definition of a Hippie, but a formal definition describes the hippie as one who does not conform to social standards, advocating a liberal attitude and lifestyle. Phoebe Thompson wrote, “Being a hippie is a choice of philosophy. Hippies are generally antithetical to structured hierarchies, such as church, government, and social castes. The ultimate goal of the hippie movement is peace, attainable only through love and toleration of the earth and each other. Finally, a hippie needs freedom, both physical freedom to experience life and mental freeness to remain open-minded” (Thompson12-13). Many questions are asked when trying to figure out how this movement reached so many of America’s youth, and what qualities defined a hippie as a hippie?
American society and culture experienced an awakening during the 1960s as a result of the diverse civil rights, economic, and political issues it was faced with. At the center of this revolution was the American hippie, the most peculiar and highly influential figure of the time period. Hippies were vital to the American counterculture, fueling a movement to expand awareness and stretch accepted values. The hippies’ solutions to the problems of institutionalized American society were to either participate in mass protests with their alternative lifestyles and radical beliefs or drop out of society completely.
... of no rebellion. Thus, it is necessary to rebel against conformity when others are controlling your direct thoughts.
Today not many people know about the movement and its connections to popular culture that surrounds everyday life.