The Beat Generation Subculture

951 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The beat generation

The Beat Generation Subculture

Every generation has its middle class, majority, and norm, which are decided by that era's standards of behavior and thought. Similarly, each generation has a group that rejects these standards and rebels against the norm. In the 1950's a group of American writers that exemplified this behavior formed. They were called the beat generation. The beat generation was particularly remarkable because although it was began by an exceptionally small group of people, its cultural influence was enormous. The beats rebelled against things like conformity and consumerism in the post World War II society. Their writing challenged both traditional American values and contemporary writing styles. Incorporating influences such as jazz, art, literature, philosophy and religion, the beat writers created a new vision of modern life and changed the way a generation of people sees the world. However, the beat generation was soon transformed from a youthful rebellion into an elaborate money making tool. The beat generation was a movement that started a cultural revolution in the United States.

Despite their small size, a group of early beat writers were able to shape an entire movement. The original group consisted of writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and Charles Bukowski. Most of the group's members met and formed around New York City's Greenwich Village and later came to reside in San Francisco where they gained fame. "The phrase 'Beat Generation' was invented by Jack Kerouac in 1948. The phrase was introduced to the general public in 1952 when Kerouac's friend John Clkellon Holmes wrote the article, 'This is the Beat Generation,' for t...

... middle of paper ...

...ion was one of the many to directly challenge American values. The Beats have forever altered the nature of American consciousness. The Beat Generation of writers offered the world a new attitude. They offered a method of escape from the unimaginative world we live in, through the exploration of one's intellect.

Bibliography:

Bibliography

Allen, Donald & Tallman, Warren

The Poetics of the New American Poetry. New York: Grove Press, 1973

Gontarski, S. E.

Dionysus in Publishing: Barney Rosset, Grove Press, and the Making of a Countercanon. The Review of Contemporary Literature (Fall 1990): 7-19

Asher, Levi

"The Beat Generation," http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages

Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia

"Beat Generation," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001

http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation

Show More
Related

  • Lunatics Taking Over the Asylum: Cultural Chaos in 1960s America

    7167 Words  | 15 Pages

    Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.

    Read More

  • The Hip Hop Generation Summary

    1126 Words  | 3 Pages

    In one of the chapters, ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ the author reveals how blacks in America use the music to express their anger and commitment to emerge as great people in an unfair community. Most songs are written to educate the society on the negative effects of racism. They encourage the society to love one another and embrace unity. The human nature is founded through a social platform where philosophers claim that people were created to love one another and live with peace and unity. Through this book, it is clear that the blacks in the hip-hop generation are money minded. However, this is expected in a world where the economy is tough. The author claims that the youth are the people who are majorly affected by racism. Many of them have been arrested for pity mistakes which are magnified in the courts due to the impression that the society has on the black people. They engage in dirty activities like drug dealings that that put them on the wrong side of the

    Read More

  • The Use of Drugs by 1950s Artists

    4706 Words  | 10 Pages

    Tytell, John. "The Beat Generation and the Continuing American Revolution". American Scholar 42 (1973): 308-317.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Beatnik Riot

    815 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Beatnik Riot of 1961 characterized the young Americans of the United States that were fighting for their rights. The young radicals rebelled against the milquetoast population of America during this time. The riot conveyed that the beats were not only fighting for their right to sing, but for equality of sex and race. The Beatnik Riot started a domino effect of protests across the United States.

    Read More

  • Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose and the Post-War Avant-Garde

    3083 Words  | 7 Pages

    MacAdams, Lewis. Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

    Read More

  • Hip-Hop: A Voice for the Chican@-Latin@ Community

    2213 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.

    Read More

  • We're All on Drugs

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    While the Beats experimented with drugs, they were more mild in their departure from the mainstream culture than the counterculture of the hippies and acid-heads . Tom Wolfe observed that, ““Kerouac was the old star. Kesey was the wild new comet form the West heading Christ knows where”” (Lytle, 4). Even though Kerouac was a major part of the Beat movement and experimented with drugs, he was not cut out for the world of LSD. When considering On the Road, Sal Paradise, does in the end return home to his mother just as Kerouac did when Neal Cassady tried to get him to join Kesey. In Howl, Allen Ginsberg laments over the deprivation of his generation. He addresses one of the roots of the problem, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!” (Part II, l.5). He blames the mechanization of the mind, prefer a more steeped in nature approach, drugs as bringing us closer to our own nature The ideas of the Beats echo in the ideas of the counter: a rejection of materialism, an embrace of experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and forms of expression, especially music. The change from the Beats to the Hippies was not so much a ra...

    Read More

  • The Counterculture

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the sixties, Americans saw the rise of the counterculture. The counterculture, which was a group of movements focused on achieving personal and cultural liberation, was embraced by the decade’s young Americans. Because many Americans were members of the different movements in the counterculture, the counterculture influenced American society. As a result of the achievements the counterculture movements made, the United States in the 1960s became a more open, more tolerant, and freer country. One of the most powerful counterculture movements in the sixties was the civil rights movement.

    Read More

  • Counterculture

    1496 Words  | 3 Pages

    For the first time in American history, a large population of people of all ages, classes, and races came together to challenge the traditional institutions, traditional values in society, and "the establishment" in general. Youth, women, ethnic minorities, environmentalists, migrant workers and others caused the emergence of the counter culture. This cultural movement from 1960 to 1973 was caused by many factors. This era was one that was filled with many important events that shaped the way that Americans viewed life. Those who were unhappy with what was going on around them and took part in this social phenomenon reflected and demonstrated their attitudes, values, and ideals in many ways. Various things from protests to songs expressed their views and made their point get across to America. This cultural movement had a profound impact on society. It had both beneficial and detrimental effects on the society. As we look back on the sixties, it was one of the most important decades because it accomplished so many important things.

    Read More

  • Effects of Hip-Hop Culture on the Youth

    1789 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hip hop culture has been around since the 1970s. Multiple sources all come down to the South Bronx in New York City, as the origin of hip hop culture. The culture began to take its shape within the African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino communities. The father of the start of this culture was a Jamaican-born DJ named Clive Campbell but also known as DJ Kool Herc. He brought forth a new sound system and the Jamaican style of “toasting.” Toasting was when Jamaicans would talk or rap over the music they played. This whole new style soon brought what is now known as DJs, B-Boys, MC’s, and graffiti artists (Kaminski).

    Read More

  • The Rave Subculture

    2616 Words  | 6 Pages

    The dizzying laser lights flashed in synchronicity with the pulsating bass of the music that bounced off the psychedelic warehouse walls. As my boyfriend and I mentally attempted to organize the chaos surrounding us, we pushed our way through the crowd of spasmodic lunatics who contorted their bodies in time with the music and lights. We located a couch in a room covered with cartoonesque, hyper-graphic graffiti. An androgynous man sat himself at my feet and began massaging my thighs, while a girl with her eyes rolled back into her head demanded that my boyfriend give her a massage. Just then the deejay laid his head in my lap, told me he was in love with me, and placed a bitter pill on my tongue. This certainly was the most bizarre method of earning three graduate credit hours I could imagine.

    Read More

  • The Beat Generation

    2378 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Beat Generation was an influence on the American society during the twentieth century on how they portrayed the way of the American dream through performing arts. It all began in the 1950’s where a bunch of writers got together to right about how much they resented the postwar society (Sterritt, 1). It was right after War World II had past and the postwar age was very unsettling for the beat writers. It was turning into a conservative lifestyle and the beats wanted a way of showing that there writings would make an impact of what and how they thought of society and postwar. They too, like many others were effected greatly by the war and wanted a way of rebelling towards all the pain they went through during the war. This began the introduction of the Beat Generation.

    Read More

  • The Individual Versus Society in Kerouac and Ginsberg

    2207 Words  | 5 Pages

    One theme that is prevalent throughout much of the literature we have covered so far is that it is very critical of the conformist values of late 1950s society. In an era of Levittowns and supermarkets and the omnipresent television, there was a call to leave the conformist suburban culture in search of something higher. Two major proponents of the individual as opposed to society were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, two of the central figures in the Beat movement. Through their work one can gain a perspective on the anti-conformity spirit that was brewing under the surface in the Beat culture.

    Read More

  • The Hippie Subculture

    1428 Words  | 3 Pages

    The sixties was a decade of liberation and revolution, a time of great change and exciting exploration for the generations to come. It was a time of anti-war protests, free love, sit-ins, naked hippie chicks and mind-altering drugs. In big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, there was a passionate exchange of ideas, fiery protests against the Vietnam War, and a time for love, peace and equality. The coming together of like-minded people from around the world was spontaneous and unstoppable. This group of people, which included writers, musicians, thinkers and tokers, came to be known as the popular counterculture, better known as hippies. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius in the late sixties was more than just a musical orgy. It was a time of spiritual missions to fight for change and everything they believed in. Freedom, love, justice, equality and peace were at the very forefront of this movement (West, 2008). Some wore beads. Some had long hair. Some wore tie-dye and others wore turtle-neck sweaters. The Hippie generation was a wild bunch, to say the least, that opened the cookie jar of possibilities politically, sexually, spiritually and socially to forever be known as one of the most memorable social movements of all time (Hippie Generation, 2003).

    Read More

  • The Effects of Hip Hop on Today's Youth

    1578 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Effects of Hip-Hop Music on Today’s Youth Does hip-hop music effect today’s youth in a positive or negative way? The effects of hip-hop music have been disputable following the time when its rise into the social standard in the late twentieth century, but hip-hop music is not just one sided but can be both positive and negative in today’s youth. What is hip-hop about? Assuming that you address hip-hop fans, the term alludes to more than simply a musical type - it incorporates an entire society, including dance structures, graffiti symbolization, and fashion (Selke INT).

    Read More

More about The Beat Generation Subculture

Open Document