A Brief Analysis Of the Counterculture Movement of the 1960s Essay

A.Definitions of the antipathetic polishIn its to the highest degree common and initial gumption, the counter acculturation refers to the finish, particularly of little great deal, with value or conduct styles in opposition to those of the realised culture in the dictionary. Until its appearance in 1969 in Theodore Roszaks influential book, The Making of a Counter Culture, counterculture, written as one parole or 2, has become the standard marge to describe the ethnical revolt of the boylike. Although obvious countercultural undercurrents exist in t bulge ensemble societies, hither the term counterculture refers to a more(prenominal) signifi sackt, evident phenomenon that reaches critical mass and persists for a catch of time. According to Roszaks definition, the counterculture front quit refers to all the confess political campaigns that happened in the States in the sixties, including both(prenominal) the political drifts such(prenominal) as the womens libe ration ride, the African-American gracious Rights effort, the anti struggle movement against Vietnam, the environment movement, the gay rights movement, and the cultural movements as drug ab expend, hippies, put down sex, and tremble and tumbler pigeon.Several explicit and dozens of silent definitions of counterculture have been offered since the term was proposed more than ternary cristals ago. One explicit definition that Westhue gave from the ideologic and behavioral perspectives is On the ideological level, a counterculture is a set of beliefs and value which radi vocaly reject the dominant culture of a orderliness and prescribe a sectarist substitute. On the behavioral level, a counterculture is a group of mess who, because they accept such beliefs and determine, behave in such radically nonconformist modal values that they tend to slobber out of the indian lodge. A nonher definition that timothy Miller gave in his The hipsters and American Values defined the c ounterculture as a romantic social movement of the new-made sixties and very early seventies, in general composed of teenagers and persons in their early twenties, who finished their flamboyant lifestyle expressed their alienation from mainstream American life. From this definition we can exceed a conclusion that the main coerce of the counterculture movement is late deal from diaphragm class families.B.Social Background in the 1960sThe 1960s was a transitional period of expectant social transpose. Economically, like the 1920s and 1990s, the decade of the 1960s was a period of scarce prosperity in the U.S. as heedful by suchstatistics as gross national product and the unemployment rate. But culturally, it was a period when long-held values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among the unripe. The far-reaching changes that veritable in the late 1960s touch on some(prenominal)(prenominal) aspects of society. Many college-age men and women became the major(ip) force of the civil rights movements. Other young citizenry simply separated themselves from mainstream culture done their appearance and lifestyle and conjugated the group of hippies. Attitudes to state of ward sexuality appe ard to loosen, and women began to openly protest the conventional roles of housewife and mother that society had assigned to them. With the nation shocked and paralytic by the Vietnam fight, thousands of American young person showed their vexation through campus rallies, antiwar demonstrations, and contrives for peace.Many of the nations youth were strongly opposed to the war taking air halfway across the cosmea, in which their fathers, brothers, and husbands were dying. unify in their antiwar sentiment, thousands of young nation joined in their instauration of the counterculture. The 1960s was a decade of counterculture, with its euphony, its poetry, its fashion, its art, its way of life, its political struggle, and its contrad ictions, its rise and its failure. Then the questions atomic number 18 raised what caused the so-called counterculture movement? And wherefore did the movement happen in this particular time period?aThe struggle genesisCultural RootsThe countercultures deepest roots arrange in the welt multiplication, a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. knave Kerouacs On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsbergs Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughss Naked lunch (1959) be often considered the most all chief(prenominal)(predicate) works of the Beat genesis. The term Beat was reported to be coined by son of a bitch Kerouac in the late 1940s, quickly worthy a slang term in America after World warfare II, meaning exhausted or measuring rod down and provided this times with a classic label for their personal and social positions and perspectives. They are put to workd by Eastern philosophy and piety (e.g., Zen Buddhism) and known especially for their use of non-traditional forms and their rejection of conventional social values.The Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had a huge influence on Western Culture more broadly. In some(prenominal) ways, The Beat Generation can be seen as the branch new-fangled subculture. During the very conformist post-World fight II erathey were one of the forces engaged in a speculative of traditional values which produced a break with the mainstream culture that to this day people react to or against. in that locations no question that trounce produced a great deal of intimacy in lifestyle experimentation ( nonably in regards to sex and drugs) and they had a bear-sized quick-witted effect in encouraging the questioning of authority (a force behind the anti-war movement) and many of them were very active in popularizing beguile in Zen Buddhism in the West.During the 1960s other cultural movements absorbed Beat ideas and attitudes, and those who practiced something similar to the B eat lifestyle were called hippies. Echoes of the Beat Generation running play throughout all the forms of counterculture that have existed since then. many time during the 1960s, the rapidly expanding Beat culture underwent a transformation the Beat Generation gave way to The Counterculture of the 1960s, which inherited a great deal of Beat prospects and life styles.bThe Affluent Society-Economic RootsTo analysis the phenomenon of the countercultural movement of the 1960s, the major force of the movement the fuck up boom generation has to be mentioned here. afterward World state of war II, Young males returning to the fall in States following tours of duty foreign during World state of war II established families, which brought about a significant subprogram of new children into the world. This dramatic increase in the number of births from 1946 to 1964 is called the baby boom. In the United States, approximately 79 million babies were natural during the baby boom. Til l the socio-economic class 1964, babies who were innate(p) during the first waves of the baby boom was already 18. And in the following 6 long time, during the counterculture movement in the 1960s, baby boomers who were studying in high school school or college became the major force of the counterculture movement.The baby boom generation grew up in an affluent society and enjoyed an unprecedented economic and social welfare. During the 1950s, Americas Gross National intersection point (GNP) increase 51%, the real hebdomadally earnings of factory workers change magnitude 50%. By 1960, more than 30% of the commonwealth was inwardness class. Changes in knowledge and accommodate further demonstrated the growth of the middle class. For the first time, the white young people were able to fare to the universities without having to start their on the job(p) life at theage their parents had to. The education they received broadened their horizons and made it easier for them to a ccept the social, technical and cultural transformations. They had cars many of them lived in the suburbs, and were enjoying an effortless life.Those people were going to be the stars of the years to come, with new ideals and hopes, and, one of the most important things, new cultural values, mental synthesiss and thoughts. Besides, the baby boomers were the first group to be raised on television, they watched scenes from the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy which strongly affected their sense of security. The boomers found that their music was another expression of their generational identity. Rock and roll horde their parents crazy. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Mo townsfolk laboured. Baby boomers constitute the single largest population explosion in history, and the culture they created alter America, permeating either decade since the 1950s .cThe fit in the 1960s-Political RootsThe 1960s was a decade of political turmoil the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War all greatly influenced young people who were born during the baby boom period.The Vietnam War was the longest military conflict in U.S. history fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975, involving the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in conflict with United States forces and the South Vietnamese army. The hostilities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. Another 304,000 were wounded. The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. And there is no reckoning the cost. For many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam will neer heal. Baby boomers played major roles both as troops and protesters during the Vietnam War.The w ar dragged the strong generation into miserable memories either young people themselves or their relatives, friends were fighting in the frontline, many of them dead or wounded. They were scared, hard put only couldnt find purify ways to let off their offense except doing drugs orindulging themselves. The Vietnam War became a high-profiled criticism and a computer program to promoting peace and criticizing the draft. As a result, the antiwar movement against Vietnam broke out in the year 1965, centering on the colleges, with the students playing prima(p) roles.C.Major Events in the Counterculture MovementThe counterculture movement consists of a serial macrocosmation of events mainly likewisek place in the later(prenominal) half of the 1960s and it is difficult to draw off back to the exact beginning of it. The counterculture stood against the traditional values of middle-class society, and manifested its rebellion in several ways long hair, brightly colored clothes, com munal living, wave and roll music as showcased at Woodstock, discontinue sex, drugs, and riots are some of the means through which the counterculture asserted itself. Through protests and anti-war demonstrations, the counterculture challenged the governmental institutions of American society and the youth spoke out for what they believed in. Throughout the decade many counterculture events increased the movements notoriety, but two in particular, the Summer of Love and Woodstock Festival, delineate the spirit of the protests.a.Summer of LoveThe Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1967, particularly in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where thousands of young people loosely and freely unify for a new social experience. As a result, the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness.The beginning of the Summer of Love has popularly been attributed to the Human Be-In at booming entre greenness on January 14, 1967. Thousands of people answered the call of the Human Be-In from the counterculture leaders, hookup in Golden Gate Park to countenance peace, happiness, and love. During the spring, more disillusioned youth traveled to San Francisco upon sense of hearing a declaration that the summer of 1967 would be the Summer of Love. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco quickly became the gathering place and home for many displaced youth who came to celebrate the counterculture event. City government leaders, firm to stop the influx of young people once schools let out for summer, brought added management to the scene. An ongoing series of articles in local papers alerted nationalmedia to the hippies increase momentum.During that summer of 1967, as many as 100,000 young people from around the world flocked to San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley and other San Francisco Bay knowledge base cities to join in a popularized variate of the hippie experience. The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people o f non-homogeneous ages teenagers and college students drawn by their peers and troupeing military force-out from bases at heart an easy drives distance. For the most part, the Summer of Love turn up successful in its ability to open up the counterculture message, but by the fall of 1967, overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, increased incidents of crime and drug abuse signaled a change in the movement. On October 7, 1967, those be in the Haight staged a taunt funeral, The Death of the Hippie ceremony, to signal the end of the played-out scene.It is already 40 years since the party was over in the Haight-Ashbury. But the influence of that summer in 1967 has never disappeared. The San Francisco hippie, leaping in Golden Gate Park with long hair flowing, has become as much of an enduring American archetype as the gunfighters and cowboys who roamed the Wild West.b.The Woodstock FestivalAs the most storied of all the counterculture concerts, the Woodstock medical specialty and Art exquisite took place in Bethel in upstate New York from 15 to 17 elevated 1969. The festival was called Woodstock, because it was hypothetic to be in the town of Woodstock, in Ulster County but the town would not give a place for such a large event, because they thought that over a million people would come. Although the show was planned for as many as 200,000 fans, over 500,000 came most of these did not pay to get in. The roads to the concert were jammed with traffic. People left their cars and walked for miles to get to the concert area. The weekend was rainy and overcrowded, and fans dual-lane food, alcoholic drinks, and drugs.The Woodstock Festival is remembered as the high point of the peace and love ethos of the period, mainly because the disaster that the over-crowding, bad weather, food shortages, supposed bad acid (LSD), andpoor facilities presaged was someways avoided. Unprepared for such a large crowd, massive traffic jams ensued, food and body of water quickly disappeared, and bathroom facilities were scarce. Despite the strength for violence and disaster, the festival advertised as Three Days of Peace and Music lived up to its billing. Listening to popular musicians of the day such as Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, and Janis Joplin, concertgoers seemed to bond because of the cutting conditions and a common desire to promote peace and love.Throughout the 1960s, music served as an integral part of the counterculture movement. Seen as a way to both embrace an alternative lifestyle and protest against war and oppression, hippies organized many outdoor music festivals across the United States. As the most famous music festivals organized by hippies, all in all, Woodstock dust a lasting icon of the countercultural movements of the 1960s that looked to change the world through its acceptance of values and beliefs that contradicted the established power structure of the United States. The festival, the participants of which exhibited extraordinary good feeling in the face of rain and organizational chaos, marked the high point of U.S. youth counterculture in the 1960s.D.InfluencesThe counterculture eventually died out in the 1970s for several different reasons like the deaths of famous leading figures and the end of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. Since then, large social groups such as the hippies have diminished, or are virtually non-existent. To some Americans, the attributes of the counterculture reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, and pursuit of happiness whereas other people saw the counterculture as self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and ruinous of Americas moral order, and some have criticized the counterculture movement for being too aggressive and showing some similarities to the presidential term itself.As a matter of fact, the counterculture remains a highly controversial root in American society and the solo thing that can be hold upon is its enormous impact on American society in just about every aspect in fashion, the commonly wore neckties and suits in the 1950s had been replaced by everyday wear, and slackly longer hairstyles became new fashion not only for young people but for the middle aged in music, the portmanteau word of folk rock into newer forms including acidrock and heavy metal became popular in sense of value, interracial dating and coupling have become common and generally accepted, frankness regarding sexual matters has become the norm, the rights of homosexual, epicene and transexual people have expand in religious aspects, eastern religions and apparitional concepts, karma and reincarnation in particular, have reached a wider audience in lifestyles, co-operative business enterprises and fictive community living arrangements are astray accepted. Interest in natural food, herbal remedies and vitamins is widespread.The greatest legacy of the counterculture, both to culture and to the succeeding countercultures res ts in a greater and deeper concern over human involve and human nature as an congenital step in emancipating human creativity. Although almost 40 years has passed, there are still indications of the influence of the counterculture movement within contemporary technologies. The ideas of the counterculture movement such as sharing, community, self-expression, anti-establishment, and individual freedom can be seen through many of the technologies we have today. As one of the most heatedly gainsay issues in cultural studies and sociological arena, the counterculture movement influences different generations in both lifestyles and political orientation and should be remembered by all of us.ReferencesBradbury, Malcolm and Temperley, Howard. founding to American Studies. New York Longman House, 1981.Miller, Timothy The Hippies and American Values. Knoxville The University of Tennessee Press, 1991.Roszak, Theodore The Making of a Counterculture. garden City, New York Doubleday, 1969.We sthues, Kenneth Societys tracing Studies in the Sociology of Countercultures. Toronto McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972.. . Jan. 2004 68-97.