POLITICS AND THE SUBCULTURES: Layout of ages, trends,
personalities Hippie, the New Left, counter-culture of the end
of 1960s—beginning of 1970s. Part III
What can convey the momentary nature and the feeling of creative
spontaneity «here and now» better than music? It’s not surprising the
musicians — envoys of the New Left movement and especially the hippie
subculture — were tremendously significant. For the first time
in human history musicians, their behavior, lifestyle, and ideas became
a role model and cult.
To be continued:
http://win.ru/en/Mysteries-of-History/8145.phtml;
http://win.ru/en/Mysteries-of-History/8157.phtml
As we’ve understood from the previous
researches, in the 1950s Beatniks personified the emerging kind
of social status and world outlook of certain young men in the
beginning-middle of the 20th century. We may see that
they’ve partially added the surrealist ideology to their armory —
in particular their efforts for debunking cultural myths and the urge for
«exposing» culture of forgery. Hippies have been the heirs
of Beatniks to a considerable degree! In fact, their kind
of world outlook was quite conforming to the theory of emergence
of new-age social relations (put forth in the 1950s
by A. Toffler) — post-industrial society (foreseen by Karl
Marx, according to his theory of class interests and the transition
of the developed social systems to post-industrialism with the
corresponding stage of capitalistic formation).
History shows us that by the end of 1940s policy has changed
drastically and the winds of the Cold War started to blow. Western
peers of our dandies started to profess the philosophy of the
«permissive», «tolerant» society, simultaneously laying the pillars of the
much-talked-about «society of consumption» (let me remind you that
the sudden increase of birth rate in Europe and America — Baby
Boom — fell for the post-war years; it was connected to the
following fierce economic and cultural growth interrupted only by the
McCarthy’s «witch hunt» in the 1950s in the USA). Thus, one may have
dressed as he liked, listened to whatever he liked, lived
whichever way he wanted but obey the laws. Let me denote that
according to statistics, since 1946 to 1964 more children were born
on Earth than at any other period of contemporary history.
Speaking of American Baby Boom we have to mention the man named
William Levitt and his role in the much-talked-about «boom
of fertility». Being an architect, in spring of 1947 Levitt
offered a cheap and quickly-built model of a single-
or twin-storied family cottage. These identical houses, often paid for
with a mortgage, have subsequently become a symbol of the
numerous American suburbs with their citizens of average incomes, age and
social status, identical TV-programs, broadcasted from the same television
sets, eating identical food from identical fridges. The suburbs were full
of green zones, sporting grounds. There were no Babylonian crowds
of the huge megalopolises, no hurry, neither large crime rate, nor
annual farming harvest time.
Suburban life obeyed to the following scheme: getting
up at 7 o’clock, a cup of an instant coffee,
yesterday’s sandwich for breakfast, two-hour-long jolting in the suburban
electric train and in subway. If the man had a car,
he necessarily spent an hour or more in the traffic. Then
he came to work, checked at the timekeeper’s desk, dined
at 2 o’clock and returned back to suburbia at 6,
personifying the American way of life. Besides, the ethnic composition
of the suburbs was homogenous. There were almost no Afro-Americans
or Latin-Americans at the time. According to the statistics data
of 1967 American suburbs were 95% white. Almost everyone voted for
Republicans. Generally speaking, it seemed to be a fairly
good existence: «friends to everyone», well-established daily life,
a couple of cars per family, gas, electricity, radio, the first
television sets, supermarkets and cinemas «right at your door».
It seems to be a heaven on earth, easy living. But,
no! Even as far back as by the end of 1950s—middle
of 1960s merely grown-up generation of baby-boomers fled this
«heaven» (the way it happened was described in our previous studies
of hippie subculture).
Be as it may, one thing is certain. By the middle
of 1960s and the beginning of 1970s rhythm of a human life
has accelerated in comparison to the 1950s and the beginning
of the 1960s, let alone the previous epochs. Human conscience started
reacting to the presence of technical equipment, new political and
social technologies livelier. This awareness hasn’t gone painlessly! Among the
rest, hippies have taken up one of the most important
counter-cultural concepts, professed by beatniks and the New Left. We’re
talking about the gap between the achievements of anthropogenic
civilization, its adequate interpretation and the decline of spiritual and
cultural values.
Nikolay Berdyaev used to define this gap as a «transition from
culture to civilization». Beatniks were the first of contemporary
subcultures to dub themselves an «exhausted», «defied», «worn-out»
and «beaten-down» generation, trying to solve the global matter
of bringing human natural integrity back to him via the power
of their own minds. In fact, they’ve left the subcultures
to come — like hippies — a huge ground for research. Then
the contemporary ecologically-politicized movements like European Greens,
yuppies, downshifters and other smart kids, who often drifted far away from the
ideas and mind games of their «founding fathers», have borrowed a lot
from hippies and the New Left.
The main resume of the 1960s was their impulse! It might have been
vain and wrong, too ingenious and naïve at times, the impulse, based
on the momentary feeling of «here and now». Yet, it was
a mass insane attempt (of young men, mostly) to break free from
the bounds of «human» and into the dimensions of some other worlds
and spaces, an attempt to reconsider the human and the world, the
borders of art and life. The main intrinsic category of hippie art
was its playful spontaneity. What can convey the momentary nature and the
feeling of creative spontaneity «here and now» better than music?
Literature, theatre, cinema, photography? These phenomena are spontaneous
enough, but they belong to a slightly different plane
of objective reality. It’s not surprising the musicians — envoys
of the New Left movement and especially the hippie subculture — were
tremendously significant. For the first time in human history musicians,
their behavior, lifestyle, and ideas became a role model and cult.
Yet, the key figures, who so to say «knew the ropes», were scarce.
For example, Hendrix expressed the spontaneity of the musical
improvisation, Joplin — the spontaneity of the songs, Morrison —
the lyrical and stage behavioral one. Warhol expressed the randomness
of a painting, Dylan — the one of text (his novel
Tarantula). We’ve already mentioned the phenomena of The Beatles and The
Rolling Stones here. Paradox of the situation was that the very rules
of this spontaneous game demanded the significant figures
to be spontaneously new each time. «I only seem free
because I keep on running» — Hendrix used to say. And that
wasn’t just a figure of speech! It turned out that people were
extremely limited in their behavior patterns. They often tend
to lapse into self-repeating. That’s why some people decide to study
the very art of spontaneity. George Harrison, for example, was attracted
to the Indian philosophic and music fixes. Theatre of the 1960s
evolved from the non-existing Artaud to the theatrical laboratory
(experimental research!) of Grotowsky.
Yet, just like everywhere else, each age has its beginning and its end. The
world is fickle! «The only constant is the world change» — poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley said and was ingenious in his invention. «Fierce» end
of the 1960s, its anti-war rallies, giant rock-festivals, i.e. the time
of action (let’s symbolically define it as «casting stones
away»), was replaced with an age of careful understanding
of what had been done (i.e. «gathering stones») that hasn’t been ended
as of yet.
By Roman Egorov
To be continued
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