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Counterculture

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In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe a cultural group whose values and norms run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition or swimming against the tide.

In casual practice, the term came to prominence in the news media as it was used to refer to the youth rebellion that swept North America and Western Europe during the 1960s and early 1970s. Earlier countercultural milieux in 19th century Europe included the traditions of romanticism, Bohemianism and of the Dandy. Another important movement existed in a more fragmentary form in the 1950s, both in Europe and the US as Beatniks or members of the Beat generation, who typically wore beards and roll-neck sweaters and liked the novels of Albert Camus and listening to Jazz music.

Today, the term counterculture is used to describe moving in a theological or material direction that is not the accepted norm in society; this is how it is most commonly described in the news media. However, it can be strange to see the co-option of counterculture movements as they quickly become the spearhead of commercial pop campaigns; once taboo ideas (men wearing a woman's color - pink, for example) can become popular trends.

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1960s Counterculture

Though it existed elsewhere also, perhaps as a parallel movement, the 1960s counterculture began in the United States, probably as a reaction against the conservative social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam. It is sometimes discussed as the inheritor of "Beat Generation" sensibilities of the late 1940s and 1950s.

In one view, the 1960s counterculture largely originated on college campuses. The 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, which had its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the American South, was one early example. At Berkeley a socially privileged group of students began to identify themselves as having interests as a class that were at odds with the interests and practices of the University and its corporate sponsors. However, other rebellious young people who had never been college students also contributed to counterculture development. The beatnik café and bar scene was a tributary stream.

Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters helped shape the developing character of the 1960s counterculture when they embarked on a cross-country voyage during the summer of 1964 in a psychedelic school bus named "Furthur." Beginning in 1959, Kesey had volunteered as a Stanford research subject during medical trials for the therapeutic use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and other psychedelic drugs, which remained legal until 1967. The Pranksters visited Harvard LSD proponent Timothy Leary at his Millbrook, New York retreat, and experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs, primarily as a means for internal reflection and personal growth, became a constant during the Prankster trip. The bus was driven by Beat icon Neal Cassady, Beat poet Allen Ginsburg was onboard for a time, and the Pranksters dropped in on Cassady's friend, Beat author Jack Kerouac, thereby creating a direct link between the 1950s Beat Generation and the 1960's psychedelic scene. After the Pranksters returned to California, they popularized the use of LSD at so-called "Acid Tests," which initially were held at Kesey's home in La Honda, California, and then at many other West Coast venues. Experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs became a major component of 1960s counterculture, influencing philosophy, art, music and styles of dress.

As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam, race relations, sexual mores, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychedelic drugs and a predominantly materialist interpretation of the American dream. The Vietnam war became an increasingly high-profile object of criticism, and opposition to the war was exacerbated by the compulsory military draft.

In 1967 Scott McKenzie's rendition of the song "San Francisco" brought as many as 75,000 young people from all over the world to celebrate San Francisco's "Summer of Love." While the song had originally been written by John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas to promote the June, 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it became an instant hit worldwide (#4 in the United States, #1 in Europe) and quickly transcended its original purpose. San Francisco's Flower Children adopted new styles of dress, experimented with psychedelic drugs, lived communally and developed a vibrant music scene. When people returned home from "The Summer of Love" these styles and behaviors spread quickly from San Francisco and Berkeley to all major U.S. cities and European capitals. A counterculture movement gained momentum in which the younger generation began to define themselves as a class who wished to create a different kind of society.

The counterculture movement took hold in Western Europe, with London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and Rome rivaling San Francisco and New York as counterculture centers. One manifestation of this was the general strike that took place in Paris in May 1968, which nearly toppled the French government. In Eastern Europe, young people adopted the song "San Francisco" as an anthem for freedom, and it was widely played during Czechoslovakia's 1968 "Prague Spring," a premature attempt to break away from Soviet repression.

As criticism of the established social order became more widespread among this newly emergent youth class, new theories about culture and personal identity began to spread, and traditional non-Western ideas – particularly with regard to religion, social organization and spiritual enlightenment – were also embraced.

The above introduces one way of looking at mid-1960s to mid-1970s counterculture development– simply (or mainly) an upwelling of youth. A quip from Winston Churchill is often paraphrased these days; it goes: "If you are not a socialist at 20, you have no heart, if you are one at 40, you have no brain" — indicating the anti-conventionalism of youth (and the typical disapproval of older citizens).

Many segments of the youth of this period were well educated, by comparison with earlier periods, leading to an interest in political philosophies. So, in the "youth culture" view of the phenomenon, every sort of outlook and political philosophy (and form of political apathy) except social conservatism might be expected to flourish: libertarianism, left-libertarianism, liberalism, socialism, anarchism, communism, anti-materialism, materialism, naturism, mysticism, hedonism, spirituality, environmentalism, feminism, and many other basic orientations. Given the era's capacity for both direct and media communication, it was natural enough that some members of the older generation would contribute to, and be influenced by, this social current within society.

During the period in question, new cultural forms that were perceived as opposed to the old emerged, including the pop music of the Beatles, which rapidly evolved to shape and reflect the youth culture's emphasis on change and experimentation. Underground newspapers sprang up in most cities and college towns, serving to define and communicate the range of phenomena that defined the counterculture: radical political opposition to "the establishment," colorful experimental (and often explicitly drug-influenced) approaches to art, music and cinema, and uninhibited indulgence in sex and drugs as a symbol of freedom.

Another way of viewing the counterculture is as 'the principle of expansion' as applied not to economies or political spheres of influence but to aspects of personal life and to creativity.

The most visible radical element of this counterculture was the hippie; some hippies formed communes to live as far outside of the established system as possible. This aspect of the counterculture rejected active political engagement with the mainstream and, following the dictate of Timothy Leary to "turn on, tune in, and drop out", hoped to change society by dropping out of it. In looking back on his own life prior to 1960, Leary interpreted his life (as a Harvard professor) to have been one of "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis .... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots."

However, a considerable impediment to the success of alternative movements growing within the counterculture was posed by the very nature of the hippie ethic. When "doing one's own thing" runs to an extreme, there is an inherent rejection of values imposed from without and an adamant avoidance of other people's expectations. So, at the extreme, the individual tends to be isolated, which may or may not be much of a problem for that individual – but it does threaten to abort or curtail collaborative action or accomplishment.

Musical and other performing groups formed within the counterculture, yet many had a far shorter active existence than, say, the Grateful Dead (a rather unusual example of countercultural longevity). Of course this ephemerality has long been the case in the performing arts, and a short lifespan does not in itself indicate failure.

Not all counterculture attempts to "think outside the box" or blaze new trails were related to the arts. In addition to art, music, literature and so on, the counterculture had representatives in the sciences, the trades, business, and law, to name only a few walks of life . Many people participated in aspects of the counterculture who were stable, dedicated, and persistent. Much was done in the area of the human interface with the natural environment (in connection with science, technologies, community planning, parks, and other spheres). While ad hoc action groups sprang up frequently, usually fading away just as quickly, some established themselves as ongoing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to working toward particular goals. The counterculture gave rise to many lasting NGOs.

The environmentalist component of the counterculture was quick to grasp the early (i.e., 1970s) analyses of the reality and the import of the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction — more broadly that the dilemmas of energy derivation would have implications for geo politics, lifestyle, environment, and other dimensions of the life of modern society.

Social anthropologist Jentri Anders, based in California, has observed that a number of freedoms were endorsed within a countercultural community which she lived in and studied: "freedom to explore one’s potential, freedom to create one’s Self, freedom of personal expression, freedom from scheduling, freedom from rigidly defined roles and hierarchical statuses…" Additionally, Anders believed these people wished to counteract, in the education of children, a perceived discouragement of the "aesthetic sense, love of nature, passion for music, desire for reflection, or strongly marked independence…"

In his essay From Satori to Silicon Valley (published 1986), cultural historian Theodore Roszak made the point that the Apple Computer emerged from within the West Coast counterculture. Roszak gives a bit of background on the development of the prototype models of these original home computers and on the two Steves' (Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the computer's developers) evolution toward being businessmen. In fact, a considerable number of early computing and networking pioneers – after discovering LSD and roaming the campuses of UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT in the late 60s and early 70s – would emerge from this caste of social "misfits" to shape the modern world.

The 1960's counterculture did produce its share of true misfits, like Charles Manson; however, it cannot be claimed that everyone involved with the counterculture was a dedicated iconoclast lacking qualities like loyalty or conscience. Most people engaged in conscious experimentation--with psychedelic drugs, with Eastern spirituality, with alternative lifestyles--while retaining the core values and social norms of their middle class upbringings.

Then too, "the counterculture" may or may not be something that an individual identified with, even when that person was identified as an apparent member of the group by someone observing it from the outside. Perhaps those people who were in fact successful in achieving something in cooperation with others--or who, as '60s individualists were able to find a niche and pursue some career--either never really identified with the counterculture, or came to distance themselves from it over time.

In any case, as members of the hippie movement grew older and moderated their lives and their views, the 1960s counterculture was to some extent absorbed by the mainstream, leaving a lasting impact on philosophy, morality, music, art, lifestyle and fashion. Though not from the so-called '60s Generation, and having grown up in American-Heartland farming country, Jay Walljasper, a commentator and the editor of Utne Reader, has written, "From the great gyrations of the counterculture would come a movement dedicated to the greening of America. While many once-ardent advocates of radical ideas now live in the suburbs and vote Republican, others have held fast to the dream of creating a new kind of American society and they've been joined by fresh streams of younger idealists."

The legacy of the 1960's Counterculture is still actively contested – debates that are sometimes framed in the U.S. in terms of a "culture war."

Russian Counterculture

Although not exactly equivalent to the English definition, the term "Контркультура" (rus. Counterculture) found a constant use in Russian to define a cultural movement that promotes acting outside usual conventions of Russian culture - use of explicit language, graphical description of sex, violence and illicit activities and uncopyrighted use of "safe" characters involved in everything mentioned.

During the early 70's, Russian culture was forced into quite a rigid framework of constant optimistic approach to everything. Even mild topics, such as breaking marriage and alcohol abuse, tended to be viewed as taboo by the media. In response, Russian society grew weary of the gap between real life and the creative world. Thus, the folklore and underground culture tended to be considered forbidden fruit. On the other hand, the general satisfaction with the quality of the existing works promoted parody, often within existing settings. For example, the Russian anecdotal joke tradition turned the settings of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy into a grotesque world of sexual excess. Another well-known example is a black humor that dealt exclusively with funny deaths and/or other mishaps of small innocent children.

In the mid-80s, the Glasnost policy allowed the production of not-so-optimistic creative works. As a consequence, Russian cinema during the late 80s to the early 90s was dominated by crime-packed action movies with explicit (but not necessarily graphic) scenes of ruthless violence and social dramas on drug abuse, prostitution and failing relations. Although Russian movies of the time would be rated R in the USA due to violence, the use of explicit language was much milder than in American cinema.

Russian counterculture as we know it emerged in the late 90s with the increased popularity of the internet. Several web sites appeared that posted user-written short stories that dealt with sex, drugs and violence. Since stories were actually posted by editors, it's pretty clear what the characteristics of Russian counterculture were. The following features are considered most popular topics for the works:

As with pornography, Russian counterculture has blurred borders and is hard to define. Generally, any content posted on a number of counterculture sites, like Udaff, [Litprom] or [Fuck.ru] is considered counterculture, although some of the stories there have nothing to do with all of the above apart from being counterculture-inspired.

The interesting aspect is the influence of the contra-cultural developments on the Russian pop culture. In addition to traditional Russian styles of music like songs with jail-related lyrics, new music styles with explicit language were developed. The most known representative of such popular music is Russian band “Leningrad”.

Late 20th century Media Counterculture

scholarly text about tabloid talk shows.
Enlarge
scholarly text about tabloid talk shows.

While Phil Donahue pioneered the tabloid talk show genre in the 1970s, the warmth, intimacy and personal confession Oprah Winfrey brought to the format in 1986 both popularized and revolutionized it. In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back[link], Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people and doing more to make gays socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."[link]. Despite such praise, tabloid talk shows had many critics including sociologist Vicki Abt who feared that tabloid talk shows were redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV talk show, Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Oprah's success was blurring the lines between normal and deviant behavior. One of Winfrey's most taboo-breaking shows occurred in the 1980s where for the entire hour, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virgina to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained the swimming pool because the man had gone swimming, and debated the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town" Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience, "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of," replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's mostly gay studio audience.

By the end of the 1990s, most tabloid talk shows had gone extinct or in the case of Winfrey, had dramatically reinvented themselves to adapt to the changing market.

Following the success of tabloid talk shows, early 21st century gays were coming out of the closet younger and younger, gay suicide rates had dropped, and gays were embraced on mainstream shows like Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and films like Brokeback Mountain.

Winfrey's intimate therapeutic hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre she popularized has been credited or blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s which broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession, and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term Oprahfication which means public confession as a form of therapy.

Counterculture in the Asian Context

In the recent past it is Dr. Sebastian Kappen, an Indian Theologian, who has tried to redefine counterculture in the Asian context. In March 1990, at a seminar in Bangalore, he presented his countercultural perspectives (Chapter 4 in S. Kappen, Tradition Modernity Counterculture, Visthar, Bangalore, 1994). Dr. Kappen envisages counterculture as a new culture that has to come up negating the two opposing cultural phenomena in Asian Countries: (1) invasion by western capitalist culture, and (2) the emergence of revivalist movements. Kappen writes, “Were we to succumb to the first, we should be losing our identity; if to the second, ours would be a false, obsolete identity in a mental universe of dead symbols and delayed myths. The only valid approach, therefore, is to fashion a counterculture which steers clear of both revivalism and bourgeois modernism.” In order to achieve this, he proposes a process of critical and creative involution. By involution he means ‘a return to our own culture, but not so much to its developed forms as to its primal sources.’ This involution into one's own cultural roots must be critical and creative. That is, while rejecting what is not humanizing in traditional and capitalist cultures, we must be open to the positive elements of both. Kappen’s concept of counterculture has inspired many a theologian in the third world. For example, see L. Jeyaseelan, Towards A Counter-Culture, Sebastian Kappen’s Contribution, ISPCK, Delhi, 1999.

Counterculture in the Netherlands

The counterculture had an enormous influence on the Netherlands, probably more than anywhere else in the world. The Netherlands had been a very conservative country before 1960. German intellectuals made jokes about the Netherlands: 'When the world ends, then I will flee to the Netherlands, because everything happens 50 years later there'. Now the Netherlands has the reputation of being a very liberal country.

Amsterdam became one of the hippie capitals of the world, next to San Francisco and London during the late 1960s. But Amsterdam was a special city; most of the Netherlands remained relatively conservative during the 1960s. Especially the 1970s and early 1980s transformed the Netherlands into a liberal country, while other countries had a tendency towards conservatism. Politicians of the Labour Party tried to change society by changing the towns and cities through local politics. Dutch youth demonstrated often against several kinds of abuse of power. All kinds of institutes tried to democratize, bringing the power of managers and officials to an end. The right-wing coalition government was afraid to lose elections, so they had to keep the welfare state until 1983.

Anti-Nazism was an especially powerful ideology. The Nazi-German occupation made a tremendous impression on the orderly organized Dutch society of the 1940s. Many Dutch celebrities were radically left-wing during the 1970s and early 1980s. Dutch liberalism is influenced mainly by American culture. The Dutch former punker and celebrity Carry expressed the meaning of punk by standing on her desk next to her computer and saying: “I don't want my grandmother to say that this is not appropriate.”

The special kind of Dutch liberalism becomes apparent when the Netherlands is compared with other countries. The relationship between the Netherlands and the Flemish section of northern Belgium has created some tensions throughout the decades. Dutch people were very proud during the 1980s and 1990s and expressed that by shouting “Hup Holland, hup” at 3 o'clock in the morning in the Flemish city of Antwerp. Belgians were frequently ridiculed as being stupid. Belgians complained also about the Dutch trying to seduce women who were in the company of Flemish men. Belgians were jealous of Dutch television, which had a lot of famous television programs, while Belgian television was considered boring in comparison.

American conservatives describe the Netherlands as a “Sodom and Gomorra” — something America should not become. Their arguments are based on a misinterpretation of Dutch liberalism, because humanism is one of the basic values of Dutch society. Dutch society has legalized suicide, prostitution, abortion. Gay marriage and euthanasia are accepted, though euthanasia is only to be applied to stop people from suffering physically. Using words as "fuck," "asshole" or "cunt" are accepted on television and the radio, even to insult people. Some tourists complain about the rudeness of Dutch people. Rudeness has been identified as a problem in traffic. This rudeness is not something restricted to the lower classes; the upper classes are rude as well. The Dutch prefer to call it honesty; Dutch people do as they feel.

Some Christians and Muslims in the Netherlands have a minority complex, because their values are ridiculed in Dutch society. Some Dutch television commentators regard an interest in religion as something of the past. The Netherlands is one of the least religious countries of Europe after the Czech Republic and Estonia (Christianity by country), and it may be the most secularized country of the Western world, having experienced the full effect of the 1960s revolution. It should be mentioned however that the percentage of people who don't believe in God is much higher in Sweden, Germany and France[link]. The difference between the Netherlands and those three countries is that norms and values used to be much more popular there than in the Netherlands of the 1980s and 1990s. Germany is considered dull by the Dutch. Social democracy and feminism are very strong in Sweden, compared with the Netherlands, while France has kept strong ideological contradictions. Dutch hedonism could be measured by the acceptance of hedonistic lifestyles and homosexuality.

Dutch people have had a strong inclination to change the world in recent decades, desiring a world with more honesty, happiness, and less suffering. Dutch news gives a lot of attention to events in foreign countries. The Dutch have been strongly anti-nationalist.

The Netherlands have the least opposition to homosexuality in the world. Pim Fortuyn was openly homosexual. Pim Fortuyn was against the backwardness of the Islamic culture. Many journalists and politicians complained about this, comparing him with the Nazis. Fortuyn replied by saying that the sperm of Moroccans tasted the same as that of other people. This was quoted in the major newspapers. Problems with the integration of foreigners have impacted Dutch culture. Many people want order and punishment to bring an end to the feeling of vulnerability.

Counterculture in the Netherlands has become mainstream since the 1970s. This had the result that the left became moderate. Problems couldn't be solved easily. Instead of changing society by demonstrating in the streets, society is changed nowadays by adjusting policy. The main issues that lead to much controversy are the integration of foreigners and adjusting the economy for the threat posed by globalism, which means downsizing the Welfare State. Dutch liberalism and counterculture are non-issues since these were absorbed into the mainstream culture. This has the strange result that socialists are advocating law and order to deal with crime and that hedonists are in favour of making an end to the nakedness and rudeness in video clips of American rappers.

Early 2000s Conservative Counterculture in the United States

Since the early 2000s many political writers have coined a new term, "Conservative Counterculture," which describes a growing youth movement in both the Catholic and Evangelical churches in America. This is a group of American teens and young people who no longer see themselves as part of the "MTV" establishment and who reject pre-marital sex, drugs, and alcohol. Polls in recent years have shown that more American teens are opposed to discrimination against religious people, abortion, affirmative action, and the silencing of freedom of speech for the sake of political correctness. The existence of a conservative youth counterculture is supported by the fact that a growing percentage of young people voted Republican in the 2000 and 2004 American elections.

See also

See earlier countercultural manifestations

External links

 

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