Art and Literature
Art, Literature and Society from 1955-1970Fear and Loathing in a Clockwork AgeAh! The noble search for identity. That intangible achievement that all artists lust after and lay in torment over. And during the post war era that struggle reached incredible magnitudes. The world cried out for legions of anti-heroes, who were only virtuous in their unapologetic and brutally honest lack of virtue. And the art world provided as many counter culture messiahs as was needed to "Damn the Man". The Beats, hippies, and punks are evidence that behind the white picket fence of suburbia lay an America that wanted more out of life than the sugar coated portrayals of domesticity and patriotism it received from pop culture. The unfortunate side of authenticity often lead to the conclusion that autonomy was an impossible dream and that just mere existence required an individual to compromise his integrity. The post-war generation developed an interesting love-hate relationship with the mass culture of it's time. Some, like Andy Warhol, embraced the inevitability of mass culturalization in order to control the beast (yes, this is a reference to Revelations). While others recognized the American Dream as being a hypocrisy and so chose the Golden
"Everything", which is the opposite of the void, is ignorant. And the sense of power and freedom even menial jobs provided was not something many wanted to trade in for being cooped up in a split level tract house with only the companionship of a vacuum cleaner and a screaming five year old. But even still that did not solve the problem of good old fashioned prejudice, which was as rampant as ever. The sexual, spiritual, and intellectual freedom and autonomy that characterized the Haight-Ashberry scene were closer to the Whitmanesque ideal than anything achieved during his life time. The last stanza equates emptiness with a state of total knowledge, which is destroyed once we become something. This was in opposition to his friend and fellow beat Allen Ginsberg. Ambiguity turned survival into a triviality, while one could find the deepest meaning in chance and whimsy. A far cry from the outwardly prosperous, but inwardly hollow and commercial suburban life. The flower child philosophy was in fact very Transcendental, minus the stuffy New England mentality. He melded that into a unique set of beliefs that would not have flown with any Pope, past or present. While the void, or the starting place, is Teaching. Postwar America was extremely prosperous from the stand point of the middle class white suburbanite. Board of Education declared segregation to be unconstitutional.
Common topics in this essay:
Board Education,
Golden Eternity,
Damn Beats,
Hamlet Hamlet,
Age Ah,
City Blues,
Wei Hipkiss,
Postwar America,
PrincipleKrimp4 Kerouac,
Buddhism Eastern,
golden eternity,
beat generation,
blissful void,
allen ginsberg,
mere existence,
jack kerouac,
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Acceptance Essays
