Arts 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
No other Beat poet understood that concept as well as Jack Kerouac. The lines "Yet everything is perfect, Because it is empty, Because it is perfect with emptiness, Because it's not even happening" echo Shakespeare's philosophy on existence. When mere existence doesn't seem to be guaranteed it's the little moments of perfection that become one's focus. Part of that knowledge was an acceptance of everything else as divine(Hipkiss,p. "Jack Kerouac single handedly created the beat generation. 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. Where Hamlet recognizes that only while he is inactive does he have possibilities. And even those who were born into that environment often found it's conventions limiting and unfufilling. It is only after everything has ended, that perfection is achieved. Kerouac was a Roman Catholic with a strong fascination with Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. He melded that into a unique set of beliefs that would not have flown with any Pope, past or present. The beauty of this state of total nothingness was that existence was reduced to its pure and uncontrived elements.
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
