Amcult 208 Lecture 5 Outline of Last Lecture I. The Minstrel Show Outline of Current LectureII. The Fluidity of IdentityIII. Definition of SubculturesIV. Who was of importance?V. Review of Transcendentalists IdealsCurrent Lecture: The Creators of Hipness and ReviewThe Fluidity of IdentityAmerica has always been a place where you could reinvent yourself• This was the supposed land of opportunity• People came (and come) here to escape other conditions• You could reinvent yourself…even change your name and hence your ethnicity • These new liberties began to (and still do) challenger all manner of class, racial, gender and ethnic boundariesThe First HipJust prior to the Civil War, several writers set down the intellectual underpinnings for the idea ofbeing “hip”Emerson: “Representative Man”, Herman Melville “Moby Dick” and “Pierre, or the Ambiguities”,Thoreau “Walden” “Civil Disobedience” Whitman “Leaves of Grass”These writers, influenced by the beginnings of industrialization and urbanization (contact), tried to create a literature and culture free from the influence of Europe. (The first “hip” revolution)Tried to free us from the schizophrenia, that looked at Europe as the model for everything, there is something unique about America and we need to spread thatIt was fairly easy to take this approach Whitman, in his intro to Leaves of Grass, pretty much laid the foundation for centuries of “hip” to follow, celebrate power and simplicity of nature, But to become American hip you have to root yourself in the present, oddly enough some of that was coming from new religious ideaReligious ideas that came from African-Americans• A new kind of oratory was needed to match the new adventure, and the African American church heeded that call• John Jasper preached intense sermons about the value of the individual and his/her personal relationship with God: a particularly heretical stance from Puritanical standards.• By the mid 1800s white preachers like Edward Thompson Taylor would bring together blacks These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.and whites and would influence…◦ Ideas from black church and put them in white worldReligion as Hip?The earliest literary, and political and social influence was the religious sermon.Based largely upon puritanical, Anglo traditions, this social doctrine stated that:• The role of the individual is clearly definedEmerson’s Ink:• Emerson’s whole philosophy was one of nonconformity and the value of the individual• Emerson said that the new country needed new mythologies, not history • By stating this he was helping root American hip firmly in the present“We could all be dead within the next minute”A boy is in the parlor is what is in the playhouse: independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by.”We need to embrace all that devil may care attitude that young people have, this is actually about embracing the insolence of youth, and Leland argues that to some extent current body-modification practices are odes to Emerson’s ideals“I am a canvas and this is my body and my own art”• “I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low”Thoreau’s Stuf• Thoreau’s philosophy was one of the value of simplicity• One should celebrate the individual “because he hears a diferent drummer”• “… The only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without excess stuf” • Capitalism: can be traced to Calvinism and Protestantism, predestination◦ Acquiring capital: the acquisition of capital, capitalism: the more stuf you have, the more proof that God was favoring you and that you were going to heaven◦ The protestant work ethic• Thoreau was saying “we did not create America to generate stuf, we are about creating new ideologies, not being tied to these old doctrines”• Emerson and Thoreau explored Eastern spiritual disciplines setting the trend for American “hip” to be associated with the pursuit of altered states of consciousness and/or enlightenmentMelville’s High• Melville’s philosophy was one that said one needs to transcend ordinary reality in order to see reality • His prose narratives, difering from the critical writing of Thoreau or Emerson, or the poetics of Whitman, created stories in which almost all the characters can be seen as symbols ofthe quest of transcendence.• What is perhaps less known about Melville’s wiring is his exploration of other sexual (and religious) possibilities? In his work Clarel, he considers every form of sexual orientation- celibacy, homosexuality, hedonism, and heterosexuality- raising the same kinds of questions when he considers Islam or democracy. Whitman’s “Grassy Soul”• Whitman’s philosophy stated that we should achieve the same primitive intensity of nature. • We are animals, we are nature, we are organic beings• Powerful words, deep words that add essence to our lives◦ It is only when we try to restrain these things that they become dangerous ◦ Let’s embrace all the words that we have at our disposal and use them however we see fit• "I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass”• “ I SING the body electric”• First time they say “dig yourself” you are holy, we all are holy, all we have got to do to understand that is just dig yourselfQuestion Authority. Ask why?All the philosophies we’ve seen, individual and collective, resist the culture of consumer capitalism.1. Life without excess stuf2. Life as more primitive, natural, and common3. Life as introspection and altered consciousness4. Life as doing what feels right, even if that’s nothingWatch “Citizen Kane”, called the greatest movie ever madeAnd we need to pay attention to this idea of transcendence itself;The historian Eugene Taylor has called this culture a ’shadow culture’“….a vast and unorganized array of discrete individuals who live and think diferently form the mainstream but who participate in its daily activities”Don’t be of the world, be in the world: you should be an active participant of the worldOf the world: over obsessed with self-induced grandeurAdvertisements for Myself: at the same time the