AC 208 Final Exam Study Guide1) Who were the OGs, what were their philosophies and how did they influence future subcultures?1. Whitman: Value of nature “leaves of grass”a. that we should achieve the same primitive intensity of nature.2. Emerson: Value of individuality and noncomformity “representative man”a. Country needs new mythologies, not history. 3. Henry David Thoreau: Value of simplicity. “walden”a. No excess stuffb. Emerson and Thoreasu explored Eastern spiritual disciplies, setting the trend for American hipto be associated with pursuit of altered states of consciousness and/or enlightenment4. Melville: value of expanding reality “Moby Dick”a. Must transcend ordinary in order to see realityThey rejected mainstream consumer capitalism by:life without excess stufflife as more primitive, common and naturallife as introspection and altered consciousnesslife as doing what feels right, even if it's nothing2) What are Westhues’s 7 subcultural characteristics and Adler’s 4 traits of the antinomian personality (make sure you can specify whether it is a subcultural characteristic or an Adlerian personality trait).Adlerian: 1. Scorns establishment as evil/corrupt2. Preoccupied with altering consciousness3. Finds expression in sexual freedom and new art forms4. Seeks a golden age of childish innocent and/or spiritual purityWesthues: 1. Relationships approach communism (egalitarianism) 2. Sexual relations deviate from monogamy and the norm3. They maintain superiority over mainstream culture4. Only marginally political5. They reject rewards/status of mainstream culture6. Look to spiritual leaders/elders7. Exist apart from dominant culture and create own folkways3) How do subcultures exist as noise?1. They interfere with the orderly sequences of society 2. They’re a challenge to norms and traditional beliefs3. They make mainstream society stop the normal order of things, by diverting their attention to the subculture 4) What were the forces that helped give birth to the Beats? -Post WWII America was not the picture of “normalcy” that many people would have us believe:It was about bland selling out of ‘the good life’About political retrenchmentConservative laisse faire attitudeNuclear anxietyMainstream became more conservative, and with nuclear anxiety, this created a sense of, “you coulddie any minute” -Youth saw what societies could do to people, murdering and atrocities. Wanted to learn what ghetto blacks already knew:To give up sophisticated inhibitions of civilizationLive in the momentFollow body not mindDivorce self from society and follow rebellious imperative of the self-Mailer claims that by doing these things hipsters are attempting to separate themselves from the middle-class culture in which they were brought up5) What was the context of the 1950s (technological, cultural, pharmacological, etc) and how did they contribute to the birth of the hippies?Economic/Family Context: the Procreation Ethic came into American Culture. Better to be married than single, and to have more than one kid. Birth rate jumped and income tripled. Children weren’t needed to help out with money, and people18-24 had a lot of leisure. They went to college to ‘find’ yourself and play. Play was huge among the hippies—this included playing music, having sex, and taking drugs. Technological: First gen to grow up with TV, which early on was experimental and smart, but moreover created the idea of the median being the message. TV destroyed the alphabet and created a global village. Electric guitar made, changed music. Was emblematic of conspicuous excess, which is what the hippies grew up in: they were very into stuff. Medical: Birth control comes out and penicillin, so people didn’t fear STDs or pregnancy. Political: Hypocrisy with civil rights, Vietnam War, first generation to grow up with the bomb. Cultural: Rock and Roll, Youth fashion, psychedelics. 6) What was the context of the late 60s and early 70s that helped give rise to the Punks?Punk was a type of music before it was a subculture. Opposite of what we usually see. -60s music ultimately became commodified and too virtuosic separating the music from the audience, performer from community. -All this bad stuff was happening—Vietnam war still going, JFK and MLK dead, Beatles broken up… Hendriz dead, even term ‘rock and roll’ is dead-Punk music was all about doing whatever you wanted, and anyone could start a punk band—not about talent but doing what you want. -Drugs have moved away from mind expansion. LSD illegal since 1966. More into hardcore drugs like speed and heroin—just to get wasted-Nixon elected because of war and economy, Watergate hearings. Can no longer trust those in charge. -Inspiration of early black music (hard rock and roll)-Rejection of new technologies -Fascination with Hollywood and pop culture iconography-Recession, harsher lifestyle7) What is a Protean person?Definition: Someone who is able to do many different things; versatile. Can change easily/frequently. Mass culture is the home of what Robert Jay Lofton has called “the protean man” who accepts as his own: “images of a more fragmentary nature than of past ideologies”Youth culture frequently organizes itself around new technologies: To produce new modes of language, to produce new style, and to produce new attitudes. There was a lot of new technologies at this time- Ex. Though an engineer by qualification and profession, he was protean. He could writepoetry, sing and draw.8) What is an icon and how and why were icons used and important to the hippies and/or punks?First prerequisite for creation of icons is thinking in pictures “Optical memory residue” as Freud called it. That is, things as opposed to words. Cultural critic Marshall Fishwick described icons as: “…images and ideas converted into three dimensions. They are admired artifacts, external expressions of internal convictions.”BEATS DID NOT HAVE ICONS. HIPPIES DID. 9) What do we mean by people being more comfortable with the fragmentation of images than with words?Having the median be more important as the message, and then become one and the same. With therise of TV, light shows, and psychadelics, the image became more important. Not just is the medium through which a message is transmitted more important than it’s message (e.g. television itself is more important than any show that appears on it because the medium has changed our