1960s Counterculture

StatsDemographics

Population-177,830,000

Average Salary-$4,743

Minimum Wage-$1.00 per hour

850,000 students enter college resulting in emergency living quarters at most campuses

The Hippy Movement

The term “hippy” comes from being hip. You were either hip or you were a “square” or a “pig.”

Hippie were looking for an alternative way to live life. Most hippies valued freedom, nature, intimacy, peace, sharing, and spirituality.

* In population terms, # of teenagers and young adults were on the rise

COUNTER CULTURE

Reaction against the conservative government, social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism of the Cold War period, and the US Government's extensive military intervention in VietnamNew Left

Middle class college studentsStudents for a Democratic Society (SDS)

• Founded at the University of Michigan in 1960• Organizational base for New Left• Port Huron Statement

Criticized the lack of individual freedoms• Believed colleges were a natural base to promote social change• Began protesting the lack of student freedoms

Dress code, course requirements, and discrimination in sororities, fraternities, and admissions

• Began student anti-war movement

COUNTER CULTURENew Left

Free Speech Movement• Organized at Berkeley in 1964• Used sit-ins and taking over college buildings to protest the war

Young International Party (Yippies)• Democratic National Convention in 1968• Chicago• Anti-war protest• Police brutality

• Protests- Berkeley, Penn State, Kent State

Countercultural valuesFree speech movement

Fuck the Establishment or “the man”

Feeling of disillusionment

Distance from the previous generation

Unrest, misdirection

Unwilling to conform

Questioning of race

relations, sexuality,

gender issues, etc.

Civil Rights in America

The Vietnam Era also proved a time of remarkable social change in American society. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders confronted racist laws and attitudes, seeking equal rights and opportunities for African Americans.

Music

The most popular music of the time was psychedelic rock

Bands like Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Grateful Dead played free concerts at Golden Gate Park.

Concerts and be-ins were places for hippies to protest, socialize, dance, or take drugs.

At Woodstock over 250,000 hippies showed up to hear artists like Janis Joplin, The Who, Canned Heat, The Allman Brothers, and County Joe and the Fish.

POPULAR CULTURE

ArtInfluenced by desire to move into modern ageArtists wanted to inspire the viewer to leap into the unknown or experience art in their own wayAndy Warhol-leading name in pop art

Artistic Approach

Old culture Vs. new culture

Postmodernism

Critique of commodification, mass production

Warhol’s play on Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

POPULAR CULTURE

LiteratureExpressed problems in societyRace relations

• To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee

Feminism• The Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath• The Feminine Mystique-Betty Friedan

Disillusionment• Catch 22-Joseph Heller• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey