ARTS237 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix, The White Negro
Katherine Paterson
ARTS237 Postmodern Art
Week 4 - Counterculture, summer of love and psychedelia
-The Who, My Generation, 1956 > idea of the generational gap, everyone's parents
can piss off let us do our own thing > electric guitar was very new and was considered
loud and disruptive > what the older generations couldn't stand > based on rhythms of
black people music > the drums were based on African culture very unlike Glen Miller
> frenzy of sexual dancing and policemen > "I hope i die before i get old"
-Counterculture > resistance to the dominant culture of the time > disrupt post ww2
status quo and restrictive gender roles and want to do what is original and interesting
-Beat Poets > existential poetry rather than the traditional worries about how we
present ourselves in public type of conservative poetry
•Influenced by surrealism (imagination and freedom of consciousness),
existentialism (writings of Jean-Paul Sartre - the big question, why am i here what is
the meaning of life), relaxation of US censorship, new freedoms for the young,
Music (folk, rock and roll, blues[emerges out of slavery to express the hardship],
soul, 60s r&b, psychedelic rock > find their voice in society > identifying guitar riffs >
emblem of youth culture)
•Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendrix
-Jack Kerouac On The Road 1957 > boys road adventure with adults and drugs, about
rejecting war, having an original life and > writing jam packed full of experience and no
adherence to rationality, stream of consciousness > self discovery, madness is a good
thing
-Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry > inspired Jimmy Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling
Stones
-"The White Negro: Superficial Relfections on the Hipster" 1957 by Norman Mailer >
young white people who adopted black culture as their own as they were dis-
enthralled with conformist culture
-Levi's Presley > "Jailhouse Rock" > first major film, set in a jail (not the accepted done
thing), portrays him in a sexual way, kissing and romance and kissing, him with his
torso showing, sexualised figure > he translated black music and primal feelings into
white understanding > big cultural difference from the north and south and Presley is
from the south > considered sexy and dangerous > dance moves considered
pornographic
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