Transcript 1960s Counterculture

1960s Counterculture
Objective Question: How did
people in the 60s form their
own culture to counter
mainstream society?
HW: DBQ due Tue.
Preparation for Socratic
Seminar on women due
Thurs.
1960s Mainstream vs. Counterculture
Mainstream Society:
Traditional American values of patriotism
“America: Love It or Leave It”
Marry and stay married
American Dream comes true for anyone who
works hard
Conform in values and personal behavior
Counterculture: the culture and lifestyle of
those people, especially among the young,
who reject or oppose the dominant values
and behavior of society.
Where did “Hippies” come
from?
 Hippie comes from hip, which comes from hipster
(we have seriously come full circle)
 Hipsters originated in the 1940s
Came from jazz culture
Characterized by sarcasm, dress, sexual
freedom, and pot
Bing Crosby called first white hip person in U.S.
More and more white people are taking on black
lifestyle
If you were “hip” you were modern, cool, and
with the latest social trends
The Hippie Movement
 Most hippies valued freedom, nature,
intimacy, peace, sharing, and
spirituality.
 Freedom from:
1. Conformity: many moved to
communes, parks, and campsites
-Self-sufficient
2. Racism, war, poverty
3. Material items: They discarded
possessions
4. Clothes: Yes, clothes restrict you,
thus go nude
Hippie Fashion
Colorful, flowing
clothing, beads,
headbands
bellbottoms, and tiedye.
Long hair, beards,
afros.
 Flowers in hair
“flower children”
Sexuality
 Sexual Revolution in 60s
 Counterculture saw themselves as sexually
liberated, unlike their parents’ generation
 Casual sex “free love”
 Medical advances in birth control made it
easier to for women to be sexually active
without the worry of becoming pregnant
One night stands
 New national attitude on sex
In movies (graphic)
Women went braless (and/or burned them!)
Music references
“Make love, not war”
Music
 The most popular music of the time was psychedelic rock
 Music like Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix , Bob Dylan, the
Beatles, and the Grateful Dead
 At Woodstock, 1969, over 500,000 hippies showed up to hear
famous artists, spend a weekend camping out, getting high,
engaging in free love, and listening to rock and roll.
Drug Culture
Marijuana and LSD large part
of counterculture
 Another way to rebel against
the mainstream
“Turn on, tune in, drop out”
–Timothy Leary Harvard
professor and LSD advocate
"Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural
and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the
many and various levels of consciousness and the
specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one
way to accomplish this end.
"Tune in" meant interact
harmoniously with the world
around you - externalize,
materialize, express your new
internal perspectives.
"Drop out" suggested an active, selective,
graceful process of detachment from
involuntary or unconscious commitments.
"Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of
one's singularity, a commitment to mobility,
choice, and change. Unhappily my
explanations of this sequence of personal
development were often misinterpreted to
mean "Get stoned and abandon all
constructive activity".
Have the hippies shaped
society today? How?