Lecture notes beats to bongs PDF

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Lecture 1 beats to bongs 5th March -

The beats had drugs and bongs as a large part of their life Drug use was a wide part of most people in the 60’s Artistically and social changes and how they effect today from the 60’s Approaches from literary and cultural and film studies Texts from US, Canada, Italy and UK Primarily about the Western world The 60’s happened in the 70’s in Australia (Oz magazine happened in the 60s however most Australians went to London to make a difference in the 60s) What came before the sixties? The fifties - Fifties have a great influence - moralist tone, great depression - world war 2 and the holocaust - people faith in Democracy in the West took a beating - people wanted to settle - reaction to great depression, ww2 and holocaust. Please wanted to settle down - prosperity and breeding otherwise known as the baby boom - white picket fence idea life - women lost their jobs when got married, had to polish houses, external conformity was enforced - homo was illegal - racial segregation was practised - cold war - AUS-split in Labour party government Menzes government - AUS-didn’t band communist party (not as paranoid as the Americans who did ban the communist party) - Nuclear weapons - Humans on the Moon race (space race) Domestic and material range Youth Culture in the 50’s - Youth culture identified as buying group - Differentiation between parents and teens - Youth was a force - Teens are the own authority not their parents - Teens spend their own money - Many started studying in uni - Expansion of suburbs because everyone wanted to own their own homes - Rock and roll rise - In consumer culture, there are not fathers any more. Teens buy what they want with their own money without taking into consideration what their parents want - Full employment (if you don’t like your job, get another one) - Car ownerships become common as well as homes - Ethnic restaurants started to appear (western influence however) The 60’s - Critiques from the 90’s American view (negative) Youth culture have strength, government is overthrown, political strengthen, far more harm than good, no artistic or literary masterpieces, political correctness was more destructive of American institutions - British view We are reaping what was son in the sixties Key features of fifties - rigid social hierarchy - subordination of women to men and children to parents - repressed attitudes to sex - racism - unquestioning respect for authority, education, government, the law and religion and for the nationsate, the national flag, the national anthem

- still form ‘father knows best’ 1954-1960 Key features of sixties - Black civil rights - Youth culture and trend setting by young people - Idealism, protest and rebellion - The triumph of popular music based on Afro-American models and the emergence of this music as a universal language with the Beatles as the heroes of the age - The search for inspiration in the religions of the orient - Massive changes in personal relationship and sexual behaviour - A general audacity and frankness in books and in the media and in ordinary behaviour. - Relaxation of censorship - The new feminism - Gar liberation - The emergence of ‘the underground’ and ‘the counterculture’ - Optimism and genuine faith in the dawning od a better world Readings Jack Kerouac, On the Road (book) Allen Ginsberg, Howl (poem) Stanley Kubric, Dr Strangelove (movie) Bob Dylan, Bringing it all back home (album) Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (book) Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow UP (film) Kurt Vonnegurt, Slaughterhouse five (book) Poetry, US and British Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman (book) The betakes, Sgt Peppers (album) Dennis Hopper, Easy Ride Short Analysis (750) words 20% Seminar Leadership Pass or fail Seminar Paper (1,500 Words 30% Online Post (250 words) 10% Research Essay (2,000 Words) 40%

Lecture 2 12th March Who were the beats 1. Group Of friends and writers who began publishing in the 50s in the US 2. Popular influence peaked in the 60s 3. Beats according to Ginsberg: Kerouac The beats consisted of - Neal Cassidy inspiration for On the Road - William Burroghs - Herbert Huncke - John Holms - And Later Carl Solomon - Philip Lamantia - Gregory Corso - Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Peter Orlovsky Female beat writers - Diane Di Prima - Ruth Weiss

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Joyce Johnson Hettie Jones Joanne Kyger Brenda Frazer Janine Pommy Bega Anne Waldman

Howl was first read publicly in San Francisco at Six Gallery Obscenity Trial Was banned Became on of the best selling books in US history Begs to be read out loud Influence on Howl : Walt Whitman, William Blake, William Carlo Williams, John Milton, Old testaments prophets such as Jeremiah - ‘Everything described in the poem is factual’ On the road - ‘Verbal Goofballs’, “like a slob running a temperature’ - “testament of the lost generation’ - the whole generation of the sixties were ‘on the road’ Quest themes - Religious-mystical yearning in Quest structure - Christen Catholic and zen Buddhism frameworks in text - Quest objects- dean’s father old Dean Morality - Beatification of hobos and bums - Inversion of suburban consumerist values in 50s - Susquehanna ghost p 94-96 dean as a ghost - Stronger quest for ecstasy - Fatigue, gunner, solitude, need drugs and talk - Story of homeless, hobos, jaz and their African American Audience - Write in a mad Benzedrine burst over 21 days in April 1951 - Third version of te book - 4th version published - Neal Cassidy wrote 23,000 letters - “this is not writing, this is typing’ - aims was to tell the truth - connected to Pollock’s style of painting Women in the text - not much in the text that a female reader can related or understand - ‘emasculation’ women not given much agency in tact - women emerge from narrative at one point - male bonds depend on the expulsion of women pp171-173 - Dean’s summary of a real woman “Now you see, man, a real woman for you, Never a harsh word, never a complaint, or modified; her old man can come in any hour of the night with anybody and have talks in the kitchen and drink the beer and leave any old time. This is a man, and that’s his castle (185)...