Many of the attitudes we now associate with 60s Counterculture appeared earlier in mainstream society.
How did The Movement grow in the space of a few short years to a major social phenomenon? As the era of Civil Rights protests gave way to anti-war demonstrations, love-ins, psychedelic drugs and music, Woodstock, and the whole peace-love ethos of the Age of Aquarius, what drew all the rest of us so inexorably into its body? One frankly revisionist thought I’ve had lately is that maybe it was based on The Movement’s incorporating trends that were already going on in less outwardly remarkable form throughout mainstream culture. Take the Movement’s celebration of sensuality and self-indulgence, and its way of giving the heave-ho to old rules and structures. Actually, a penchant for self-indulgence and an unwillingness to abide by the usual rules was growing in popular culture well before anybody had ever heard of a hippie. The Las Vegas-based Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford was, after all, much admired for its boozing and skirt-chasing. Mini-skirts also weren’t exactly Puritan garb. And scantily clad go-go dancers in gilded cages suspended from the ceiling had an air about them of something rather different from sober self-discipline. Closer to home, our dads drove the biggest, cushiest generation of cars the world had ever seen. Everything was push-button this and automatic that. They were pursuing a dream of wafting down lush fairways in the noiseless ease of electric golf carts, with gin-and-tonic bliss waiting at the nineteenth hole. What did young and old alike dream of? Consider our fascination with James Bond. He got to indulge himself sexually pretty much however and whenever he wanted. And an odd detail: he kicked when he fought. This had been a strong taboo for heroes in prior days, considered not only dirty, but also somehow girlish. Years later, it would be claimed that The Movement of the 60s had “feminized” American youth, just as it would be blamed for encouraging disrespect for traditional values. But in actuality, to what extent did The Movement actually introduce some higher values back into all an already-prevailing climate of self-indulgence?
(c) COPYRIGHT 2000 ROBERT WINTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
