‘This is the Beat Generation’ by J.C.Holmes is the first literary article ( was published in New York Times in 1952) that coined the phrase “Beat generation” for the hippies and yippies in the American society. The entire generation is remarked as the post-war drunk generation of young people who developed a sort of nudity in their mental and spiritual contexts to crave and demonstrate the newly defined version of freedom (Holmes 232). Their level of distrust and distress were augmented by the war scenarios and dwindling national economy. Their lifestyle was generally knitted around beachheads and planned as per late-night arrivals and before-dawn departures.
‘Howl’ , a poem about the Beat generation, was written by Allen Ginsberg in 1956 in San Francisco. The poem starts with describing how drugs and booze destroyed perhaps the best minds of an entire generation. The oppression of constructive qualities in youth was a result of the post-war turmoil, government aided capitalism and the mainstream American culture (Ginsberg 1). The poem ends with explaining the plight of these affected people from the beat generation in various psychiatric hospitals.
The film , ‘Rebels: a journey underground’, is a 1998 feature film which revolves around the lives of Hippies and starts with the development of the Counterculture in America. Then it moves on to the post-war miseries of the socio-cultural upheavals in the American society and explains the development of some of the most rebellious voices of the American Society (Youtube 1). Finally, the socio-economic factors of rising unemployment and disenfranchised youth are coupled with government aided capitalism to explain how the youth turned into rebellions.
So, my initiator post is an assimilation of the three different sources (having 2-course readings) regarding the beat generation and its evolution in the American Society.
Works Cited
Ginsberg, Allen. " Howl".1956. Web. March 07, 2016.
Holmes, J.C. "This Is The Beat Generation".1958. Web. March 07, 2016.
"Rebels: a journey underground". Youtube, 1998. Web. Video.
