The Cultural Revolution
• The Cultural Revolution was a complex process of social and cultural change that involved
Great Britain and the USA but spread across Western Europe from the early Fifties on.
• Among the reasons for this change the main was the frustration young people felt after
WWII when, even after the great social conquests of the Welfare State, the old morality
and strictness of Victorian days still survived in politics as well as family life.
• Another reason for this change was the easier access to a market that allowed young people
to buy music, books, cosmetics, clothes, drinks, motorcycles. New lifestyles and
behaviours became a mass phenomenon their parents were compelled to accept.
• One of the symbols of the new lifestyle was Carnaby Street in London, where clothes
shops and fashion studios were opened making it the centre of the Swinging London.
• The universal cultural language that contributed to export the revolution across the world
was that of pop music. Young people of the Fifties found in these songs new ideals, energy
and even encouragement to pick up bad habits.
• Rock-and-roll and pop music bands and singers like Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones became famous worldwide. Their songs incited youths to rebel,
disregard old rules and be free to do wrong things like leaving school, protest against the
government, take drugs and have sexual freedom.
• The general wave of rebellion changed society radically. The new social behaviours and
facts had been simply unthinkable before: living together and having children outside
marriage, one-parent families, same-sex partnerships, contraceptive pills and family
planning.
• Young people and above all women now got the chance to be really free to decide on their
future. The Women’s Liberation Movement was formed in 1968 and completed the battle
for equal rights with men in the home and the workplace.
The Beat Generation
• The most famous member, probably the founder, of the Beat Generation was Jack Kerouac
(1922-1969) who, with his lifelong friends Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal
Cassady, spent his whole life travelling across the States and writing about his experiences
and way of life.
• The word beat, a slang term first used by jazz musicians, meaning down and out, was used
for their literature and beatniks were its writers. The Beats relentlessly moved across the
nation but their main rally point was the City Light Bookstore in San Francisco.
• The key ideals of the Beat culture were:
▲ rebellion and bohemian living;
▲ refusal of middle-class puritanical values;
▲ rejection of organized religion and search for alternative universal spirituality in Eastern
religions;
▲ communion with nature, deep meditation, also with the help of mind-altering drugs.
• The Beatneaks’ lifestyle implied:
▲ Living in dirty apartments, selling drugs and committing crimes for money;
▲ Hitchhiking to travel along Route 66;
▲ Doing whatever they felt like doing, like being naked and being sexually promiscuous;
▲ Using hallucinogenic heavy drugs and abusing alcohol;
▲ Not caring about personal cleanliness;
▲Wearing long hair and beards, worn out jeans, old t-shirts and sandals;
▲ Taking part in the underground culture made up of jazz, poetry and Eastern spiritual
philosophies like Zen Buddhism.
▲ In the Sixties the Beat Generation evolved into the Hippie movement, also famous for
their saying Make love not war and the protests against the war in Vietnam.
▲The literary symbol of the Beat Generation was the novel On the Road (1957) by Kerouac.
It is the autobiographical narration of Kerouac’s life as a Beat boy. The protagonists are the
narrator, Sal Paradise, his idolised friend Dean Moriarty and their group.
