Week 6 response-Ben

I guess there was a bevy of small and large communities that individuals wanted to be a part of. For this topic, it was the beatniks v. true beat writers. Beatniks were the subset of writers , who themselves created the aforementioned community to write about heavy hitting topics. Yet, I believe they wrote them for the public reaction, self exposure, and to feel like they are undermining the status quo post World War Two. Essentially, they lacked altruistic incentives and motivation such as the true beat writers, aka, the likes of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Beatniks became prominent in the literary world  by writing about aspects of beat culture rather than true counterculture because of their surroundings (the influences of original beat writers).

A question I have is: Can we use the idea of vernacular landscape on more semiotic neighborhoods and enclaves rather than physical ones? In this case, for the beat writers (and artists) in New York City. The German keywords come to mind here: vissen and kennen. Maybe the true beat writers represented more of a vissen understanding of their surroundings and thus their writing was more wholesome and organic, while the beatniks represented more of a kennen perspective–trying to emulate the authenticity of writers such as Kerouac and Ginsberg. However, it can be seen that many media outlets and writers that attempted to exude individuality, in fact conformed to the pressures of the desire of being part of a movement–a writer’s movement in this case to detail American counterculture. As mentioned in the “The Beats Sixties Counterculture” article, and what we have been discussing in class, there is a symbol or icon (in this case the “elite” beat writers) that others (usually minorities or a diverse group of various cultures) want to be a part of. Furthermore, the group that looks up to the icons always tries to change something about what makes the icons so great. In this case, it is the beatnik philosophy of anti-war and anti-government rather than a spiritual release and existentialism. This is a common theme we keep seeing. We saw it with the housing projects readings/discussions, the idea of “Brooklyn” as an icon, and with males in television. Apparently there was a bevy of social boundaries in the 1960s that I am learning about and I thought I would mention that, it is cool and something new.

Beatniks were also influential though, just in terms of counterculture. They provided a precedent, or guide, on how to live and sustain an alternative lifestyle, not according to the status quo. The effects were subtle, but maybe they have been ingrained in our current culture with the idea of “hipster” and extreme “liberal” movements.