Counterculture is a movement of questioning and denying the current culture that aims to break taboos and contradict cultural norms and standards that dominate a given society. In general, counterculture actions emerged from young people unhappy with the life and standards set by their parents. The peak of this movement took place in the United States, with the hippie movement , in the 1960s, covering the apex of the Cold War , and extended to the 1970s, in England, with the punk movement .
What is counterculture?
The essence of counterculture lies in the contradiction of socially established norms and standards. Societies have always created habits, customs and standards considered as the normality of people’s actions, thus creating a culture. Within a society, culture tends to become hegemonic, that is, to establish itself as a pattern of behavior that must be followed by everyone. In this sense, the counterculture comes to question the hegemonic norms as a way of indicating that something in the culture is wrong and must be modified.
Crowd of young people at the Woodstock Festival, a landmark of the counterculture in 1969. [1 ]
In general, counterculture actions were produced by young people , due to the fatigue faced by them in relation to the rules that they themselves did not create, but that they were forced to follow. Thus, counterculture movements questioned not only patterns of social behavior, but religion , sex, social institutions (such as family, marriage, Church, school, state, police, army and work ) and aesthetic standards.
The rebellion is striking in counter stock because it is the weapon by which people have come to fight the charges . The non-acceptance of the standards is essential for an effective change in social behavior and indicates that counterculture movements were basically fighting for more freedom.
Themes such as feminism (which intensified from the 1960s onwards, engendering the second phase of feminism, which aimed to question patterns of female behavior and fight for women’s sexual freedom) were associated with counterculture ; the culture of peace as opposed to wars, such as the Vietnam War ; the rock and roll as a musical movement to challenge the aesthetic standards set by society; and the political challenge against social oppression , by social class, gender or color, established by groups of struggles for equality rights.
This movement was also fundamental for the development of protests against political authoritarianism that occurred, in May 1968, in several countries, such as France, the United States and Brazil (our country was, in 1968, the most repressive years of the Civil Dictatorship – Military, 1964 to 1985).
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Culture and counterculture
The concept of culture is, in general, a set of knowledge, techniques, arts, religions, habits and customs of a people. Usually, this set becomes a social rule within the community in which it is inserted, and everything that deviates from it is considered strange and abnormal. Counterculture is the movement to challenge culture that tries to challenge the standards of behavior established by society.
Contrary to established standards, counterculture tries to show that there is a cultural flaw that must be identified and corrected in order to establish new ways of life and new ways of looking at the world.
Cold War
One of the decisive factors for the youth’s revolt against the hegemonic cultural system was the Cold War . The world was polarized in two economic blocs: the capitalist bloc , led by the United States, and the socialist bloc , led by the Soviet Union. Within the capitalist bloc, there was the promotion of a bourgeois way of life based on consumption and respect for institutions.
Contradictorily , the bourgeois way of life also preached an idea of freedom , which, for most middle-class youth, made no sense . These were encouraged to study, work in jobs that reproduce capitalist logic, raise a family and consume. What was done outside this cycle was considered abnormal.
For young people in the 1960s, this was not freedom, as they could not express themselves and lead their lives freely . In the same way, women were still seen as secondary parts in an extremely sexist society. It was the woman’s role just to be a good wife and mother.
The Vietnam War led young people in the United States to rebel against American culture. The translation of the plaque reads: Get the hell out of Vietnam.
In the political field, young Americans revolted with a meaningless war , the Vietnam War, which aimed only at showing the superiority of the capitalist bloc over the socialist bloc (Vietnam was going through a socialist government).
At that event, several innocent Vietnamese were killed and several young American men were summoned to war, many of whom returned with physical and psychological consequences or died there. All of this contributed to a revolt against the current cultural and political system.
Hippie movement
The hippie movement has its embryo and its main inspiration in a movement that started in the United States in the post-war period, called the beat or beatnik movement . The beatniks were poets and writers who defended creative freedom, the pursuit of pleasure (hedonism) and the opposition to current social and cultural standards. They sought a nomadic life, without certain roots, and sought drug use and free sex as an escape from the apparent lack of meaning in bourgeois everyday life.
Beat writers sought in existential philosophy the foundation for their writings : the idea that there is no human essence, because the human being is made while he lives. Among the names of the beat generation, we can highlight three: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
Inspired by beat hedonism, the idea of freedom and the lack of meaning of bourgeois life demanded by their parents, associated with capitalism and political oppression, many young people began to live in a nomadic way, practicing free sex and against social norms. They preached total freedom : live as you wish, wherever you want, without strings attached, as long as there is respect for the freedom of others. They found the pleasure they sought in drugs and sex and preached respect and contact with nature.
The feminist movement gained strength in the hippie environment due to the search for female sexual freedom. Likewise, black movements , such as the Black Panthers, who fought against the policy of racial segregation , gained prominence due to the idea of equality sung by the hippie movement.
Jimi Hendrix
The rock and roll, musical style that emerged in the 1950s inspired by rhythm and blues and jazz, became the anthem of the hippies . In this scenario, names such as singer Janis Joplin, guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix, the band The Doors, guitarist Santana, among others, stood out. Joplin, Hendrix and Santana participated in the great Woodstock festival.
· Woodstock Festival
Singer Janis Joplin was one of the festival’s attractions and an important symbol for the hippie movement.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair (Woodstock Music and Art Fair) was a music festival that took place between August 15 and 18, 1969, on a farm in Bethel, New York. The festival organization prepared a structure to receive 50 thousand people, however, about 500 thousand people attended the festival.
The aim of the festival was to bring together people with the same ideal : the promotion of peace and freedom and the promotion of rock. Hundreds of thousands of hippies went to Woodstock with the intention of expressing their freedom, making the festival a milestone in the promotion of counterculture in the world.