Beatnik
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Beatnik (disambiguation).
The term "beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958. Caen coined the term by essentially Russifying the earlier term, beat generation. The description beat generation was a label invented about 1948 by renowned author Jack Kerouac. Caen coined the term "beatnik" shortly after the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, and also at the end of the highly anti-communist McCarthy era of American politics. This was an era of intense anti-communist sentiment in the US, and it was apparently Caen's intent to portray the 'beats' of the beat generation in a rather negative light by his new turn of phrase. Kerouac's earlier term had more positive connotations, associating the beat generation with words like the musical definition of beat, the journalistic definition of beat, and later having religious connotations with the word beatitude.
Once the term beatnik had been coined, it gradually replaced the earlier term beat generation, though historians still refer to the earlier term. Since 1958, the term beatnik has been used to describe an anti-materialistic literary movement that began with Kerouac in 1948, stretching on into the 1960s. Many historians have asserted that the beatnik philosophy of anti-materialism, combined with its fundamental soul-searching ethos, may have influenced some of the lyrics of popular 1960s musical groups such as the early Pink Floyd and The Beatles, and was the precursor of the hippie generation.
At the time that the term was coined, there was a trend amongst young college students and struggling writers to emulate writers such as Kerouac and John Clellon Holmes. Emblematic of this new stereotype were men wearing goatees and berets, rolling their own cigarettes, and playing bongos. Fashions for women included black leotards and wearing their hair long, straight, and unadorned. This was a rebellion against the middle-class standards of the time which expected women to get permanent treatments for their hair.
Participants in this subculture often preferred to drink wine or coffee rather than more mainstream beverages such as beer or hard liquor. Marijuana use (or 'tea-smoking') was also associated with the beatnik subculture. During the 1950s Aldous Huxley's popular The Doors of Perception further influenced beatnik views on drugs.
The beatnik philosophy was generally counter-cultural, anti-materialistic, and stressed the importance of bettering one's inner self over and above the importance of bettering one's material standing in the world. Despite the attempts of several mainstream authors such as Caen to imply a connection with communism, there was no direct connection between the beatnik philosophy (as expressed by the leading authors of this literary movement) and the philosophy of the communist movement, other than the antipathy that both philosophies shared towards materialism and capitalism. This connection is questionable because of the distinctly spiritual element of the beatnik philosophy, as contrasted with the anti-spiritual views in Marxist philosophy. For instance, some beatnik writers began to delve into Eastern religions such as Buddhism or Taoism.
Most beatnik politics tended to be liberal; many beatniks supported causes such as desegregation, and an openness to US African-American culture and arts is apparent in beatnik music and literature, such as their love of jazz. In this regard, beatniks were considerably ahead of their time given the often strained race relations in American society.
A classic example of the beatnik image is the character Maynard G. Krebs played by Bob Denver in the Dobie Gillis television show that ran from 1959 to 1963. The general beat stereotype also owed something to some of the popular film actors emerging during the early and mid 1950s (for instance, Marlon Brando and James Dean) who had youthful, adventurous, "rebel" images. A sensationalist Hollywood interpretation of the sub-culture can be seen in the 1959 film The Beat Generation, as well as The Subterraneans (based on a Kerouac novel of the same name) and parts of Funny Face.