Hippie Culture Essay

Few sociable movements designated the twentieth century in the us as the protest movements of the 60s. However , despite the scope and scale of such a wide movement that exemplified so many different people and causes, which includes voting privileges, women’s rights, civil privileges, and ending the battle in Vietnam, the motion is better noted by a stereotype of the kind of people that seemed so instrumental in perpetuating the movement: hippies. Although great majority of those in the protest movement were not hippies, the movies, music, and cultural events that marked the days were dominated by hippie culture, and few events represented this kind of fact as the stereotype-reinforcing Woodstock Music Festival.

By the time Woodstock occurred in 69, the hippie movement was already something that had been growing the entire decade and most people who are not hippies a new good idea exactly what a university hippie was. If you might have to describe a hippie then, it can be said to be a young man or woman that was dirty, hairy, out of work, and on prescription drugs. While these are only a few characteristics ascribed to a couple hippies, the stereotypes started to be so solid that they had been hard to take out from the other significant input they manufactured, including in music, art, culture, and social awareness.

So , whilst hippies were far more sophisticated than many people chose to see them, these people were pigeonholed towards the stereotype of spoiled middle-class kids with too much time and freedom, and who declined to do their very own patriotic duties as their parents had performed before them, most specifically by starting family members and struggling with in the country’s wars. However , the ten years leading up to Woodstock only helped reinforce several stereotypes. Hippie culture might have been said to begin the words and ideas in the Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, while others.

These writers laid the foundation for the rebellious, anti-establishment ideals that might come to be so strongly embraced by the hippie culture throughout the 1960s. Yet , it would be Bob Dylan, who had been strongly inspired by the Surpasses, who would use their ideas in his persons music. Dylan’s popularity not simply made folk music well-known, but his songwriting as well tackled many of the issues of the time, including war, civil legal rights, and the fundamental questions of whether or not America was heading the right way, and if not really, why. Dylan’s music inspired the songwriting of almost every major saving artist that came after him, or at least virtually any that achieved any amount of success.

Through Dylan and those he affected, music became the initially defining attribute of hippie culture, demonstrating a long history of music understanding cultural motions and instances through its almost faith based effect on the ones that listen to it. Religious causes, like art, music, and everything that encourages classification since sacred, Emile Durkheim (1965) writes: “do not translate the manner in which physical things affect each of our senses, however the way in which the collective consciousness acts upon individual consciousnesses” (1965, l. 254). Music has the ability to work as a symbol of this collective consciousness, bringing the public together to indicate a shared philosophy or perhaps perspective.

Even though many contend that art and music is nothing more than an escape from the day-to-day anxieties that life presents up, it truly is far more than that. Similar to the sacred in religion, which usually Durkheim claims is not really rooted in fear as humanist and existentialist theorists claim, in the idealism of the group mentality, music becomes sacred when shown in a way that appeals to the individual as well as the collective. Music and those who also perform this act in manners similar to religious totems, representing the ideals of the group and how they will inhabit the individual, and have their root base in exhalation and party.

According to Durkheim, “In fine, the sentiments at the root of totemism will be those of completely happy confidence instead of terror and compression” (1965, p. 56). Music became the creativity for hippie culture and gave all of them the self confidence to fight back against beliefs they noticed as wrong, including the Vietnam War. There was clearly no better representation of the than Woodstock. The Woodstock Music & Art Event that occurred on a plantation near Woodstock, New York, September 15 through August 18, 1969 not merely assembled thousands of rock, take, and persons musicians through the day, but likewise had a 1 / 2 million fervent young and old supporters celebrating lifestyle and music in a live performance that altered the way the more youthful generation was viewed.

After Woodstock, the burgeoning table culture increased into the popular, as the whole United States noticed that the hippie culture was obviously a force that may not end up being ignored, and its particular icons including the Who, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Jimi Hendrix reinforced most of the stereotypes of long locks, reckless behavior, and sexuality. Woodstock might become a popular orgy of drug make use of, sexual intercourse, nudity, and mud, yet also of peace, like, and an over-all togetherness that also characterized hippie traditions. Another well-liked stereotype was your hippie general disregard for a lot of authority, and Woodstock was no different.

Over one-hundred thousand tickets was sold to the event, but soon fans had been crashing above fences and simply began loading in to begin to see the show (Woodstock. com, 2009). However , there have been very few incidents of physical violence and the festival went on to be one of the well-known points in the culture of the 1960s. Additionally, it marked the start of the end of hippie culture.

Woodstock was the last hurrah for a technology of teenage boys and women that did their finest to rebel against the earlier generations and create their own persona. Sadly, stereotypes had been rich and long concerning hippie traditions, and Woodstock did well to encourage both the good and bad stereotypes. They displayed their very own amazing music and free-loving culture, although also all their drug abuse and contentment with filth. By the time the 1970s began, hippie culture was all but useless, even though most of the hippies continuing to live in. Today, hippies are seen as largely a faiytale and very shallow, which may discuss about it their ultimate failure to have up to their particular ideals.

The region is still mainly conservative in many regards, nonetheless refuses most of the ideals of peace and love the hippies influenced, and is still at conflict with overseas countries. Hippies are now noticed in modern kind as eco warriors, annoying activists for un-American or unethical causes, potheads or non-meat eaters. Hippies are no longer seen as a feasible threat towards the conservative values of the United States, and also have in essence turn into all design and no compound.

While stereotypes helped perpetuate the romantic notion with the idealistic hippie, they just as equally helped destroy a notion that never really been around in the first place.