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Lecture 09:Counter Culture and Containment

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Lesson 09 Agenda• Last Time…• The Times They Were A’ Changin’

– The Lyrics & The Times– The Sixties: “Change” Condensed

• What is the Counterculture– Defining Counterculture

• Let’s Watch Some TV!– Late Sixties Televisual Landscape Pt. 1

(Prime Time Programming)– Late Sixties Televisual Landscape Pt. 2

(Living Room War)– Laugh In: Co-opting Counterculture– The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour– The Mod Squad: Counterculture As

Coexistence

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Section 1: Last Week …

• Assimilationist Texts

• Symbiotic Texts

• Race, Representation

and “Color-blindness”

Pat Paulsen, “Presidential Candidate” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

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Section 2: The Times They Were A-Changin’

March on Washington D.C., 1963 Escalating violence outside of the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, 1968

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“…There's a battle outsideAnd it is ragin'

It'll soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’.”

--Bob Dylan “The Times They Are

A-Changin’” (1963)

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There’s battle lines being drawn,Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong…

You better stop,Hey, what’s that sound?

Everyone, look what’s going down.

--Stephen Stills “For What It’s Worth” (1967)

By 1970,Too Much “Change” Had Come.

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The Sixties: “Change” Condensed

– Era of Dramatic Swings: Cultural, Political

& Social – Civil Rights to Black

PowerMLK at March on Washington, 1963 (Above) Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Olympics, Mexico City, 1968; (Left) Huey Newton at Black Panther Rally, 1969

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More Overcoming to Do: Women’s Liberation & Gay Liberation Movements

Women’s Liberation Rally, 1970 Washington D.C. Gay Liberation March, 1969 NYC

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Sexual Freedom:

• The Pill (FDA Approval: 1957 with warning that pill prevents ovulation);

• Summer of Love (1967)

• Sexual Information (Our Bodies/Our Selves published 1969)

• 12.5 million using the Pill by 1969

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Drug Culture:• Not your parents’ “escape” of choice• Dr. Timothy Leary: LSD– “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

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Music & Critique

• Pop (Social?)• Folk (Social & Political)• Rock (Social & Political• Psychedelic Rock

(Cultural)

VS.

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Crisis in Authority

• Widespread Critique of:Politics, religion, the nuclear family, sexual mores, social practices, historical circumstances and human and civil liberties.

Social Change=Cultural Change= Political Change?

Yes and No.

Section 3:What Is The Counterculture?

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‘Counter-culture’ is…

A term made popular in the 60s – refers to the rising presence of ‘radical’/alternative theories, practices, and politics (pertaining to race, the family, government etc.) which run contrary to conventional mainstream values and patterns of behavior.

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What Characterizes the ‘Counter-culture’?

• Transgressive: sexuality, gender roles, race, televisual norms, etc.

• Ambivalent: gender, sexuality, etc.• Unruly: bodies, language, etc.• Alternative Aesthetic: hippies, mods, etc.• “Carnivalesque”: (Stallybrass & White, 1997)

the play/spectacle/pleasure associated with resistance and transgression – a display of the ‘profane’ and ‘grotesque’

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Section 4: Let’s Watch Some TV!

Download Reading/Screeni

ng Sheet 9 from

Learning Tasks

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Late 60s Televisual Landscape Pt. 1

• Top Prime Time Shows: Fiction Programming

(1965-1969):Bonanza; The Red Skelton Hour The Andy Griffith Show Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C Mayberry, R.F.D. The Lucy Show Gunsmoke Cast of Bonanza (NBC, 1959-1973)

• Filling the spaces left by the disjuncture between lived experiences/news and the televisual landscape.

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Late 60s Televisual Landscape Pt. 2a• Living Room War:

– Television brought the Civil Rights movement into the domestic sphere—made it real for viewers physically separated from the struggles.

– The casualties of the Vietnam War (literal and figurative) were made real by the evening news coverage of the War and anti-war sentiments.

What was their appeal to

Post War audiences?

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Late 60s Televisual Landscape Pt. 2b• Case Study: Walter Cronkite in Vietnam

– Cronkite’s conclusion: "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?” (CBS, February 27, 1968):

“…it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

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For Your Viewing Pleasure:Laugh In

• Your Dad’s Counterculture

(aka: Hef meets Hippie)• Overt social

commentary/critique• Diversity (?) in

representation• The role of ‘comedic

excess

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In The Episode• Laugh-In: Style over Politics

– Cooptation (Frank, 1997) of the counterculture into the mainstream

– Counterculture/identity politics played as titillation (i.e. women’s representations)

• Co-optation of counter-hegemonic ideologies or cultural artifacts alters them– strips them of their potential or politics and

leaves behind style.– Their resistant meanings are ‘lost in

translation’.

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For Your Viewing Pleasure: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

• Playing with Expectations• “Creative Control”&

Standards & Practices• Moment of Rupture on

Network Landscape

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In The Episode

• Rebellious text within network programming

• Mainstream guests (such as Jack Benny, George Burns), Bodroghkozy argues, in The Smothers Brothers (p. 212) legitimates the countercultural narrative of the show.

• Non-mainstream guests (such as The Beatles [via tape], The Who, The Doors) legitimates countercultural cred

And, finally…The Mod Squad

• The Rebel, The Hippie & The Black Guy

• Youth Commodified: “Solid!”

• Being the Man & Being Cool

• Making the Counterculture Safe for Middle America

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In The Episode

• Markers of the Counterculture– Whose “Radical” Is This?– More Than Just Wearing

Flowers In Your Hair

• For The Love of Julie?– The Hip Girl vs. The Smart Girl

• On Being the Man, Man.– Linc

– Pete

– Captain Greer

• Laugh-In: “The Revolution Co-opted”

• The Smothers Brothers: “The Revolution Televised”

• The Mod Squad:“The Revolution Contained”

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You Say You Want A Revolution

Final Thoughts

• Are all ‘radical’ texts created equal?• Is rebellion always a hot commodity?• Can a “counterculture” exist when all trends

can be/are prime candidates for marketing?• Can texts be progressive & regressive at the

same time?

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GOOD NIGHT, GOOD LUCK & GOOD WRITING!!!

Next Week:

Conflicting Object Lessons,

Containing Relevancy & Jiggling All the Way29