The Beat Generation: The Creation, Commodification, and Historicization of a Countercultural Movement
Abstract: Within this paper, I am studying the thematic commonalities of writers within the Beat generation and their subsequent commodification because I want to find out how countercultural movements are co-opted within a Capitalist mode of production. This is being carried out with the means of helping my reader understand how the values countercultural movements proselytize can be diluted through varying kinds of commodification. The written piece was originally accompanied by an artistic piece which can be seen below.
Essay: The Beat Generation was, and still is in various ways, a prominent and influential piece in American literary and countercultural history. Members of the “Beat Generation” would go on to influence, both directly and indirectly, a variety of other countercultural movements such as the hippie-associated “Free Love” movement and the various student protests of the 1960s.
Within this argument, I hope to emphasize the cultural image of the Beat Generation in the gaze of the public at the time of their writing and a discussion of the movement’s core values alongside the subsequent and continual commodification of the Beats. In doing so, I hope to draw attention to not only the contradictions between the values the Beats espoused and their appropriation into American consumer culture but also to the process through which countercultural movements are co-opted within Western Capitalism to bolster the consumerism that many of them, including the Beats, sought to disrupt. The limitations of time have prevented me from going into the minute details of individual works and figures of the Beat Generation, and, as a result of this, I will be primarily be observing the work and subsequent cultural images of Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, three essential and culturally recognized members of the Beat Generation, interspersed with notes on other figures in order to emphasize the hostility the Beats were initially confronted with.
The advent of Beat Generation itself, according to Selçuk, 2014, was a result of various contingencies of the post-war era including the economic state of America during and between world wars, the recognition of gender issues as a social matter within American society, and an opposition to the traditional compositional methods of the time (Selçuk, 2014).
According to Harvey Pekar in The Beats: A Graphic History, the term “Beat” originated from the relationship Jack Kerouac and the other Beats from the east coast, including Burroughs and Ginsberg, had with a man named Herbert Hunke, “a bright guy from a middle-class background” who had been in a “dissolute life [of thievery, hustling, and drug abuse] for years” (Pekar, 2009, p. 15). He is said to have put the young men onto the term “beat,” as in “Man, I’m beat” (Pekar, 2009, p. 15). The term would be first published and further proliferate through John Cellon Holmes novel, Go, an autobiographical novel about the Beat scene in which Homles would attribute his usage of the term to a conversation with Kerouac (Pekar, 2009, p. 20).
The Beat Generation exemplified a kind of failure to achieve, something I will build on momentarily, and many within the movement would openly criticize structural issues, societal conventions, and the implications they believed these had.
Like Hunke, many of the Beats came from what could be considered promising backgrounds; Burroughs attended Harvard University while Ginsberg and Kerouac attended Columbia University (Pekar, 2009, p. 4, 12, 80). Nevertheless, the Beats were not initially successful in their literary efforts, facing intense societal backlash.
Within Cartwright and Sturken’s Practice of Looking, the thesis of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste is employed to describe how “‘taste’ is culturally specific, class-based, and non-universal” and how “taste entails having education about value” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 60, 61).
The public distaste for the work of the Beat Generation can be exemplified through the 1957 trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti; he was being accused of “publishing purportedly obscene material,” Ginsburg’s poem Howl (Pekar, 2009, p. 57). Another example can be seen in the initial negative response to Kerouac’s The Subterraneans. Upon release, Time magazine referred to Kerouac as “the latrine laureate of hobohemia,” a title which has since been attributed to reviewers “[refusing] to see that [his] stylistic nonconformity was [. . .] much-needed” at the time (Perkar, 2009, p. 41).
Before their mass popularity, the public believed much of the work produced by the Beats to be, at best, bad, or at worst, obscene and worth banning. Resonating with the work of the Beats was deemed as “bad taste,” but through Bourdieu’s thesis, this distaste proceeding their popularity can be identified as culturally-coded, reflecting the zealous anti-sexual attitudes of “conformist American post-war society” (Rehlaedner, 2015). Nonetheless, this distaste being culturally-coded did not negate the negative cultural responses, both in and outside academia of the Beats at the time, as seen through Ginsburg’s Howl.
The poem begins on a somber note with Ginsburg describing how he “saw the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” and how these “scholars of war” were “expelled from academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull” (Ginsburg, 2010, p. 1). Other lines such as describing the Beats as “a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes” and “yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes” only further bolster the societal rejection many Beats felt but also what they would come to experience as they grew in popularity (Ginsburg, 2010, p. 2–3).
This poem became the subject of an obscenity case. It was published prior to the mass circulation of the poem, and the societal recognition and distaste was reinforced by its increased popularity. Cartwright and Sturken also discuss how “taste is [. . .] something that one can defy” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 61). The work of the Beats can thus be characterized as a challenge to the dominant-hegemonic culture and the prevalent taste of the period, calling for a new kind of freedom in opposition to the rampant conformism of the period in which they were writing.
I bring up these occurrences to exemplify the sheer antipathy for the Beats and their work upon publication. This is not to say that the Beats were not popular at all or did not have a following, but rather that their opposition to social conventions as a means of liberation from a restrictive culture and superficial consumerism provoked a severe animosity, making their eventual commodification quite ironic.
The first primary image is a developed Kodak photograph of William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac sitting next to each other. The photo was taken by Allen Ginsburg in 1953. In an interview with NPR, photographer Elsa Dorfman recalls a conversation she had with Ginsberg upon meeting him in 1959, remarking that he “never doubted he’d be a great man” and “had a feeling that all his friends were equally genius” (O’Neil, 2010).
The article claims that “[k]nowing that they’d one day be famous, Ginsberg documented their lives” (O’Neil, 2010). Ginsberg would often write on the photos he took, identifying the subjects and environments in which they were taken. Ginsberg’s photography strikes me as very personal, and it serves as a kind of window into the mundane lives of individuals who are now lauded as writers indelible to the development of twentieth century American literature. Through a Bartesian lens, all of this information I’ve just mentioned serves as “studium,” or a kind of education which allows for the discovery of the Operator, in this case Ginsburg, and their intentions (Barthes, 2010, p. 28).
Alongside “studium,” Barthes discussed what he referred to as “punctum,” or a part of the image which metaphorically pierces the viewer (Need to source). Barthes makes it clear that punctum is not something which comes out of analysis (Barthes, 2010, p. 42). Punctum is in a co-presence with studium and is a sort of detail that “[rises] of its own accord” and reveals a “subtle beyond” outside of the image itself (Barthes, 2010, p. 42, 43). Upon viewing this image, the punctum, for me, was the painting which sits above Kerouac’s left shoulder against the flowered wallpaper. While I am not entirely sure why exactly this “pierced” me, I believe it did. It took me outside of the image itself and revealed this subtle beyond. In a sense, it almost humanized the men for me, reminding me they were just people, people who did interesting and applaudable things, but still people, people with taste for specific aesthetics, whether it be wallpaper or paintings.
It was this “punctum” that drove me to curate supplementary images which reflected the lived experiences of these men, hence the presence of alcohol and amphetamines.
While Guinsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac were all drug users, the latter two were especially abusive of substances (Pekar, 2009, p. 16). Kerouac became hooked on speed and struggled with addiction. In the 1950s, he was diagnosed with phlebitis as a result of excessive drug use (Pekar, 2009, p. 16, 30). Burrough’s drug abuse did not only harm himself. He and his wife, Joan Vollmer, got addicted to speed as well. On a night in 1950, Vollmer taunted Burrough’s about his marksmanship while they were both drunk, resulting in a game of William Tell which would end when Burrough’s missed the shot, instantly killing her (Pekar, 2009, p. 84, 85). Drugs were a constant part of these Beats’ life while they were in their prime. The hands stand in as representation for Ginsberg who, as mentioned before, took the photograph along with the others layered behind it.
The Beat generation had a very specific kind of relationship with commodity consumption, as exemplified in Essif, 2012. According to Lucien Carr, a close friend of Ginsberg and Burroughs’, the Beats were “attempting to “find values [. . .] that were valid by pursuing one’s social, spiritual, sexual, and creative interests independently from the oppressive dominant culture (Essif, 2012, p. 2).
Although Carr never wrote any literature for the movement, he is attributed with developing this “New Vision” which would influence individuals like Ginsburg, Kerouac, and Burroughs to “channel this spirit of non-conformity into artistic and literary activity” (Essif, 2012, p. 2). The Beats “stood in opposition to consumer culture,” their work often being viewed as a “radical assault on post-war [consumerism]” (Essif, 2012, p. 2). The Beats were open critics of the rampant, symptomatic conformism of their generation.
In 1958’s Dharma Bums, Kerouac discusses the “middle-class non-identity,” a testament to the consumerism that the Beat generation resisted. The “rows of well to do houses” Kerouac portrays exemplifies the distaste the Beats had for the American consumer economy, a “consumer economy in which ‘well-to-do’ did not mean distinguished but rather indistinguishable” (Essif, 2012, p. 6).
These sentiments can be seen throughout the work of the Beats and serve as reflection of their disillusion with Capitalism. Essif describes how “Beat consumption diverged from and opposed consumerism in that it was an attempt to navigate back to an authentic form of consumption, liberated from the authoritarian culture of conformity and materialism inherent in consumerism” (Essif, 2012, p. 14). Spurred on by these core values, the work of the Beats characterizes an “attempt to posit a new concept of authenticity that challenged the ‘economy of symbolic or cultural goods . . . aligned sympathetically with Capitalism’s fundamental objective” (Essif, 2012, p. 9).
Their clear distaste for the persistent obedience to cultural conventions helps exemplify why their eventual commodification was not only ironic but also contributed to an adulteration of the movements values.
As mentioned prior, the works of the Beat Generation heavily contributed to the rebellious contempt upheld by the youth-led countercultural movements of the 1960s. Individuals like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac “experienced triumph due to their creative contributions to American culture and because of the seeds of non-conformity they sowed” (Huddleston, 2012, p. 2).
However, the notoriety of the Beats would not be without its downsides. In the fourth episode of Ways of Seeing, John Berger describes how publicity results in the formation of a kind of philosophical system (Berger, 1972). When objects are commodified, a new value is generated, a value dependent on varying cultural contexts. As a result of this, “publicity abuses the realities of public figures” and their experiences (Berger, 1972). The reification of the Beat Generation through advertising efforts reinforces Berger’s assertion.
The Beat Generation’s shared values represent a unified opposition to consumerism and cultural conventions in hopes of achieving liberation from them. However, “revolution can be wrapped around anything,” and the ideology of freedom, such as that proselytized by the Beats, had the potential to, and eventually would be, diluted for monetary purposes (Berger, 1972; Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 257).
The Beat Generation’s growing notoriety as a result of their unorthodox ideals led to a variety of misinterpretations through and by the media, resulting in a false image of the Beats’ and their work proliferating within the American cultural consciousness. Whether purposeful or not, these interpretations nonetheless directly influenced the way the public viewed the Bears. Instead of attempting to look into the background of the individuals within the movement and dive into their work, “the media spread a simplified, inaccurate stereotype that obscured the Beat message of restoring the human community to spirituality and authenticity” (Huddleston, 2012, p. 2).
The media of the era can be attributed with proliferating a reductive caricature of the Beats referred to as “beatniks,” people who “listened to jazz, wrote poetry, and did not hold jobs” (Huddleston, 2012, p. 11) These beatniks “became a commodity and their image was used to promote coffee houses, cellar nightclubs, and help sell newspapers, records, clothing, and other accessories” (Huddleston, 2012, p. 2). For example, in 1959’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, American comedian Bob Denver played a character named “Maynard G. Krebs,” representing the cultural image of the beatnik prominent at the time (Huddleston, 2012, p. 11). Many Americans’ first interaction with the idea of the Beat Generation was likely through the viewing of television shows like Dobie Gillis.
Considering this, media portrayals such as Denver’s were likely more influential in shaping the cultural image of the Beats than the decades worth of writing published by the Beats themselves at the time of the show’s airing. Therefore, media depictions like Denver’s helped contribute to a rash abatement of the Beats’ experiences, ideals, and contributions to American literature.
During the 1960s, a shift occurred within advertising. Marketers began to “see youth culture and alternative cultures as sites that could be appropriated to mark commodities as hip and cool” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 283). The Beats would end up being victim to this commodification along with a subsequent watering-down of the values they espoused. According to American historian Thomas Frank, “1960s advertising began to appropriate the language of counterculture” and “anti consumerist values into consumerism itself” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 283).
In October 1969, Jack Kerouac would die as a result of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage which has since been attributed to his severe alcoholism (Pekar, 2008, p. 50), and 1993, less than thirty years later, Gap would use an image of Kerouac clad in khaki pants within an advertising campaign along with the text “Kerouac wore khakis” (Nash, 2006, p. 57–58). Gap’s utilization of Kerouac in their clothing advertisements can be seen as a clear example of the commodification of countercultural imagery for profit. Gap depicts Kerouac as “the archetypal clean-cut all-American hero,” distorting the individualism evident through Kerouac’s work “to fit the particular brand of individualism [they wanted] to portray (Nash, 2006, p. 58). Gap, in a sense, is responsible for reconfiguring the cultural image of what it meant to be a Beat by reducing it down to the purchasing of a certain commodity.
When one considers how much greater a reach the Gap corporation had on influencing the public than the Beats themselves, it becomes clear that, in a similar vein to “Maynard G. Krebs,” Gap can be held partially responsible for not only the commodification of the Beats but also simplifying their values and experiences down to buying a pair of pants.
I also feel like it is important to say that I do not want to callout those who worked at Gap at the time as individuals who did something preventative and wrong, but rather draw attention to this kind of commodification as an occurrence symptomatic of a Capitalist mode of production, occurring as a result of given conditions in the same way the Beats’ writing was dependent on the conditions they wrote within.
The second primary image of my image project is the advertisement Gap created utilizing Kerouac’s image. It is safe to assume Gap’s advertisement was not curated out of an appreciation for the contributions of the Beat Generation but was rather an attempt to interpellate those who either knew of or even deeply resonated with the Beats, in line with the trend in advertising Frank identified.
I decided to leave this middle portion of my image somewhat barren to represent the role that commodification plays in reducing a cultural image into a simplified representation, either accurate or not, to appeal to a consumer.
The commodification of the Beats can also be seen as one example of how “brands [were and still are continually becoming] integral to personal identity” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 257). In her book, Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture, academic and author Sarah Banet-Weiser discusses how “aspects of life such as [. . .] self-identity are now ‘understood and expressed through the language of branding’” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 258).
Consumers are participating in a specific culture as a way of life by purchasing certain products. Within the gaze of the public, various products can become representative of certain groups or ideas. Branding or specific commodities, therefore, become a kind of extension of the self, playing into what scholars of the Frankfurt School called “pseudoindividuality.” The Frankfurt School described pseudoindividuality as “the way that cultural forms can define and interpellate viewer-consumer-users as individuals, when in fact they are selling homogenous experiences” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2018, p. 263).
The Beat Generation can be seen as a group of individuals who had varying backgrounds with similar experiences coming together in order to collectively represent what they believed to be a truthful depiction of American life, a depiction which was met with intense scrutiny upon recognition. Advertisements such as Gap’s reconfigured what it meant to be a Beat, simplifying it down to the purchasing and wearing of a pair of pants. The purchasing of a pair of khakis from Gap as a sign of solidarity with the values the Beats espoused should immediately be seen as ironic given the Beats anti-consumerist sentiments.
However, such adverts nonetheless simplified the Beats into a lifestyle achievable through the purchasing of a commodity. If one were to dress in such a way, they would be recognized by others as aligned with this contorted representation of the Beat Generation. Whether or not this stands as an accurate representation is not as important as the visual association with what is meant to be represented.
In this sense, branding is ingrained in visual communication and comes with a reduction of, as mentioned prior, experiences, ideals, and contributions of the Beats.
While there is a plethora of research surrounding the co-opting of countercultural language, values, and images for monterey purposes, I found it interesting that there is not much discussion surrounding the historicization of countercultural movements and the way this affects the values espoused by certain movements.
It feels inaccurate to me to assume that there is simply one form of commodification inherent to a Capitalist mode of production, and I am curious about how the commodification of a countercultural movement can shift over time. I am tentative to speak on the subject since I am not in a position to be giving an authoritative account of this subject. However, given what I’ve learned over the course of my research, I think I have accumulated a sufficient amount of information to help me begin discussing this interplay between commodification and historicization.
This interplay served as the impetus for the third primary image of my image project. The primary image is a copy of Ann Charter’s The Portable Beat Reader, originally released by Viking in 1992.
I do not mean to demonize Charter’s work. In actuality, Charter’s academic experience in the field of literature, holding a PhD from Columbia University, presence at the Six Gallery Poetry reading where Ginsberg publicly read Howl for the second time, and her professional relationship with Kerouac towards the end of his life leaves Charter as the closest one can come to a primary source on the Beat Generation in contemporary academia (“Ann Charters,” n.d.). I more so want to point towards the role the proliferation of an image such as the cover of The Portable Beat Reader has on the cultural image of the Beat Generation.
When observing the cover of The Portable Beat Reader, at least for myself, there is an immediate recognition that this is a book representing something of the past.
The presence of a black and white image, whether knowing about Ginsberg’s photography or not, connotes a kind of historical recognition. The book is viewed as something chronicling past writers, collecting their works so that one can view the tradition. This, in and of itself, historicizes the values of the Beats. If one were to read the books itself, they would likely come to understand the Beat Generation to a degree.
However, the image of the cover alone, especially since it is likely viewed more than the entire book is read, very clearly contributes to a historicization of the individuals and ideas discussed within the book. The presence of this book alongside varying other books about historical literary movements within a bookstore setting, for example, further contributes to this understanding of the Beats.
They are reduced down to one, on a list of many, historical literary movements. As a result of this, the ideas they proselytized are similarly historicized and culturally recognized as historical. In this sense, they are commodified as a historical subject, identified as ideas and values of the past. In the Barthesian sense, this commodification aids in the creation of a myth that allows for a literal and theoretical shelving of the ideas present within the work of the Beat Generation.
I also want to discuss how varying forms of commodification can co-exist, interpellating different groups in different ways. As discussed prior, a shift in 1960s advertising resulted in countercultures being ripe for commercialization as hip or cool, and, although the Beat Generation has somewhat lost this position as what is “hip and cool,” I would say that there works still have the ability to interpellate young people exploring the beliefs of countercultural movements. This is what happened in my experience.
Even in my own efforts to learn more about the Beat Generation, I was unable to escape consumerist tendencies and whether or not I engaged in consumerism in the way the Beats claimed was justifiable is up in the air. I would be lying if I did not admit to the fact that my initial interest in studying the Beats was at least partially prompted by their role in the counterculture, and because of this I was profited off of.
Simultaneously, the representation of the Beats as a historical literary movement alongside many others is also culturally present, interpellating individuals with an interest in American literary history or criticism.
This suggests to me that late Capitalism, as an economic system, especially within it current state (a topic which has been elucidated by writers such as Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, and David Bridle very convincingly to me) leads to a co-existence of varying representations in order to maximize profit.
I am not attempting to insinuate anything inherently negative or apply a value judgment to this, Rather, I mean draw attention to this occurrence as a symptom of a Capitalist economic system, exemplifying how countercultural movements are commodified and how this can attribute to an adulteration of the individual experiences, values, and contributions of countercultural movements.
References
Ann Charters. (n.d.). The Graduate Center City University of New York. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/05/05/126532131/ginsberg Barthes, R. (2010). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. Hill and Wang.
Berger, J. (Writer). (1972). Ways of seeing , episode 4 [Film]. BBC. Berger, J. (Writer). (1972).
Ways of seeing , episode 3 [Film]. BBC.
[The cover of Penguin Book’s publication of “The Portable Beat Reader”]. (1992). Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-14-015102-2
Gap. (1993). Kerouac wore khakis [Photograph]. Open Culture. https://www.openculture.com/2013/02/kerouac_wore_khakis.html
Ginsberg, A. (2010). Howl: And other poems (Nachdr. ed.). City Lights Books. Ginsburg, A. (1953).
William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac [Photograph]. The Allen Ginsberg Project. https://allenginsberg.org/2014/09/william-burroughs-on-jack-kerouac-at-the-1982-naropa -conference/ Huddleston, D. M. (2012).
The Beat Generation: They Were Hipsters Not Beatniks [PDF]. Digital Commons@WOU, 1–15. https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=his
Nash, C. (2006). “An Ephemeral Oddity”?: The Beat Generation and American Culture [PDF]. Working with English Journal, 5460. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/working-with-english/volume-2-1/nash -’an-ephemeral-oddity’-the-beat-generation-and-american-culture.pdf
O’Neil, C. (2005, May 5). Poetry in Allen Ginsberg’s photography. NPR. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/05/05/126532131/ginsberg
Pekar, H., Buhle, P., & Piskor, E. (2010). The Beats: A graphic history. Hill & Wang. Rehlaender, J. L. (2015).
A Howl of Free Expression: The 1957 Howl Obscenity Trial and sexual liberation. PDXScholar. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=younghisto rians#:~:text=But%20more%20than%20these%20impacts,explicitness%20remained%20i n%20American%20minds.
Selçuk, O. (2014). The Beat Generation in social and cultural context. 2nd International Conference on Computational and Social Sciences. file:///C:/Users/vizzi/Downloads/SelcikO-BeatGenerationinSocialandCulturalContext.pdf
Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2018). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture (3rd ed.). Oxford UP.
Tomakić, I. (2018). The Beat Generation and the American counterculture of the 1960s. https://repozitorij.ffos.hr/islandora/object/ffos:409
