The
Beat Generation and the Modern Hipster
An Essay by Arielle Martin
The search for identity and the fight for
freedom from the mainstream defined the 1950’s Beat generation and travelled
from that era and landed itself in the centre of the hipster ideology,
manifesting itself in today’s American youth. The movement began in 1948 with a
group of friends, a small social circle of post World War II writers and poets,
clad in black with thick, dark rimmed glasses, and a defiant position against mainstream
American society. It took one man to put a name to their doctrine, their new
way of life after the war, and suddenly a movement was born. Jack Kerouac
deemed himself, and his friends, the Beat Generation.[1]
For Kerouac and his friends at Columbia University in New York, where it began,
the term ‘beat’ was riddled with contradiction. It represented social
marginalization, yet it was a blessing. It defined a group of ‘beaten down’ people,
yet it represented enthusiasm and an idealized means of being.[2]
It labeled a generation coming out of a war and The Great Depression, who
liberated themselves sexually and spiritually[3].
The meaning of the word ‘beat’ may be obscure, but to those involved it evoked
a true clarity. It represented individual rawness and weariness of “being
undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself.”[4]
Kerouac and his friends became the inspiration, and the creators, of a movement
that would sweep mid 20th century America, through literature that
opposed censorship, formalities, and took risks[5].
It became a rejection of
middle-class values, a rejection of the purposelessness that American modern
society had become after the war, and the realization that they could forge
their own path. Through the writings and documentations primarily by Jack
Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, a cultural and
literary legacy was left behind.[6]
The Beats, or Beatniks, represented
undeniable individuality and spontaneity. Jack Kerouac and his Beatniks opposed
the ideas of conformity and collectivity, having been born into the collective
conditions of a depression and raised amidst the collectivity of a global war.
Seemingly lost in a new world of consumerism and submission to materialistic
values, this postwar generation of the 1950’s stood in opposition to the
culture that tried to consume them. However, beneath their anti-conformity, their
informal literary style, and beyond their conscious opposition, is a pursuit; a
pursuit of new values, a quest for identity and placement in a world of
disorientation, and a search for ecstasy in the dreary world that Jack Kerouac,
his peers and friends, and the post-war writers and poets in New York City, were
raised into.[7]
The typical World War II veteran came home after the war, got married, and
blindly bought into the mainstream American dream. The Beats did not. Since
they saw themselves as having nothing to loose, the Beats sought a kind of
freedom that could not be bought. It was a freedom that Kerouac and Cassady
found on America’s highways as they travelled them aimlessly throughout the
1950’s. They hunted new territories and fought for a new kind of lifestyle. To
the conformists of American culture, the Beats were a wild and threatening group
of individuals, yet amongst it all, they were inspiring.[8]
The Beat
generation became an inspiration to later generations of youth throughout the
second half of the 20th century in America. Today, another group of
people, a modern Beatnik has arisen– the hipster. In an undeniable search for
‘cool’, the hipster’s today possess the same anti-conformist, anti-consumer
ideals of the aging Beatniks. They are a counter-culture possessing a state of
mind that values independent thinking and an appreciation for creativity. They
are the pioneers of new trends in fashion and music, and the leaders of
rejection and rebellion towards the mainstream consumers. For the Beatniks and
the contemporary hipster, life was unsteady and unpredictable. According to
George Cotkin, “the Beat or Hipster was open to experimentation and lived, or sought to live, for the intrinsic fullness of each moment”.[9]
However, the hipsters today
are similarly defined by a contradiction the way the definitions of ‘beat’ were.
The hipster, in his or her quest for resistance to mainstream, actually ends up
conforming to the doctrine of an ever-growing materialistic subculture, which ends
up forming its own society on the edges of the mainstream.
The Beatniks were a group of creative geniuses.
The written word became a tool for them to define themselves as free and
independent, such as Kerouac’s ‘On The
Road’, a documentation of his road trips through America with Neal Cassady.
Today, one- liner twitter updates and short form statuses on our social media
portals has replaced the value of the written word. Western society condenses
and accelerates the human interaction. The experience of the Beatniks was about
close friends coming together to utilize literature and poetry to express their
new, spontaneous way of life. Today, modern hipsters operate in a cyber space
as opposed to the physical social space of the past. The modern hipster and the
Beatniks of the 1950’s may praise the same principles regarding identity and
separation from the mainstream, but their tools for spreading their values have
drastically changed. The hipster’s today have the power of the Internet.
However, this in fact may end up challenging them instead of helping. As the
Internet praises connectivity and worldwide accessibility, the subculture of
hipsterism is now becoming mainstream due to the masses that can participate.
The Beats were a smaller, identifiable group of individuals with a clear
motive. Today, the hipster philosophy has the ability to span much greater
territory, and dips dangerously into the mainstream culture they try to avoid.
The Beatniks, social media, and
hipsterism are all reminiscent of the concept of identity. Their means may
overlap, but they also stand in contrast. The value and use of the written word
may be compromised by today’s youth, something that was praised during the reign
of the Beat generation. Regardless, the Beat legacy lives on, as it survives in
its modern adaptation—the hipster.
