The Beat Generation

Revered for narrating the realities of America’s abandoned inner-cities, Hip Hop has long been the triumphant voice of impoverished communities. Conceived on crack-riddled corners where curious kids crowded around ciphers, standing amidst killers, hustlers and honest locals alike – rap rewarded trapped souls with hope. As each hour extended a survivalist existence, it was the talented street storytellers who added clarity and context to their complex condition. Commonly silenced and ignored by high society, a culture was cultivated that empowered poor and disadvantaged people to aspire for more with a belief in attaining it. Emerging from a niche art form into a fascinating global genre, Hip Hop ushered these treacherous truths into the scope of mainstream America in a way that deactivated the dangers, while celebrating its many coveted nuances.

Joan Morgan, a self proclaimed feminist, loves the power that rap and hip hop offers. Joan, also a music writer, is exceptionally troubled by the disrespect of women in not only in the musical lyrics but also the music videos. In the June 1990 edition of Ebony Magazine, Charles Whitaker wrote an editorial addressing the problems American culture brought on by the hip hop industry. Even though, his editorial was published in the 1990’s, it is extremely clear Charles Whitaker saw the negativity brought along with “The Hip Hop and Rap Revolution.” Both authors loved the powerful energy the new hip hop movement brought along with its beginnings, dating back to the mid to late 1970’s. With that being said, the two authors, both had one recurring theme within their respective works, the evolution of hip hop and rap. In other words, both Joan Morgan and Charles Whitaker addressed the issues brought on by the change in the rap and hip hop industry over its short exists. Change is the absolute most constant thing in our world, whether it is positive or negative change that is uncertain, in both of the articles that change in hip hop and rap is demonstrated

Molefi Asante is the author of It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop: The Rise of the Post Hip-Hop Generation. In this article, Asante predicts that the post-hip-hop generation will embrace social justice issues including women’s rights, gay’s rights, and the anti-war movement. To challenge these stereotypes, Asante speaks to the personification of the African-American ghetto and the need to stop glorifying black suffering. For Asante, the post-hip-hop generation no longer expects hip-hop to mobilize disenfranchised youth. Asante states, “The post-hip-hop generation shouldn’t wait for mainstream musicians to say what needs to be said…No movement is about beats and rhythms…. it must be bigger than hip-hop.” Because hip-hop is controlled by corporations, Asante says hip-hop will never be the focus of political change. Asante argues that “old white men” have dictated hip-hop, and by extension the actions of black youth, since 1991. “Allowing white executives, not from the hip-hop culture, to control and dictate the culture is tragic because the music, and ultimately the culture, as we can see today, has not only lost its edge, but its sense of rebellion and black movement- the very principles upon which it was founded.” Asante calls for the rise of “artivism,” a new social movement that uses art to improve community police relations, failing schools and the criminal justice system. Asante encourages the post-hip-hop generation to unite with Latino/Immigration Rights and Black Civil Rights

    The Beat Generation can be perceived in many ways depending on how a person may translate the traits characterizing it but the real definition of this generation remains the same all throughout. The Beat Generation is a literary movement that happened during the 1950’s after World War II and was greatly influenced by a group of artists and authors who explored. The Beat movement was centralized in certain communities where freedom of expression was greatly prevalent. The lifestyle in bohemian centralized communities were explored and described by many authors and some of the most well-known authors of this generation are  Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Jack Kerouac. All authors gave light to what beat generation was like through their work of art. They outlined that Beat Generation is an approach made by the people to reach a certain goal. Some of the goals are personal release and purification. Sounds familiar? These goals are more similar to the goals of yoga. These goals were attained mainly through the use of drugs, sex, and expressed in jazz music.. The Beat Generation is a  rejection of standard narrative values, spiritual quest, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with drugs, and sexual exploration. All these components are widely known as the characteristics of “hippies” and

I 've always liked writing. Even before I knew how to write I would make up stories and pretend to write them down. Each year in high school I 've written a multitude of essays on varying topics. I have selected three of these writings from each of my years in high school to examine as part of this rhetorical analysis of my writing history. As I 've grown older, my writing style has changed and I 've learned more about the world and developed my own personal writing voice more and more.

After the 1980s blacks had finally made their own identities which were recognized through their talents. While creating black studies and preferring to be called African Americans instead of derogatory names such as a “Nigger” or “Negroes.” However, music symbolizes the younger generations in the 1960s, especially Hip Hop and Rap music. Hip Hop gives blacks authentic music they can relate to with the lyrics and their everyday life struggles. It also conveys attitudes in a specific art form. Rap music defines the artist’s character and allow them to speak from their hearts with passion. This music gives a voice to the poor, oppressed and younger youth against harassment while portraying the image of black people in poverty.

Mass media, through its selective portrayal of hip-hop has played a crucial role in the way that it has been understood and interpreted over time. The media’s focus on negative aspects of the genre has led to the establishment of a two-class system. This brings forward the theories of Karl Marx in relation to the ‘two-class system’. The media also portrays the dominance of capitalism, and has a sensationalist view where the high powers have hyperbolized selective aspects of the hip-hop culture with the intention of increasing viewership and readership numbers. This sheds light on artists such as Biggie Smalls and his

The beat generation was a movement that sought to oppose American society values, and any sort of control. They explored Eastern religions, was somewhat postmodernism, rejected the materialistic culture, spoke about drugs, our conscious mind, and fought for sexual liberation and exploration with their unapologetically offensive language. While reading the novel Jitterbug Perfume written by Tom Robbin, one can witness how the novel exhibits aspects of the beat literature, and thus concluding that the beat generation served as inspiration to Tom Robbin.

Though rap started out as a force for positive social change, popular subgenres of hip-hop such as "gangsta rap" have since eroded much of the art form's value to society. Impressionable young people are negatively affected by rappers' obsession with guns, drugs, sex, and material possessions. Since record companies do not seem to care about negative content as long as it sells albums, parents should assume a greater role in regulating their children's listening habits. Hip-Hop is the proclamation that young people are independent and intolerant of what they consider to be adult society, which they frequently view as hypocritical.

” Williams’ theory therefore suggests that the terms must necessarily co-exist in order to define each other. The “pervasiveness of consent ” therefore characterises the fifties, against which these Beat texts can be contrasted. Theodore Roszak’s 1969 article ‘The Making of a Counterculture,’ helps define beat ideology as “heightened self-expression and often a rejection of political and authoritative institutions… a negative spirit of the times coupled with a specific lifestyle .” Both On the Road and Howl and their author’s lifestyles of their writers reflect this criterion, in idiomatic and contextual terms, lending to the notion that they are, by the overall nature of their existence, countercultural texts. Roszak’s adolescent counterculture often seems the embodiment of Dean and Sal’s ‘beatitude’ in On the Road “when they pulse to music…value what is raunchy… flare against authority, seek new experience, ” but it is similarly descriptive of the naked, sometime vulgar language Ginsberg employs in Howl “who bit detectives in the neck… let themselves be fucked in the ass.” (13) The Beats admire the vibrancy naturally present among youth, and although this is a style for which their writing has been criticised, it is a move away from the traditionally

Jack Kerouac was not only a leader of the Beat movement in literature, but also a spokesman. Kerouac’s major writings are loosely organized and autobiographical. Many describe his wanderings throughout the United Sates, Mexico, and Europe. Like the other works of Beat writers, Kerouac’s novels emphasized spiritual liberation through sex, drugs, and the Asian religion called Zen.

The Beat Movement, beginning in the 1950’s, consisted of a group of American writers that went against the social norms of that generation. During that time in America, society bent themselves out

Jack Kerouac was one of a group of young men who, immediately after the Second World War, protested against what they saw as the blandness, conformity and lack of cultural purpose of middle-class life in America. The priorities of people of their age, in the mainstream of society, were to get married, to move the suburbs, to have children and to accumulate wealth and possessions. Jack Kerouac and his friends consciously rejected this pursuit of stability and instead looked elsewhere for personal fulfillment. They were the Beats, the pioneers of a counterculture that came to be known as the Beat Generation. The Beats saw mainstream life as a prison. They wanted freedom, the freedom to pick up and go at a moments notice. This search for

Jack Kerouac is considered a legend in history as one of America's best and foremost Beat Generation authors. The term "Beat" or "Beatnic" refers to the spontaneous and wandering way of life for some people during the period of postwar America, that seemed to be induced by jazz and drug-induced visions. "On the Road" was one such experience of Beatnic lifestyle through the eyes and heart of Jack Kerouac. It was a time when America was rebuilding after WW I. Describing the complexity and prosperity of the postwar society was not Karouac's original intent. However, this book described it a way everyone could visualize. It contained examples and experiences of common people looking for new and exciting

Influences of the Beat Movement can be noted in the next phase of American History: Hippie counter-culture of the 1960s. The Beat Generation was an important political catalyst for those minorities that had no voice. The “beatniks” of the movement were seen as a threat by those Americans that lived in the typical suburbs of American who tried to raise their children in morally upright ways (Silesky, 81).