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INTRODUCTION:
FLASH! The New Age discovers the Beat Generation! Recently published by Mel Ash, "Beat Spirit: The Way of the Beat Writers as a Living Experience," according to its hype, "exposes the truth that life doesn't have to feel standardized, patented, predictable, interminable or robotic for today's new Beats. Readers will howl with Ginsberg and take off on the road with Kerouac, as they discover new frontiers of thought and spirit with Beat Spirit. It kick-starts the rebellious, non-conformist and fiercely independent streak that lives within everyone." While we will not use Ash's text in this course, we will embark on our own discovery of the meaning of the American 1950s to the present time, and if it kick starts a rebellion, that's OK too.
The eighteen nineties were gay, the nineteen twenties roared, the thirties were depressed, and the forties were patriotic. What will be the term to describe the American fiffies? Those of us living through the decade as young adults might have said "conformist," a term used often by social critics of the period to castigate the middle class for mindless, herdlike behavior. Yet this age of conformity was anything but status quo. The most powerfiil non conformist movement since abolition was born in Birmingham, Alabama on December 1, 1955--the very middle of the conformist fifties. Elvis and Marilyn parlayed their non- conformity into careers that earned them near mythic status and transformed popular culture forever. And in literature, no generation before or since has rivaled the Beats of the fifties for founding a life style on non-conformist values.
This list could continue, but these examples are sufficient to suggest that no single term like "conformity" can come close to characterizing the real essence of that troubled decade. If there was a prevailing literary and film hero during the fifties, it was the rebel:Salinger's Holden Caulfield, for example, or Ellison's Invisible Man. In film, think of Jimmy Dean's "Rebel without a Cause," Brando's "The Wild Ones," or Alan Lad's "Shane." If on the one hand, the American middle class had become hopelessly bogged down in the conformist values of a shallow, materialistic world view, it's imagination still reached out to the classic American values of individualism and freedom. The tension between these contradictory impulses is one of the keys to understanding how this decade produces the roots of such movements as civil rights, women's liberation and sexual tolerance that are our legacy from the fifties.
Americans reaching adulthood in the early fifties had learned in school of the miracle of atomic power ("We'll be able just to drop a tiny pill into the gas tank and run our car for a year!"), only to see the dream become the nightmare of the Cold War superpower confrontation with nuclear weapons. As American's constructed elaborate survival shelters and children in school practiced weekly drop drills, it seemed to many that war had at last come to these shores. And not just war, but apocalypse. The end of the world as they had known it. Anxiety generated by these cold war tensions turned the culture to gnawing at its own vitals. That the United States should have fallen into such a vulnerable position demanded an explanation that could shift the blame for such a state of affairs from thosewho had developed, tested and used the bomb in the first place to a scapegoat who would propitiate the mob while the political and military leadership escaped unscathed.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican senator from Wisconsin, did not need to look far for the scapegoat. He had "discovered" that Communists had infiltrated the State Department and were controlling American foreign policy. With the rise of McCarthy to political prominence began a purge of American intellectuals and political liberals unprecedented before or sense in our history. Before he was brought to heel, McCarthy had purged politicians, artists, scientists, writers, Hollywood, college professors, and other cultural leaders. The major casualty of McCarthy's campaign was the truth, as he deliberately practiced the big lie, guilt by association, and outright frabication as he pursued his own political agenda at the expense of his victims. The very fear that McCarthy might brand them a communist or fellow traveler--though there were no grounds to support such an allegation--was enough to coerce many Americans to commit acts repugnant to their moral values, but, they felt, essential to their survival. Those few who stood up to McCarthy and faced him down are today among the cultural heroes of the era.
The fifties are being discovered by more than just the New Agers. For example, David Halberstam's megabook, The Fifties , now the basis for a seven-hour History Channel mini-series, is one of the most comprehensive introductions to any American decade. At the same time, an increasing number of critical and scholarly works on the period are appearing, and increasing numbers of courses on the period are being offered in Colleges and Universities. One of the questions I will raise in this course is, "why now?" After so long in the shadow of the more flamboyant sixties, why do the fifties again seem relevant? Or is it relevance that drives such cultural phenomena? Are we, in our re construction of the fifties, inventing a past that will be compatible with the present in a way that the sixties--now perhaps fading as a dominant historical interest--no longer are? In either case, we can also always ask, of what use is history anyway.
The course materials will be comprised of several different elements. Since the History Channel miniseries, "The Fifties", is so rich with visual images of the period, we will view these tapes in their entirety over the course of the semester. In addition, we will read several works of literature of the period that represent such fifties trends as the mainstreaming of ethnic writing, the acceptance of black American writers into the literary canon, the Beats, proto-feminism, the sexual revolution and the literary reaction to McCarthyism. We will also view six films that dramatize issues central to the consciousness of the fifties. Throughout our discussions of these works, we will seek to ground them in the social and cultural milieu of the decade that produced them, and to determine their value as representative artifacts of that period.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Readings: All assigned texts should be completed on the date indicated Anendance at showings of TV and films is required. It is also expected that all students will participate in our seminar discussions of the materials.
Listproc: All students are required to subscribe to a class listproc (i.e. an on-line discussion group). We will supplement our in-class discussion with posting to the listproc.These posting are a seminar requirement and will be part of the grading for the course. Think of them as required short papers.The postings will be in two parts: Part 1. By 6:00pm on the Sunday prior to the date of an assigned reading, each student will post a short (approximately300-500 words) critical or scholarly paper on the assigned reading. Part 2. Prior to 6:00 Monday beforeclass, each student will post a short (one or two paragraphs) comment on one or more of the posts.
Some Ground Rules: 1. Personal comments or "flaming" will not be tolerated; keep your posts professional in tone and content. 2. If you fail to post on time, you make it impossible for someone to react to your paper. A habit of late posting will be weighed at grading time. 3. Before coming to class, read all posts and responses. These can become the basis for our in-class discussion.
Research and Writing: In addition to the listproc postings, a short (about 12-15 pages) research paper on a literary or cultural topic relevant to the SOs will be required. As an alternative to a formal paper, I will consider proposals to develop an appropriate scholaraly WWW site. Research topics will be selected in individual conferences. Please set up an appointment early on in the term to discuss possible topics.
Research Papers (or WWW sites) will be presented to the seminar during our final sessions. Schedule to be announced.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Arthur Miller, The Crucible; Saul Bellow, Seize the Day; Bernard Malamud, The Assistant; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Jack Kerouac, On the Road; Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems; Mary McCarthy, The Group
Films:
Don Siegal, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); Herbert Biberman, Salt of the Earth (1954); Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront (1954); Nicholas Ray: Rebel Without A Cause; Elia Kazan, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); Richard Brooks, Blackboard Jungle (1955).
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