Lucien, The British Invasion

At first the focus of my project was going to be the location of the film industry in the US but I had a sudden change of mind since we made brief mention of this movement in class just before the break. A few other people have also chosen topics from this era so i thought it would be interesting to contribute something a little closer to home for me, that is the ‘British Invasion.’
Rather than focusing on one particular place where a movement originated, I am going to attempt to explore why so many English bands of the time found themselves in the US and why so many of these artists found themselves leaving England. I will be looking at influences, push and pull factors for individual bands, personal interviews and opinions of the artists themselves as well as financial and managerial reasons for this mass immigration of musicians to the United States primarily looking at the time period from the mid to late sixties. I will be trying to find one major reason, (aside from revenue and earnings) that links bands such as the Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Animals, Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin together in one category. Was there one defining impulse that they all had in common? Even Jimi Hendrix moved to London to form his band ‘The Jimi Hendrix Experience’ with Englishmen Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell before he moved to the US to gain popularity and notoriety.
Finally I will also be discussing problems and advantages that the bands faced. During a period of such cultural upheaval, many of these groups were considered to be directly involved in some of the political and social changes taking place during this decade. The Rolling Stones in particular faced huge adversity from governments on both sides of the Atlantic not simply for drug charges and their disruptive demeanor. The US very nearly blacklisted them and they struggled to obtain touring visas whilst the British government essentially expelled them for tax reasons. This link to the documentary focuses on the recording of the album ‘Exile on Main St’ and explains just why the stones exiled themselves from their homeland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXcqcdYABFw
My essay will also draw comparisons between cities that were considered hotbeds of activity such as London, New York and San Francisco and discuss what separated areas such as Carnaby Street and the Village from other neighborhoods. These were not only centers for the music scene but for writers, poets, fashionistas, intellectuals and political activists all influencing and thriving off of one another. Relating arguments in Currids book regarding creative epicenters, i will attempt to draw links between the British invasion and the cultural and creative pull that the united states at this point in turbulent history.

Michelle: Summer of Love

Michelle: Summer of Love

sIn 1967 in the Haight- Ashbury area of San Francisco something amazing happened. An influx of about 100,000 people migrated from all over the country to experience the central location to the hippie counterculture. Tons of social issues were overwhelming the nation during this time period. The hippie movement emerged in response to environmental problems, discrimination against African Americans, discrimination against woman, extensive military invasion in Vietnam and they came together looking to find tolerance and peace.

There were multiple reasons that San Francisco was the ideal and inevitable creative hub that fostered this movement. Prior to this movement was the Beat Generation that took place during the San Francisco Renaissance  which gradually gave rise to sixties counterculture. People who were known as beatnicks soon became known as hippies. Also prior to the Summer of Love in 1967 at UC Berkley there was a large Free Speech Movement hosted in 1964. These hippies were looking for a new way of life that promoted tolerance and rebelled against authority. California represented and symbolized the “American Dream” as a place of prosperity, opportunity, and freedom. San Francisco’s geography offered a place that could offer communal living and a type of love that could be easily shared. It soon became the melting pot of psychedelic drugs & music, sexual freedom and creative expressions. San Francisco opened something called the Free Clinic offering organized housing, food, sanitation, music, and arts.

The Golden Gate Park which is a huge urban park with over 1000 acres of land and a bohemian ambiance offered a tradition of large, free public gatherings and portrayed a specific harmony with nature. This was the perfect place for the hippies to flock to. All the huge music artists like The Who, The Doors, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix were there. The drugs were there. The people were able to connect to each other closely and pass on free love in Haight Ashbury.

Unfortunately, the influx of a number of people the small city could not handle began to lead to a wide range of social problems which led to an end to the Summer of Love known as the death of the hippie.

Addie: The Beat Movement

In 1952, The New York Times published a celebrated article proclaiming ‘This is the Beat Generation’. Written by John Clellon Holmes after several conversations with Jack Kerouac, who is considered to be the father of the ‘beat generation’, this article made public the characteristics and existence of a new underground post-war generation of young, instinctive individuals “driven by a desperate craving for belief and as yet unable to accept the moderations which were offered [to them]…Their own lust for freedom, and the ability to live at a pace that kills, led to black markets, bebop, narcotics, sexual promiscuity, hucksterism, and Jean-Paul Sartre”.  This ‘Beat Movement’, which spurred in the mid 1940’s and gained popularity in the 1950’s, started with a diverse but small group of anti-conformist male college students who met at Columbia University in New York City.  Although these young writers and poets were not natives to the city, it attracted them like a shining magnet.  For example, Kerouac wrote:

“The city flashed before me like a glorious jewel, blazing with the thousand rich and brilliant facets of a life so good, so bountiful, so strangely and constantly beautiful and interesting that it seemed intolerable that I should miss a moment of it.  I saw the streets swarming with the figures of great men and glorious women, and I walked among them like a conqueror, winning fiercely and exultantly by me talent, courage, and merit, the greatest tributes the city had to offer, the highest prize of power, wealth, and fame, and the great emolument of love. The only thing to do, is go.”

These creative beats roamed the streets of New York, hustled in Times Square, bopped to jazz in Greenwich Village bars and clubs, and made very specific places in the city to be their unofficial hang-outs.  My research will describe how certain venues and neighborhoods in the city supported and were important to the growth of the beat movement, and I will analyze the creative beats’ relationship with each other and the city in which they thrived.  However, the Beat Movement’s birth is not only contributed to the ‘glorious jewel’ that New York City was.  In the mid-1950’s, central figures involved in the movement ended up together in San Francisco, thus allowing for the movement to take roots in the West.  For example, the Six Gallery and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore were considered to be important and innovative spaces for poetry readings and communal gatherings in the North Beach area of San Francisco.  In my paper, I will analyze why both of these city’s attracted individuals associated with the Beat Movement, and in turn how they contributed to it’s growth. However, it is also important to note that the Beat Movement was not only specific to these two cities, but it grew out of them and eventually became a national and international phenomenon.

The below video is a reading by Jack Kerouac of his poem ‘The San Francisco Scene”.  It gives meaning to the understanding of the term ‘beat’ as it is used to describe this elated, downtrodden generation.  Kerouac’s reading draws upon on a lively scene in a San Francisco jazz-joint, and it also mentions a friend associated with the criminal underworld of New York’s Times Square.    

The French New Wave, Lula Fotis

The French New Wave is considered to have happened between 1958 and 1964 in Paris, France.  Films such as Breathless, La Jetee, and Last Year at Marienbad, amongst many others, are a few iconic representations of the era.  The movement grew out of the Latin Quarter in Paris where the pioneers of the New Wave such as, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Rivette all frequented informal meeting places like cafes and bars.  These New Wave directors started out at the Cahiers du Cinema as critics under the realm of renowned film critic Andre Bazin. The Cahiers du Cinema is a French film publication that started in 1951, still active today.  A lot of the movement’s fruition had to do with the unstable position of France after WWII and the resulting desires for rebirth. The election of Charles De Gaulle along with the introduction of mass manufacturing, more disposable income, and more people going to university led to a different sociopolitical climate of which the French New Wave was born. These young critics began to move away from the old style of cinema and shed light on artists such as Hitchcock. They began to question “the way things were” and create a style of their own, introducing the “jump cut” and extremely long tracking shots.  The directors often worked on a shoestring budget, shooting in the yards of their friends and also using their friends for actors. Because they were all in the same place, Paris in the late 50s and early 60s, working at the Cahiers du Cinema they were able to bounce ideas off of one another and eventually make their own films.  The importance of place is salient here, as without such a centralized location as Paris, it would be debatable that these influential films ever would have been made.

My paper will begin with a brief overview of Frances’ social and political position of post world war II and the desire for a renaissance. I will also give a brief history of the French cinema, then segway into the climate that made it possible for the French New Wave to begin. I will examine in depth the cahiers du cinema and the individual artists such as Godard, Truffaut, Mille, Chabrol, Rivette and Resnais. Beyond the magazine offices, they hung out in informal places as suggested by one meeting between the already established film critic, Andre Bazin and Godard.  In the late 1950s
upon Godard’s return to Paris he met Bazin at one of the up and coming cine clubs in the Latin Quarter of Paris.  It is these sorts of interactions that sparked La Nouvelle Vague.

Here is the trailer for Breathless by Jean Luc Godard: 

Lula- A bout de Souffle

 

Sorry, don’t know why this didn’t go with my text post, but here is the trailer for Breathless.

Gill- Hippie Movement

Like Natalie, I will be focusing on the Hippie movement that began in the Haigh-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s. As previously mentioned, this movement focused on a peaceful state of mind and the common theme of one love.  There was also an emergence of a new kind of fashion, music, and graphic art (posters) that solidified in correlation with the movement. In addition, there were different kinds of hippies: the visionaries, the freaks and heads, the midnight hippies, and the plastic hippies. These were the people who allowed the outside world an aesthetic view of their lifestyle and political goals. The entire hippie look was based around the idea of the natural; hair, clothing, make up, accessories, etc. However, for the purpose of this paper, I will focus on the reasons why San Francisco as a city was able to foster this movement and allow it to spread cross-country. Among many reasons, San Francisco serves as the creative milieu because of the social context and the people that originally occupied the Haight-Ashbury region. There were many people who were described as “eclectic, visionary, polytheistic, ecstatic, and defiantly devotional.” These characteristics seem extremely important for the Hippie movement in particular. They were experimenting with poetry, theater, and other forms of self-expression. This is just my initial research to get an idea of why San Francisco as a place was able to provide the foundation for this specific movement.

                

Ana Proehl-The Hyphy Movement

The Hyphy Movement is a culture in the Bay Area of California. It refers to the certain atmosphere and lifestyle where individuals connect with each other. The movement is based around the common love for “hyphy music” or rap and the party scene. The term Hyphy comes from the word hyperactive which was coined by rapper Keak Da Sneak in one of his songs. “To get hyphy” is to act or dance in an overemphasize, ridiculous way. The “hyphy music” mirrors these actions by being very loud with ridiculous lyrics. People of the Hyphy Movement normally are anti-police and defiers of the system. Although many look to Keak Da Sneak as being the creator of the movement, Mac Dre was the first rapper on the scene to produce this music and act this way, despite there not being a name for it. Mac Dre and other rappers began making music as a way for their voices to be heard. They were poorly educated and came from lower class families, so the music gave them something to make their own.

The Hyphy Movement is a reflection of the Bay Area’s history. Before the Hyphy Movement was the era of Hippies. Hippie’s were also deifiers of the system and congregated together to do their own thing. After the police shut down the Hippie movement, it was only time before another group sprung up to take over. Because of the Hippie’s, the Bay Area has been known as a liberal, speak your mind kind of place. This only helped encourage the Hyphy Movement. Since is start young people from all over the West Coast were able to relate to this form of expression. Personally I relate to it as a way to be carefree and do whatever I want in the moment. The widespread popularity has drawn people to the West Coast and more specifically the Bay Area. People move or visit there to be apart of the movement or adopt that carefree attitude. It has helped the Bay Area become a place that attracts young people to move and help fuel the economy. However, some people view the Hyphy Movement as having gang relations which fuels crime causing a negative impact. The Hyphy Movement isn’t about gangs or drugs, but a way of life that allows young people to connect with each other of music and views.  

The San Fernando Valley Pornography Industry – Ana Lacher

The girls of San Fernando Valley, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, are often nicknamed ‘valley girls.’ They are the girls that often say “like” as every third word and are reminiscent of Cher in the 90s classic Clueless. However, these ‘valley girls’ are not the only girls in the Valley. There are the ‘valley girls’ that are featured on websites that require your birthday be on or before this day in 1993. These ‘valley girls’ are the porn stars of America.

The goal of my paper is to analyze why San Fernando Valley, California is the hub of the pornography industry in the United States. Many of these girls, the ones that go on to become porn stars, have the dream of becoming ‘something.’ In order to try and get noticed they head out west to Los Angeles, one of the largest creative cities in the United States, hoping to be in the right place at the time. However, upon their arrival, they realize it isn’t as easy as they had hoped. Many girls turn to pornography as a way to pay their rent and make a living. For some it is a one-time deal, and for others it becomes a career.

Because of its proximity to Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley has become the city responsible for the creative industry of pornography. Because so many people seek fame and wind up unsuccessful but looking for work, there is an endless stream of ‘employees.’ Not only does Los Angeles bring employees, but also the suburban location of San Fernando allows for pornographic films to happen and remain unnoticed. They are tucked away in rental houses undisturbed and discreet.

San Fernando Valley, California to some is just a suburban neighborhood they call home, but to others it is the center of a multimillion dollar industry, that continues to flourish.

Natalie Haft– Hippie Movement

I am going to be focusing on the Hippie movement that began in the early 1960’s and originated in San Francisco. I want to explore the reasons for why this counter-culture became so popular. The hippie mentality initially was fostered by a common disregard for the laws and normal ways of living that were motivated by the current events taking place in America at that time. There will be much focus on the “Haight Ashbury District” which is where many speculate that the Hippie movement began and was started by drop out college students from San Francisco State. Amongst these students, mostly white, rich, middle class teens and young adults cultivated the movement.

Usually teens to young adults are known as being more impressionable and open to new ideas (which is probably one of the reasons that this movement grew so rapidly). Therefore, I would like to analyze the Hippie culture from a psychological perspective—what their state of mind was. I will focus on their beliefs of communal living, harmony with nature and promotion of peace and free love, their experimentation and expression with art, and the recreational use of drugs. I think the drug usage makes the Hippie movement more controversial and I want to focus on how drugs inhibited these people as well as facilitated creativity and the mindset that fueled this movement.