1960s America

Counterculture

Conformity: behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards.

Counterculture: a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm.

Resisting Conformity

Generation of Baby Boomers breaking from force-fed conformity of the 1950s

The Commune

Dictionary Definition: a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities.

Twin Oaks, Virginia

The Commune

• CONSIDERED TO BE UTOPIAN SOCIETIES
• and the answer to violence pervading society-
• REACTION against current society
• Rejection of the capitalist system
• Some Philosophically based but many tied to Religious/Spiritual Beliefs
• Eastern Religions VERY attractive
• Promoted Peace and Self-Awareness
• (See Influences of Eastern Religion in Beatles Music)

Fate of Utopian Societies

• Many failed
• Exhausted Funds
• Charismatic Leader would leave or would seek to use society for own ends
• Most Societies gradually dissolved
• ONE still exists today
• Twin Oaks (Virginia) began in 1967 and is still in existence as a Commune today

Psychedelic Drugs

• Harvard Professor of Psychology Timothy Leary
• Discovers LSD when experimenting with mushrooms
• Believes can be beneficial in rehabilitating criminals and alcoholics
• Openly Promoted LSD use
• Mind Expansion and Personal Truth
• Reaction against current state of society - "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out"
• Creates Drug Culture
• Influences Culture - Especially Evident in Music

Music

The common bond of the time was music

All forms -

• Folk
• Rock and Roll
• British Invasion
• Psychedelic Rock
• The Music Festivals

Folk Music

• Anti- War (Peace) Themes
• Environmental Themes (Rejection of Nuclear Age)
• Begins in Late 1950s, Gains Steam through 1960s
• Synonomous with Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
• Music Festivals
• Music ALWAYS had a message

Who?

• Bob Dylan
• Pete Seeger
• Peter, Paul, and Mary
• Jefferson Airplane
• Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and Later, Young)
• Mamas and Papas

Rock and Roll Music

Beach Boys

British Invasion

The Beatles

The Animals

The Rolling Stones

The Who

Herman's Hermits

The Yardbirds

The Zombies

The Kinks

Dusty Springfield

Compare and Contrast....

Psychedelic Rock

Ed Sullivan Show 1964

The Beatles

The Doors

The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds)

Jimi Hendrix

Pink Floyd

Janis Joplin

Jefferson Airplane

John Lennon on Dick Cavett

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - 1967

Compare and Contrast

Beatles to Stones

1964 to 1969

Eastern Religious Infusion

Promoting Peace, Inner Strength.....

Infused with Drug Culture - Psychedelic Musical Styling?

The Music Festivals

Newport Folk Festival - 1965

Monterey Pop - 1967

Woodstock - 1969

Altamont Speedway - 1969

How might what happened at Altamont confirm this society's view of violence and divisions?

Neil Armstrong

July 20, 1969 - "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Muhammad Ali

April 28, 1967 - Ali Refuses Army Induction

• Cites Religious Reasons - Muslim Doctrine
• “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”
• Stripped of His Heavyweight Title
• Convicted of Draft Evasion
• Sentenced to Five Years in Prison
• Fine $10,000
• Banned from Boxing for Three Years
• Appeals - U.S. Supreme Court Overturns

Charles Manson

• Uses Commune (Utopian Society) to create a "Family"
• Mostly young girls
• Convinces them to "rid" society of undesirables
• July 1969 - Murder of Gary Hinman by Manson Followers
• August 8-9, 1969 - Murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate (wife of director Roman Polanski), writer Wojciech Frykowski, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring. Also killed is Steven Parent, who was a friend of the family's gardener. The murders are committed by followers Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel at Manson' request
• August 9-10, 1969 - supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary are brutally murdered by Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten supervised by Manson

On the Sharon Tate Murder

Susan Atkins: "Because we wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, that the world would have to stand up and take notice."

Convicted and sentenced to death:

Atkins, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Watson, and Manson

The Death Penalty is Abolished in California and Sentences Revised to "Life"

Kitty Genovese

For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom Iights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

New York Times - MARTIN GANSBERG MARCH 27, 1964

Image of Urban Alienation

"The Bystander Effect"

bystanders would ignore tragedies that were unfolding before their eyes and why, the more witnesses there were, the less likely it was that one of them would intervene

Is this relevant to the Kitty Genovese Story?

BUT... What Really Happened?

NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINES

37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police

MARTIN GANSBERG MARCH 27, 1964

A.M. Rosenthal- Relatively new Editor of NY Times - pushed story on "urban violence" and "bystander effect" angle

The New Yorker - March 20, 2014

Some of the fascination that racialized, sexualized violence attracts surely rubbed off on the story -- it became clear from photographs and other outlets that Genovese was white and attractive and that Moseley, a repeat rapist, was black -but the gist of the piece lent itself perfectly to Sunday sermons about a malaise encompassing all of us. It was a way of processing anxieties about the anonymity of urban life, about the breakdown of the restrictive but reassuring social conventions of the fifties, and, less directly, about racial unrest, the Kennedy assassination, and even the Holocaust, which was only beginning to be widely discussed, and which seemed to represent on a grand scale the phenomenon that one expert on the Genovese case calls Bad Samaritanism.

The New Yorker Reexamines the Case

The Times' version of the Genovese story represents a version of reality that was molded to conform to a theory.

It's now clear that this version of events is wrong, thanks to a number of Genovese revisionists who have emerged over the years.

The New Yorker Reports

The essential facts are these. Winston Moseley had been out in

his car, looking for a victim, when he came across Genovese driving home from work. He followed her. She parked at the Kew Gardens train station, adjacent to her apartment. Moseley parked, too, and attacked her with a hunting knife. She screamed, and a man named Robert Mozer opened his window and shouted, "Leave that girl alone!' Moseley ran away. Genovese,wounded but not mortally, staggered to the back of her apartment building and went inside a vestibule. Moseley returned, found her,"and attacked again, stabbing her and assaulting her sexually. He fled again before she died.

The Real Story - The New Yorker

The Times story was inaccurate in a number of significant ways. There were two attacks, not three. Only a handful of people saw the first clearly and only one saw the second, because it took place indoors,within the vestibule.The reason there were two attacks was that Robert Mozer, far from being a "silent witness,"yelled at Moseley when he heard Genovese's screams and drove him away. Two people called the police. When the ambulance arrived at the scene precisely because neighbors had called for help-Genovese, still alive, lay in the arms of a neighbor named Sophia Farrar, who had courageously left her apartment to go to the crime scene, even though she had no way of knowing that the murderer had fled.