Fear and Loathing in a Clockwork Age

Ah! The noble search for identity. That intangible achievement that all artists lust after and lay in torment over. And during the post war era that struggle reached incredible magnitudes. The world cried out for legions of anti-heroes, who were only virtuous in their unapologetic and brutally honest lack of virtue. And the art world provided as many counter culture messiahs as was needed to "Damn the Man". The Beats, hippies, and punks are evidence that behind the white picket fence of suburbia lay an America that wanted more out of life than the sugar coated portrayals of domesticity and patriotism it received from pop culture. The unfortunate side of authenticity often lead to the conclusion that autonomy was an impossible dream and that just mere existence required an individual to compromise his integrity. The post-war generation developed an interesting love-hate relationship with the mass culture of it's time. Some, like Andy Warhol, embraced the inevitability of mass culturalization in order to control the beast (yes, this is a reference to Revelations). While others recognized the American Dream as being a hypocrisy and so chose the Golden

Examples of such beliefs can be found in the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. Where Hamlet recognizes that only while he is inactive does he have possibilities. As soon as he commits to any one course of action his fate is set. Oberon, in his speeches expresses similar sentiments. The last stanza equates emptiness with a state of total knowledge, which is destroyed once we become something. "Everything", which is the opposite of the void, is ignorant. While the void, or the starting place, is Teaching. The implication is that if one were to " numbly not get there" they would be able to achieve and maintain a state of divine emptiness and knowledge. Part of that knowledge was an acceptance of everything else as divine(Hipkiss,p.70).

Marilyn Monroe embodied the two things that interested Warhol the most, celebrity and death. It is no wonder that he did so many paintings bearing her image. Marilyn was the emblem of, if not the American Dream, at least the Hollywood Dream. She was a testament to the belief that image is everything. How else could one explain how a plain and insecure girl could become an enduring sex symbol. She was pure fabrication, from her appearance( Marilyn was notorious for taking three hours or more just to do her makeup), to her personae and name. That artifice comes across in the painting. Her features are veiled by flat panels of makeup and her hair color is cartoonish. Marilyn became for Warhol a symbol of the power to shape one's own destiny. The mystery surrounding her death also greatly intrigued Warhol. Although she was not particularly talented and was not a natural beauty she managed to exit life surrounded by conspiracy theories involving everyone from the President to the Mob. To Warhol death was the ultimate celebrity, which he explored extensively in paintings like "Orange Car Crash."

For all the hippies who tried to promote drug use as a mind expanding experience, "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" set forth the blunt truth. Drugs merely provide an easy way out of reality. Not that the Ramones had anything against escaping a dull suburban existence. But they called it for what was. The song also pokes fun at the idealistic notion of peace and love. Here happiness is merely a side effect of being brain dead. "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" is a testimony to notion that ignorance is bliss.

Ultimately the post war period was about learning to cope with quickly changing environment where mass culture and the government was stripping away peoples sense of individuality and autonomy. The changing landscape allowed repressed minority groups such as women and blacks to finally gain the power they had been denied for so long. While the average white male felt that his opportunities were becoming increasingly limited. This manifested itself in the formation of many counter culture movements. All of which eventually succumbed to or were engulfed by the mass culture. Because the truth of the matter is that as much as culture controls who we are, we control it by virtue of the fact that we make up society.

And if the first amendment was more than merely a sham, the Hippies would utilize it to the furthest extent of the law to keep the government off the peoples backs and out of Vietnam. Since they were America's youth, it was their bodies that would be lying in the soggy Vietnamese soil. Not surprisingly, these youth rebelled in spirited protests and public burning of draft cards. These common ideals bound the hippies into tight knight communities like the famous Haight-Ashberry district. There they could just be. They were free to let their eccentricities flow on rivers of illicit drugs. Dilated pupils were as de riguer as tie dyed clothing.

In the "113th Chorus" of Mexico City Blues is a perfect explanation of this blissful void. Since only two lines address life("Got up and dressed up, and went out & got laid"), it is clear that Kerouac's emphasis is on the hereafter. It is only aft

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Approximate Word count = 5560
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page double spaced)