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We don’t live
in the United States, we live...
Ah, sigh, the counterculture. How I miss it. Remember? It was the popular culture of persons of the ages between the advent of adolescence to first hair loss. It was distinguished by uninhibited attitudes, loud fast music, and unconventional dress. It was similar to all other youth movements from the dawn of dude-kind but especially prevalent in this century (e.g. flappers, beatniks, mods, teddie boys, hippies). The term was popularized, and probably coined, by Theodore Roszak in his somewhat wishful "The Making of a Counter Culture," 1969. Also known as the Freek movement. It was believed by many to be the mainstream culture of the future. It could still happen. The revolution was only postponed due to technical difficulties. We are all comrades in the struggle. Legalize marijuana. The counterculture was the "alternative" America. Alternative was what we called anything that was the freek version of straight goods--granola is alternative corn flakes, Mr. Natural is an alternative Spiderman, blue jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt are an alternative business suit. "Alternative" meant an alternative to STRAIGHT culture. In the '60s, the STRAIGHTS complained that the hippies were intent on tearing down modern culture but offered no alternatives. In the '70s, unrepressed sexuality, healthy foodstuffs, politically correct (in the best sense of the term) educational texts, and endless other features of HIPPIE ideology became CO-OPTED by STRAIGHTS. Without a word of recognition or gratitude. But are we bitter? Yep, the counterculture was an alternative to "Amerika." Although it sounds the same as the country we live in, this is the paranoiac country of the mind where LBJ, the CIA, and the FBI killed Kennedy, where the truth about the worker's paradise of Russia was hidden, where preservatives were added to our food to sap our will. It's not real though, so don't worry. Everything is fine. Now eat your Wonder Bread and shut up. Buy yourself a "smiley." Remember "smileys?" That's short for "smile faces," the sunny yellow visual symbol of fatuous oleaginous honky-dom. The symbol is closely identified with the expression "have a nice day" and is regarded as a passive-aggressive affront to anyone with a social conscience who might wish to have a bad day while contemplating the genocides and exploitation practiced on the minority peoples of the planet by the capitalist system. Righteous! The annoying smileys had a comeback in the early eighties with the wide spread practice of email. The use there was often ironic, however, as demonstrated by the wink integrated into one of the most popular email variations-- ; ) You know who liked smileys? The MOR crowd. MOR was the acronym for "Middle Of the Road," a phrase meaning moderate in view, especially as regards politics, where MOR was considered to be a stance in-between conservative and liberal predilections, or musical tastes, where MOR was considered to be bland, puerile, mindless, and even nauseating. In the '60s, MOR was considered to be entirely the province of A.M. radio, as typified by Paul Anka and Montovoni. However, by the early '70s, F.M. radio quickly lost its commercial-free pirate underground rock traces and was as carefully modulated by play lists as any Top 40 Golden Hits A.M. radio station had ever been. Hip FM radio began playing some goddamn thing called "Southern rock." This was an annoying variety of rock that lacked all creativity and any progressive political sense. Many songs rehashed traditional southern themes, including the "tragic" loss of the Confederacy. The vocals were often reminiscent of a pig squealing. The central accomplishment of Southern Rock was to give rednecks a progressive music to listen to, and give them an honorary membership in the Counterculture. This led to long-haired, dope-smoking good ole boys which on one hand was desirable as it meant they no longer made sport out of beating up Freeks, but on the other hand it meant that the Counterculture was diluted by allowing sexist, racist attitudes to gather under its mantle, a portion of which now had the Confederate colors of the Stars and Bars stitched into it. Greasers liked Southern rock. A greaser was a member of a teenage sub-culture that was antithetical to the counterculture. Greasers were white, blue collar, academically un-ambitious, predisposed to recreational violence, and believed all Freeks to be faggots. They preferred alcohol to dope, and shop class and Driver's Ed to art class and creative writing. They were throwbacks to another era, the sons of the juvenile delinquents of the '50s, and many of them ended up in Vietnam because they were too stupid to get a college deferment. All those vets that whine about how America abandoned them should remember all the sissy faggots they beat up in high school before they start crying about the unfairness of life. They were a step down the evolutionary ladder from jocks. What they were not was "free." Free was a word we used rather loosely. It basically meant unrestrained, independent, and not subject to any obligations, including monetary. It was considered a highly desirable quality and optimistically applied to the title of a variety of products, behaviors, and institutions including, most notably, a gum ("Freedent", a sister product of "Trident"). Free as in Free love, which was a phrase that, atypical, survived from the previous decade untainted by irony, but sometimes tinged with nostalgia. Or as in Free (people's) clinic. These were and remain, surprisingly and continually successful medical clinics founded and staffed by medical students and community volunteers, most of which survive to this day. Then there was the Free school, the illegitimate spawn of the Montessori schools, these "schools without walls" which began in England in the late sixties and spread across the liberal communities of America by the early seventies. High school students could avoid the restrictions of regular hours, work discipline, and pharmacological limits and devote themselves whole-heartedly to actualizing their potentials, developing their creativity, and drinking their beer. Curiously, free school graduates of the first few years of the seventies had a statistically higher rate of professional success and a lower mortality rate than contemporary conventional schools. There were even Free stores--cost-free, volunteer-staffed stores for second items, mostly clothing and records, intended for the poor but disdained by almost all but the freeks who were friends of the volunteers. But the word "free" ended up the way everything in the counterculture ended up--CO-OPTED. Now the only time we hear the word "free" is in the term "sugar free." Free the Village! Power! Righteousness! Link Yaco has written comic books for several publishers. He is currently working on a couple comics-related paperbacks. He has been a copywriter, technical writer, newspaper journalist, and magazine entertainment writer. He has a Masters' degree in Telecommunications and was a technical manager at MIT for five years. Link lives in West Greenwich Village with his wife, Susannah, a Senior Vice President at an independent film company. Check out his web page here Read last week's column Visit Link Yaco Home Page COPYRIGHT 1999 LINK YACO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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richard e. schiff,
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ere
we are in the Village on the verge of a bold new century. I
gotta say, our modern, improved Manhattanland version of the
Village is kinda tame compared to the wild old days. Who ever
thought we'd get nostalgic for the Vietnam and Cold Wars? But
siege-mentality chic is here. Camouflage is a designer color
again. It's hard to recall that being a unemployed, drugged out
illiterate was once cool, and that working for a Blue Chip
company used to be a bummer. The Village of yore was refuge of
drop-outs, not erstwhile web designers.
