In reading this bio of Manyard G. Krebs I had to pause and wonder where the beatnik ethos came from? Was it a reaction to the 50’s. Where the heck did the ethos of the beat generation originate from? Were they just proto-hippies or something different?
Different than hippies, though the beatniks (the media’s word, not their own) paved the way. I think it’s fair to say it was a reaction away from the growing post war materialism. Inspired by Buddhism and other eastern religions, it was largely a literary movement. Maynard Krebs was a mainstream parody. Look into the works of Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, William Burroughs, and Alan Ginsburg for the roots and heart of beat.
the **The Sonoran Lizard King ** has it!
Kerouac was pretty much the beatniks chronicler. His books are largely ‘faction’ as he definitely lived the life.
Obligatory reading: About the Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac.
Beatnik was inspired by Sputnik and coined by famed SF columnist Herb Caen.
It was the reaction of a subculture to the conformity of the post WWWII era. Look at photos from that time and notice the amount of conformity in hairstyles, dress, etc.
The “beats” were the non-conformists. However, they weren’t prone to violence like the gangs. They tended to be more intellectual in their preferences for literature, music, politics and smoking a little weed.
The beatniks also drew heavily on the jazz subculture of the 1940s.
My mom used to occasionally go to beatnik hangouts in Greenwich Village in her late teens. According to her, people sat around being very intellectual while wearing black turtlenecks and handmade jewelry.
The Wikipedia page gives some good insights, including the following:
I wouldn’t necessarily call the Beats themselves proto-hippies, but the ideas and values of the Beat generation were a MAJOR influence on what would happen in the '60s.
Were the Beats themselves the cultural descendents of the Bohemians?
They also sipped espresso, which made them way ahead of their time.
An English professor of mine put it well when he reminded us that they were really more of a Beat Clique than the Beat Generation. Because of their literary success, they were influential far beyond their numbers, so we often imagine their population to be much larger than it actually was.
I mention this only because the question seems to have been satisfactorily answered already.
Tracing the genesis of the Beats can’t be answered in a paragraph. It’s a whole college course. I mean that literally, because I took a whole college course on the subject.
We started back with the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-1800s and worked forward through Greenwich Village in the early 20th century, Bohemians, and much more.
Every generation has some similar anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, anti-conformity, anti-rushing around, anti-somebody else’s control movement. Sometimes the manifestations are similar, sometimes they are widely divergent. The core “anti’s” stay more or less the same.
The whole Greatest Generation scam that is all the rage lately is a deliberate rewriting and whitewashing of postwar history. I would not make light of any of the hardships, danger, and sacrifices people endured for the span of the actual war, although I would note that the majority of soldiers were draftees. After the war, however, the men returned to a society that was as ugly in its repression as any we’ve seen in this country, and they fought bitterly against any lifting of that repression.
The men swiftly kicked women out of the jobs they had during the war, jobs that brought in good incomes and respect. They also removed blacks from jobs that had opened because of shortages, and returned them to a Jim Crow society that was a mockery of what they claimed to be fighting Hitler for. Anti-Communist movements ravaged society with totally false accusations, leading to loss of jobs and careers. And on and on.
The Beats largely intended to drop out of such a society and live in parallel to it. Many of the hippies wanted to do the same, but a sizable minority of the hippie movement decided to fight against this society and they got most of the attention and approbation.
Today almost everybody is against all the things the hippies were against, but we somehow pretend that everybody was all the time. Nor do we hold the postwar leaders culpable for those things. We let the War excuse everything. But that falsifies history.
Maynard G. Krebs is a fascinating figure, historically and culturally. It’s of course true that he was a caricature of a beatnik. But he was the only character on television who even hinted that a counterculture existed in the society. He raved about jazz artists who were mostly invisible to the general public (many of whom were black, to boot). He was a combination of the Court Jester and the literary figure known as the Holy Fool, one who can speak truth about society through mocking its conventions and pretensions. His extreme innocence also gave him special powers (he could talk to animals, e.g.). He was as subversive a character as any ever put on network tv. Max Shulman knew exactly what he was doing when he created Maynard. And Bob Denver played him brilliantly. (Check out much less successful Michael J. Pollard was when he replaced Denver for a few shows when Denver got drafted.)
Thank you for that. When I tossed off ‘Maynard G. Krebs’ is a mainstream parody’. It was only knowing the character by cultural reference. Gilligan in a black turtleneck sweater saying ‘hey daddy-o’. I’ve never seen an actual episode of Dobie Gillis. Your synopsis makes me want to.
I have a theory that post-WW2 society was in many ways more repressive than pre-war, at least on middleclass whites, who previously had not had to put up with that level of regimentation in their lives. We were, in many ways, a militarized society after WW2. (But just you try getting a thesis accepted on the white middleclass, or any aspect of pre-WW2 society that doesn’t deal directly with the Depression. Not kosher history.)
Maynard always wore the same torn, stained sweatshirt in every episode except when he went in to the Army. He never drank coffee or wore a beret. He had his own slang vocabulary. He was himself.
I wish there were a decent DVD collection of the show, but there’s something about the rights that keep holding it up. The quality of the show kept bouncing up and down, too. It didn’t get going until they kicked Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld off, and the Army stint in the second season was a total mistake. The fourth season never should have happened. That leaves a little over two good seasons. Any episode that takes place in a school is a good one. I desperately wanted Dobie’s teachers in place of mine when I watched the show.
Although there are many differences between the Beatniks and the Hippies, it was explained to me that the Beatniks had dropped out of regular society, and because of the fear of nuclear war, had decided that there was nothing that could really be done to improve the world, so decided not to participate in it.
The Hippies believed that the whole world could be changed by individuals and groups, and that there was no end to the possibilities. While Hippies did not move through regular channels while trying to improve upon the world, they believed in a better future and a culture that could work for everyone.
From what little I’ve seen of Dobie Gillis, Maynard, besides being a mainstream parody, is more a poser than anything. He doesn’t seem to know or think about anything; instead he just spits out the stock lingo and asserts that the only worthwhile music is jazz.
For a very funny parody of the lingo and attitude, watch Rock All Night, if you can find a copy anywhere. It’s a late 1950’s noir-ish B-movie in which Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan’s Island) is a crook who holds some musicians and others hostage in a bar. One of the others is “Sir Bop”, a sort of talent-manager/impresario who has to be heard to be believed.