tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/counterculture-30916/articlesCounterculture – The Conversation2024-03-28T05:49:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2267452024-03-28T05:49:47Z2024-03-28T05:49:47ZThe rocking story of how religion crept into popular music – where it remains even today<p>It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or '90s kid, you might be surprised to find many of your favourite tunes are more concerned about Jesus and God than you’d realised. </p>
<p>Many chart-topping songs in Western music delve into themes of faith (especially Christianity), spirituality and divinity. But unlike Christmas music, most of these come from a rock tradition.</p>
<h2>Early gospel makes the charts</h2>
<p>Hits by some of rock’s greatest guitarists, such as George Harrison, Lenny Kravitz and Prince, feature strong guitar riffs that create a sense of aural transcendence. These riffs, which involve a repeated note sequence or chord progression, help to define their songs.</p>
<p>This intertwining of guitar and Christian spirituality dates back to the emergence of rock music in the 1940s. American rock pioneers such as Jerry Lee Lewis (1935–2022) and <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/sister-rosetta-tharpe-rocknroll-pioneer/">Sister Rosetta Tharpe</a> (1915–73), both from the Pentecostal church, used powerful guitar riffs that surged with soulfulness. </p>
<p>Tharpe’s 1944 gospel song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4-22b72muY&ab_channel=HistoryofRockMusic-Mostpowerfulrocksongs">Strange Things Happening Every Day</a> – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IfYroJOiMg&ab_channel=RCARecords">covered by Yola</a> for the 2022 film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_(2022_film)">Elvis</a> – is a great example.</p>
<p>Using electric guitar, and the theological message “Jesus is the holy light”, Tharpe’s was the first song to cross over from gospel into a mainstream “race” chart in the US. “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/popular-songs-of-the-day/rhythm-and-blues/">Race music</a>”, which eventually became R&B, was the term used to describe African American music (but generally just referred to secular music).</p>
<h2>The rise of spirituality and counterculture</h2>
<p>Christian rock also has roots in the 1960s US <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/1960s-counterculture">counterculture</a> “hippie” movement. The Jesus People brought a Christian vibe to this movement, leading to works such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1971 rock opera <a href="https://playbill.com/article/look-back-at-the-original-broadway-production-of-jesus-christ-superstar#">Jesus Christ Superstar</a>, which is still being performed more than 50 years later.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1960s and '70s, plenty of songs exploring themes of God, faith and spirituality climbed their way into the Top 20. For example, Norman Greenbaum’s 1970 track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2msh0jut2Y&ab_channel=CraftRecordings">Spirit in the Sky</a> became popular during the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/24/the-unlikely-endurance-of-christian-rock">Christian rock movement</a>. </p>
<p>It was joined in the same year by Harrison’s hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04v-SdKeEpE&ab_channel=GeorgeHarrisonVEVO">My Sweet Lord</a>, which is particularly interesting because of its mix of spiritual undertones, which reflect the West’s growing interest in Eastern spirituality at the time. </p>
<p>Along with the the repetition of “lord” (which is said around 40 times) and the use of the Christian/Hebrew word “Hallelujah”, the song also includes chants of “Hare Krishna” and “Hare Rama”, praising the Hindu gods.</p>
<p>My Sweet Lord became the <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/george-harrison-my-sweet-lord-music-video/">highest-selling single</a> in the United Kingdom in 1971, as well as the first solo number-one hit by a member of the Beatles. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. The song sparked controversy, and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/09/08/archives/george-harrison-guilty-of-plagiarizing-subconsciously-a-62-tune-for.html">lawsuit that claimed</a> it was too similar to The Chiffons’s 1963 hit He’s So Fine.</p>
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<p>For some, My Sweet Lord is considered a Christian song – at least the until the Hindu chants begin. But the mixing of religious elements was seen by some conservative Christians as satanic, or pagan (even though Hinduism <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-hinduism-a-pagan-relig_b_1245373">isn’t a pagan</a> religion). </p>
<p>Music throughout the 1960s and '70s, while it still touched on religious themes, grew much more rebellious and edgy with bands like <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151027-the-satanists-who-changed-music">The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath</a>. </p>
<p>Topics such as sex, drugs and hedonism became common – as did protesting against traditional values. From this cocktail emerged the view that rock was the <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/the-devil-has-all-the-best-tunes/">devil’s music</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jesus-people-a-movement-born-from-the-summer-of-love-82421">'Jesus People' – a movement born from the 'Summer of Love'</a>
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<h2>The 80s: when religion met raunchy</h2>
<p>The 1980s and '90s continued the trend of intertwining spirituality and popular music. Many of these tracks stirred deep discussions on faith, cementing music’s power as a medium for expressing complex themes.</p>
<p>Lenny Kravitz’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnqUK7XF54k">Are You Gonna Go My Way</a> (1993) was written to sound like the lyrics came from Jesus himself:</p>
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<p>I was born long ago, I am the chosen. I’m the one. I have come to save the day, and I won’t leave until I’m done […] But what I really want to know is, are you gonna go my way? </p>
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<p>Prince’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXJhDltzYVQ&ab_channel=Prince">Lets Go Crazy</a> (1984) was a metaphor for God and Satan, hinted at in the line “are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh no let’s go!” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Madonna’s 1989 smash Like a Prayer made more than one wave when it topped the charts 35 years ago. The music video stirred up <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/from-the-archives-outrage-over-madonna-video-20190402-p51a0s.html">quite a controversy</a> by mixing the sacred with the profane. Among other things, Madonna is shown dancing among burning crosses, and kissing a black Christ who comes to life from being a statue.</p>
<p>The video conveys messages about prejudice, racism, violence and sexuality. Some networks refused to show it, deeming it inappropriate for children. Others aired it with a warning it might offend viewers. The Catholic Church was outraged and the Vatican condemned it. </p>
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<p>Nonetheless, the video achieved huge commercial success, winning MTV’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0003172/1989/1/">1989 Video Music Award</a> for Viewer’s Choice. Even now, it remains a pinnacle of music video art.</p>
<h2>Religion is still everywhere in music</h2>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/02/10/sam-smiths-grammys-performance-criticized-by-conservatives-and-satanists/?sh=3339c55f30b1">most of us</a> won’t bat an eyelid when we see Lil Nas X <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/lil-nas-x-montero-call-me-by-your-name-video-church-of-satan-1147634/">giving Satan a lapdance</a>, and that’s probably because of the work of artists like Madonna. </p>
<p>It’s interesting that, despite a <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/religious-affiliation-australia">rise in secularism</a>, the intersection of the sacred and secular in music has persisted. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, with its intermingling spiritual and sexual themes, is still one of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/17/hallelujah-leonard-cohen-film-rejected-song-became-classic">most popular songs</a> of all time.</p>
<p>Today, many of the world’s most famous contemporary artists continue the tradition of engaging with spiritual and religious themes. Take Drake’s 2018 hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&ab_channel=DrakeVEVO">God’s Plan</a>, or The Weeknd’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/07/the-weeknd-dawn-fm-review">highly acclaimed</a> 2022 album Dawn FM, replete with spiritual undertones and religious symbolism. </p>
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<p>Perhaps it’s just in the nature of religion to evoke feeling and inspire, even for those who aren’t “religious” themselves. Or perhaps we’ve collectively realised musicians can experiment with themes and take risks, and it won’t bring about the end of the world. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lil-nas-xs-dance-with-the-devil-evokes-tradition-of-resisting-mocking-religious-demonization-158586">Lil Nas X's dance with the devil evokes tradition of resisting, mocking religious demonization</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panizza Allmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You’d be surprised by how many of your favourite hits are about God or Jesus in one way or another.Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213022024-03-04T19:21:30Z2024-03-04T19:21:30ZHash fudge and a fish for Picasso: inside the legendary cookbook of Alice B. Toklas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579116/original/file-20240301-28-m6lgwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1020%2C723&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Around the Fish – Paul Klee (1926)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Around_the_Fish_by_Paul_Klee.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Our cultural touchstones series looks at influential books.</em></p>
<p>Alice B. Toklas wrote one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time. One reason for its popularity was the inclusion of stories of her 39-year relationship with the great modernist writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein">Gertrude Stein</a>. Another was its recipe for hash fudge, which made Toklas an icon of 1960s counterculture.</p>
<p>Alice wasn’t a very common name in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate. People used to tease me about it: you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant, living next door to Alice, go ask Alice – and mysterious references to Alice B. Toklas. </p>
<p>I had never heard of her before; I wasn’t that cool. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to unconsciously associate her with Alice the housekeeper from the 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I felt an affinity with this other Alice, who died when I was three years old. (The B, incidentally, stands for Babette.) When I realised <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alice_B._Toklas_Cook_Book">The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book</a> had been published 70 years ago in 1954, I decided it was finally time to become better acquainted.</p>
<h2>The ladies of 27 Rue de Fleurus</h2>
<p>Toklas was born in San Francisco in 1877. She studied piano at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1907, when she was 29, she travelled to Paris and met Gertrude Stein the day after she arrived. It was love at first sight. </p>
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<p>In the book Stein wrote about their life, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Alice_B._Toklas">The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas</a>, Stein has Toklas say: “I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice.” The brooch is now in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge UK, and appears in <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488221">Pablo Picasso’s famous portrait of Stein</a>.</p>
<p>The women moved in together and presided over one of the most renowned literary and artistic salons of the time, entertaining Picasso, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway">Ernest Hemingway</a>, <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/4607">Francis Picabia</a>, <a href="https://www.henrimatisse.org/">Henri Matisse</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edith-sitwell">Edith Sitwell</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Clifford_Barney">Natalie Barney</a>, and many others. </p>
<p>Surrealists rubbed shoulders with cubists and modernists, the exchange of ideas lubricated by delicious food and drink. Toklas was in charge of catering, but they also employed a series of cooks for the day-to-day.</p>
<p>Hemingway described Toklas thus:</p>
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<p>[She] had a very pleasant voice, was small, very dark, with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the <a href="https://www.jeanne-darc.info/art-image/louis-maurice-boutet-de-monvel/">Boutet de Monvel</a> illustrations […] we liked Miss Stein and her friend, although the friend was frightening. The paintings and the cakes and the eau-de-vie were truly wonderful. </p>
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<p>Toklas did not like Hemingway, though, particularly because of the sexual frisson between him and Stein – perhaps that was why he was frightened.</p>
<p>In the 1920s and ‘30s, Paris was crawling with American migrants or “expats”. Stein and Toklas were a tourist attraction, like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_of_Llangollen">Ladies of Llangollen</a> before them. If you had an introduction, you could visit 27 Rue de Fleurus and its incredible art collection. </p>
<p>In the first world war, Stein and Toklas drove delivery trucks. In their 60s when the second world war began, they decided to wait it out. By this time, Stein was increasingly unwell with stomach cancer. Stein and Toklas moved to the country, but continued to receive visitors and entertain.</p>
<p>Stein died in hospital in 1946 with Toklas by her side. Toklas said in a letter to a friend that it was the end to all happiness. It devastated her. But it also allowed her to come into her own. She started to put together the cookbook that made her practically a household name.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pablo-picasso-was-not-a-lone-genius-creator-he-was-at-the-centre-of-several-creative-hubs-and-changed-the-course-of-western-art-181329">Pablo Picasso was not a lone genius creator – he was at the centre of several creative hubs, and changed the course of western art</a>
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<h2>A modernist in the kitchen</h2>
<p>Toklas’ literary output was two cookbooks and a memoir. Stein also immortalised her in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (her only bestseller), and the erotic poem <a href="https://www.dca.org.uk/assets/general/Session_2_(9th_July)_Lifting_Belly_-_Gertrude_Stein.pdf">Lifting Belly</a>, written in 1916-17 but only published in 1953.</p>
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<p>The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book was much more than a collection of recipes. It was also semi-autobiographical. It included observations of the differences between French and American food cultures, culinary tales involving their famous friends, and stories of wartime life. </p>
<p>In his book <a href="https://eatingmywords.com.au/alice-among-the-gourmands/">The Gourmands’ Way - Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy</a>, Justin Spring called it a “brilliant, deftly comic hybrid”.</p>
<p>Toklas had much in common with the culinary writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/08/elizabeth-david-first-lady-of-food">Elizabeth David</a>. David’s recipes brought a taste of the sunny Mediterranean to bleak post-war Britain, where people were still living on rations of powdered eggs and losing their minds over <a href="https://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0910/chef/chef2.html#vi">a fresh orange</a>. Toklas aimed her book at a British and American audience, stating that “it will be pleasant if the ideas in it, besides surviving the Atlantic, manage to cross the Channel and find acceptance in British kitchens too”.</p>
<p>Food scholar <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Aesthetic-Pleasure-in-Twentieth-Century-Womens-Food-Writing-The-Innovative/McLean/p/book/9780415703314">Alice McLean</a> noted how both Toklas and David </p>
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<p>claimed the pleasures of gastronomy previously reserved for men. [They] expanded women’s food writing beyond the domestic realm by pioneering forms of self-expression that celebrate female appetite for pleasure and for culinary adventure. </p>
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<p>Janet Malcolm, in her 2007 book <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/two-lives-paperback-softback">Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice</a>, says that “most of Toklas’ recipes were and remain too elaborate or too strange to attempt”. The sentiment is echoed by other commentators. Is this a fair assessment? </p>
<p>Certainly, there are recipes like the “hen with golden eggs”, where a boiled chicken is stuffed with mashed potatoes shaped into eggs and fried in butter until golden. With the extras arranged around the chicken on a platter, reduced boiling liquor enriched with butter and cream is poured over. </p>
<p>“This is an amusing way to present a chicken,” Toklas wrote: “a delicious dish”. </p>
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<span class="caption">Picasso drawing a fish. Le Mystère Picasso – Henri-Georges Clouzot (1956).</span>
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<p>For Picasso, Toklas cooked a whole fish and covered it with a design of red mayonnaise, sieved hard-boiled eggs, truffles and herbs. Picasso “exclaimed at its beauty”, but commented that it was more in <a href="https://smarthistory.org/matisse-goldfish/">Matisse’s style</a> than his own.</p>
<p>A cake they enjoyed in the town of Mâcon had four layers of almond meringue, separated by mocha, kirsch and pistachio butter cream, and decorated with crystallised apricot and angelica flowers. Toklas experimented until she had got it as close as she could to the original.</p>
<p>But then there were recipes as simple as this: </p>
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<p>Mutton roasted and basted with port is out of this world. Try it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My own forays include Chicken à la Comtadine, where a jointed chicken is simmered in butter and flambéed in red vermouth. Salad Port Royal consists of boiled potato slices and green beans, mixed with shredded apple, and dressed with mayonnaise. The silky texture of a home-made mayonnaise makes this simple salad delectable. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/betty-crocker-turns-100-why-generations-of-american-women-connected-with-a-fictional-character-168443">Betty Crocker turns 100 – why generations of American women connected with a fictional character</a>
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<h2>A light snack in Dante’s Inferno</h2>
<p>So what about the “haschich fudge”? It wasn’t actually an original Toklas: the recipe was contributed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brion_Gysin">Brion Gysin</a>, in a section of the cookbook with recipes from many of Stein and Toklas’s friends. </p>
<p>Gysin was a Canadian experimental artist, who moved to Paris in 1934. He was expelled from the Surrealists by the autocratic control freak <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist/breton-andre/">André Breton</a>. In 1954, he opened a restaurant in Morocco. </p>
<p>The recipe stated, tongue-in-cheek, that it was suitable for a ladies’ bridge club. Lucie Hamilton, in a review for the Australian magazine The Farmer and Settler, said it was “more akin to a light snack taken in Dante’s Inferno”.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/epPzZbT42B0?si=4ZEiULEX6sJfOsEW" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>As she explains at the end of her reading of the recipe in the recording above, Toklas was not aware the hash fudge would cause a controversy in America, where consuming narcotics was illegal. </p>
<p>The irony is that the fudge does not actually contain hashish, the resin extracted from the cannabis plant. The recipe recommends foraging for wild <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/indica-vs-sativa"><em>cannabis sativa</em> or <em>cannabis indica</em></a> and grinding the dried leaves to add to the fudge. </p>
<p>After the censored fudge recipe was finally published in a 1960s US edition of the book, it was transformed into the <a href="https://littleindianabakes.com/history-brownies/">all-American brownie</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cannabis-how-it-affects-our-cognition-and-psychology-new-research-180987">Cannabis: how it affects our cognition and psychology – new research</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>If you’re going to San Francisco</h2>
<p>In 1968, the year after Toklas died, Peter Sellers starred in the movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063115/">I Love You Alice B. Toklas</a>. A conservative lawyer is given hash brownies by a young woman and turns into a hippie. He tries to return to his conventional life, but finds that he can’t do it any more. </p>
<p>In the final scene, he leaves his fiancée at the altar and runs into the street, saying “there’s gotta be something beautiful out there! There’s got to be. I know it!”</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f5VaFyBCU0g?si=ZhgCJ-M_Qgn_kEHh" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>1967 was the “summer of love” where hippies who had “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out#:%7E:text=%22Turn%20on%2C%20tune%20in%2C,tune%20in%2C%20drop%20out%22.">turned on, tuned in and dropped out</a>” congregated in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The city Toklas had left in 1907 for a more exciting life was the now the epicentre of a global movement of environmental awareness and grassroots peace activism. </p>
<p>Across the world, young people were repudiating the values of the previous generations. They rejected war, encouraged self-discovery, and embraced Eastern mysticism. </p>
<p>Hash brownies were part of a panoply of mind-altering substances that opened the door to cosmic oneness. </p>
<p>While Stein gradually became part of the literary canon, Toklas entered the annals of popular culture. In the 1990s, both women were elevated to the ranks of the celestial when craters on the planet Venus were named after them. </p>
<p>Toklas’ fame was not just a result of the haschich fudge, though. The doyen of American gastronomy, James Beard, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/03/specials/stein-toklasobit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">said of her</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Alice was one of the really great cooks of all time. She went all over Paris to find the right ingredients for her meals. She had endless specialities, but her chicken dishes were especially magnificent. The secret of her talent was great pains and a remarkable palate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also had imagination, wit and a charming arrogance. </p>
<p>But perhaps Gertrude Stein described her best, in Lifting Belly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She is a dish.<br>
A dish of good.<br>
Perfect.<br>
Pleasure.<br>
In the way of dishes.<br></p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alice B. Toklas and her partner, the influential modernist writer Gertrude Stein, hosted a celebrated Paris salon. Toklas would go on to write an unusual bestseller.Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911132022-10-06T12:15:21Z2022-10-06T12:15:21Z‘Great resignation’? ‘Quiet quitting’? If you’re surprised by America’s anti-work movement, maybe you need to watch more movies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487564/original/file-20220930-26-b5vjfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=115%2C168%2C4900%2C3179&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1994 movie 'Clerks' was one of many 'Slacker films' that were made in the 1990s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actors-jeff-anderson-and-brian-ohalloran-on-set-of-the-news-photo/459830921?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <em>femme fatale</em> who tries to con thousands through her lover’s insurance company. Jobless bikers on drug-fueled adventures in New Orleans. People smashing printers at work.</p>
<p>Watching movies like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/">Double Indemnity</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/">Easy Rider</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/">Office Space</a>,” you might think Americans had never heard of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/11/pain-gain-work-ethic-burkeman">Protestant work ethic</a> – the spirit of sacrifice and delayed gratification that helped build capitalism. </p>
<p>Films like these reveal that many Americans’ current <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/">anti-work sentiments</a> may not be all that new. <a href="https://medium.com/@zdochter">As someone</a> who has researched and taught world literature and cinema for over a decade, I believe some of the most fascinating movies make viewers ask, “What if all that hard work isn’t really worth it?” </p>
<h2>The pandemic and the ‘Great Resignation’</h2>
<p>Since the pandemic, more Americans than ever have been asking that same question. </p>
<p>During what some have termed the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1007914455/as-the-pandemic-recedes-millions-of-workers-are-saying-i-quit">Great Resignation</a>,” many Americans changed careers, quit bad jobs or refocused on life away from work. More recently, the trend of “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/how-quiet-quitting-became-the-next-phase-of-the-great-resignation.html">quiet quitting</a>,” or doing only what one is paid for, has blown up on social media. The phrase is a bit misleading, as one does not quit one’s job. Instead, workers refuse to hustle in the workplace, especially since going “above and beyond” often means working for free.</p>
<p>The recent wave of quiet quitting comes from a deeper, more long-term disengagement with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2022/06/22/new-gallup-workplace-report-says-employee-stress-is-at-an-all-time-high/?sh=1726be2335ca">stressful work</a> environments, unfulfilling roles and, despite <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/09/08/goodbye-standard-3-percent-raise-employers-increase-next-year/">recent wage hikes</a>, the inability of paychecks to keep up with the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affordability-crisis-breaking-america/606046/">cost-of-living crisis</a> for many working and middle-class families.</p>
<p>Ironically, the drive to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/the-frustration-with-productivity-culture">hyperproductivity</a> that some argue is a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-would-aristotle-do/202209/the-myth-productivity-in-america">central feature of capitalism</a> is at an all-time high. Workers are told that if they “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/do-what-you-love-work-myth-culture/399599/">do what they love</a>,” work should never feel like a burden. Some theorists compare modern forms of work culture, especially in Silicon Valley, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691219080/work-pray-code">to a religion</a> in their attempts to instill people with passion and meaning. </p>
<p>These developments have created a pushback, especially among younger generations, toward work-life balance, flexible schedules and a deeper focus on <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/08/16/mental-health-is-the-next-big-workplace-issue">mental health</a>.</p>
<p>But some people have gone even further, with philosophers questioning the very foundations of an <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25725">achievement-based society</a> that lends itself to rampant burnout and depression. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventing_the_Future:_Postcapitalism_and_a_World_Without_Work">Political theorists</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220126-the-rise-of-the-anti-work-movement">anti-work movement</a> are asking how it might be possible to create more free time for everyone, not just those who can afford to quit or take a job where they’ll earn less money.</p>
<h2>Crime as an alternative to work</h2>
<p>Yet such anti-work sentiments are nothing new to American culture. </p>
<p>It was arguably Charlie Chaplin’s characters that first expressed the anti-work ethos, most famously in the 1936 film “Modern Times,” in which his character works too slowly at an assembly line and gets caught in the <a href="https://photo.charliechaplin.com/categories/6/images">cogs of a giant machine</a>. </p>
<p>Around World War II, crime became an allegory for an anti-work ethos: little effort, big payoff. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/film-noir">film noir</a> genre often explores the existential and psychological factors that drive people to crimes of passion. </p>
<p>Many noir films feature a <em>femme fatale</em> – that is, a woman who seduces men as part of a larger criminal plot for her to get ahead financially. This character type often speaks to a cultural fear around what women might do to remedy their domestic and workplace dissatisfaction. </p>
<p>For instance, in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/">Double Indemnity</a>” (1944), Phyllis Dietrichson, who’s unhappily married to an older, wealthy man, seduces insurance salesman Walter Neff. They concoct a plot to stage her husband’s murder as an accident and collect his life insurance money. A similar crime of passion against a wealthy husband also takes place in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038854/">The Postman Always Rings Twice</a>” (1947). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman about to kiss man on a couch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487553/original/file-20220930-6015-lqs7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘Double Indemnity,’ actress Barbara Stanwyck assumes the role of <em>femme fatale</em> Phyllis Dietrichson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kino-frau-ohne-gewissen-double-indemnity-frau-ohne-gewissen-news-photo/1262757201?adppopup=true">Film Publicity Archive/United Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Joseph H. Lewis’ “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042530/">Gun Crazy</a>” (1950) charts the story of Bart and Laurie, who “can’t live on 40 bucks a week.” They embark on a string of robberies that allows them to live job-free for a time. After Bart learns that Laurie killed two people, he turns remorseful, exclaiming, “Two people dead – just so we can live without working!” </p>
<h2>Youth rebellion and the counterculture</h2>
<p>With the arrival of the 1950s, the anti-work ethos becomes associated with youth culture. </p>
<p>A new generation of “hoodlums,” hippies and dropouts is a poor fit for the traditional workplace, beginning with the leather-jacket clad, motorcycle-riding Marlon Brando in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047677/">The Wild One</a>” (1953) and James Dean in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/">Rebel Without a Cause</a>” (1955). </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/">Easy Rider</a>” (1969) follows two unemployed bikers who, after a lucrative drug deal, stop at a New Mexico commune and admire the self-sustaining economy there. They continue toward New Orleans and meet Jack Nicholson’s George Hanson, who tells them, “It’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.” </p>
<p>Hanson goes on to contrast America’s world of work to the freedom of a hypothetical alien species with no leaders and no money. The counterculture is crystallized.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men ride motorcycles on the highway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487552/original/file-20220930-26-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actors Dennis Hopper, left, and Peter Fonda starred in ‘Easy Rider.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kino-easy-rider-easy-rider-easy-rider-easy-rider-dennis-news-photo/1262757770?adppopup=true">Film Publicity Archive/United Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Slackers and sabotage</h2>
<p>In 1990s popular culture, a “slacker” ideal took hold. </p>
<p>The apathetic, unemployed or underemployed young person appears in films such as “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106677/">Dazed and Confused</a>” (1993), “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110950/">Reality Bites</a>” (1994), “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113118/">Friday</a>” (1995) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/">The Big Lebowski</a>” (1998). </p>
<p>Richard Linklater’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102943/">Slacker</a>” (1990) follows a series of unemployed people, hustlers and moochers around Austin, Texas, in their nonworking time. One of these men says, “To hell with the kind of work you have to do to earn a living. … I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it.” He ends with the rousing proclamation: “To all you workers out there – every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death!”</p>
<p>However, the slacker doesn’t merely try to work as little as possible. Some seek to actively sabotage the workplace. In “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/">Clerks</a>” (1994), two workers are intentionally rude toward customers. They play hockey on a rooftop and go to a friend’s wake during work hours. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/">Office Space</a>” (1999) follows three workers, who, frustrated with their company’s malfunctioning printer, decide to take a baseball bat to it before infecting the office computers with a virus. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N9wsjroVlu8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Workers destroy a printer in ‘Office Space.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/">Fight Club</a>” (1999), Tyler, played by Brad Pitt, sneaks pornographic clips into family films while working as a projectionist. The narrator, played by Edward Norton, describes Tyler as a “guerrilla terrorist of the food service industry” after Tyler “seasons” plates of food at a fancy hotel with his various bodily fluids.</p>
<h2>Recent cinema shifts to overt anti-capitalism</h2>
<p>The 21st century has witnessed the rise of a whole series of foreign films and TV shows with explicitly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/17/down-with-the-rich-class-rage-fuels-new-wave-of-us-v-them-films-and-plays">anti-capitalist themes</a>, with dramas like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6468322/">Money Heist</a>” (2017) “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6751668/">Parasite</a>” (2019) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10919420/">Squid Game</a>” (2021) centered on the characters’ fight against economic inequality.</p>
<p>This trend is evident in American cinema, too. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5688932/">Sorry to Bother You</a>” (2018), workers are so desperate for economic security that they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/19/sorry-to-bother-you-is-this-the-most-anti-capitalist-film-ever">sell themselves</a> into slavery at a company called “WorryFree.” The satire follows Cassius Green, an African American telemarketer who, in his desire to rise up the corporate ladder, cuts deals with international companies to use WorryFree’s slave labor. While not as explicitly anti-capitalist, Chloé Zhao’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9770150/">Nomadland</a>” (2020) paints a portrait of America where jobs are increasingly seasonal, temporary and insecure, leaving people adrift as “nomads.”</p>
<p>Americans have long had a vexed relationship to work, seeing it as alienating, exploitative or simply without real payoff. </p>
<p>Hustle culture and “grinding” might still dominate in America. However, more theorists are now arguing that technological automation and major social change could lead to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_World_Beyond_Work.html?id=uAZbzQEACAAJ">a world beyond work</a> with more free time for all. </p>
<p>It is therefore more important than ever to pay attention to what these films say: Perhaps work does not hold the key to happiness, fulfillment and the good life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zen Dochterman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A range of films spanning different eras confronts viewers with the same question: ‘What if all that hard work isn’t really worth it?’Zen Dochterman, Lecturer of Writing, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1651522021-08-03T20:44:28Z2021-08-03T20:44:28ZFrom outlier to Olympic sport: How skateboarding made it to the Tokyo Games<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414395/original/file-20210803-19-2ut00h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5564%2C3579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zion Wright of the United States takes part in a men's park skateboarding practice session at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ben Curtis) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If organizers could script skateboarding’s Olympic debut, they’d likely change very little about what unfolded in Tokyo. Hometown skater Yuto Horigome, who honed his craft on the streets of Tokyo, won the discipline’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/tokyo-olympics-live-updates/2021/07/25/1020382670/japans-own-wins-first-skateboarding-medal-at-tokyo-olympics#:%7E:text=Ezra%20Shaw%2FGetty%20Images%20TOKYO%20%E2%80%94%20In%20the%20neighborhood,air%2C%20sailed%20over%20staircases%20and%20glided%20on%20rails.">inaugural gold medal</a> in the men’s street competition. </p>
<p>The next day, <a href="https://www.nprillinois.org/2021-07-26/japan-is-golden-again-in-skateboarding-at-tokyo-olympics">13-year-old Momiji Nishiya</a> won Japan’s second skateboarding gold, finishing atop the podium in women’s street style to become the nation’s youngest ever Olympic gold medallist and the third youngest in the history of the Games.</p>
<p>And the Japanese domination continued in the women’s park event, when Sakura Yosozumi took the gold and 12-year-old Kokona Hiraki won silver.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The three athletes wave as they stand in the skateboard park with the Tokyo 2020 sign behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414573/original/file-20210804-19-1tdqeyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Silver medallist Kokona Hiraki of Japan, gold medallist Sakura Yosozumi of Japan and bronze medalist Sky Brown of Britain pose during a medals ceremony for the women’s park skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many people may find it strange to see skateboarding in the Olympics. And that’s not a slight on the skill or talent required to compete as an elite skateboarder — it’s strange because of skateboarding’s long history as a counter-cultural activity. </p>
<p>To participate in the Olympics, a sport needs an international federation that adheres to the Olympic Charter. Yet, it’s hard to imagine that some, if not most, skaters don’t scoff at <a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/General/EN-Olympic-Charter.pdf?_ga=2.194823405.1504875107.1627918953-1425222182.1623163457">Rule 1</a>, which lays out the “supreme authority and leadership of the International Olympic Committee.”</p>
<p>What unfolded at Tokyo 2020 is just a small sliver of an activity, typically celebrated and cherished as a form of resistance against mainstream culture. Indeed, in its most basic form, skateboarding is still a quintessentially counter-cultural activity. </p>
<h2>Rooted in resistance</h2>
<p>Skating as we know it today evolved <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Skateboarding_and_the_City/Hb-EDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">primarily in the 1970s and 1980s</a>, when innovators like Mark Gonzales (Street), Rodney Mullen (Street), and Tony Alva (Vert) were experimenting with new ways of using skateboards.</p>
<p>In the mid-1970s, purpose-built skate parks dotted America’s urban landscape. Competitions existed, but there was little money to be made. Skating was about camaraderie, creativity and personal expression.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkpvw/why-skateboarding-should-not-be-an-olympic-sport">2018 article for <em>Vice</em></a>, Cole Nowicki describes skateboarding as an art. Like so much art that came before it, skateboarding stood in opposition to prevailing notions of appropriate leisure and recreation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A skateboarder slides down a staircase railing while the Tokyo Olympic logo is in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414416/original/file-20210803-23-16gdrpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yuto Horigome of Japan competes in his gold medal performance in the men’s street skateboarding at the 2020 Summer Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an America dominated by sports with strict rules and regulations and confined to a stipulated playing field, skateboarding offered beautiful, unstructured freedom. There were no scores. No stadium. No limits. Improvisation was celebrated, not castigated.</p>
<p>There was little money in early professional skateboarding. Competitions paid virtually nothing. Skaters filmed “parts” demonstrating their abilities, hoping to gain a modest sponsorship from industry-specific companies. When John Cardiel was named the 1992 Thrasher Magazine Skater of the Year, for example, he was only <a href="http://www.thepowellmovement.com/listen/2018/6/17/s2-ep25-john-cardiel">earning $500 a month</a> as a professional skateboarder.</p>
<h2>From margin to mainstream</h2>
<p>The popularity of skateboarding eventually caught the attention of folks with deep pockets. In 1995, ESPN staged the first X-Games, encompassing skateboarding and eight other “extreme” sports.</p>
<p>Rather than the typical skate sponsors, <a href="https://www.xgamesmediakit.com/read-me/">the X-Games touted massive brands</a>, including Advil, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, Chevy Trucks, AT&T, Nike and Miller Lite Ice. Although the X-Games placed new eyes on skateboarding, ESPN didn’t make millionaires out of skateboarders. The lifestyle of a professional skater largely remained a struggle to make ends meet.</p>
<p>Skaters first really took notice of the IOC when it staged a hostile takeover of snowboarding for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. As <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7exnq/how-the-olympics-ioc-thirst-for-youth-subculture-steamrolls-the-sports-we-love">Dvora Meyers recently highlighted in <em>Vice</em></a>, the IOC flexed its organizational muscle by rejecting the already established International Snowboarding Federation (ISF) — the group truly responsible for the global spread of the sport — moving snowboarding under the umbrella of the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS). Rival FIS events were staged, forcing snowboarders to choose sides, resulting in the collapse of the IFS in 2002. </p>
<p>After enduring immense hostility from within snowboarding for its treatment of the IFS, the IOC moved rather more carefully when incorporating skateboarding into the 2020 Games. Although it looked like the IOC might hand jurisdiction over skateboarding to the International Roller Sports Federation, a merger with International Skateboarding Federation was ultimately secured, producing the IOC-recognized federation World Skate.</p>
<h2>A mixed response</h2>
<p>The skateboarding community is split over their pastime’s incorporation into the Olympics. In 2016, shortly after the IOC announced that skateboarding was joining the mega event, <em>Thrasher Magazine</em> <a href="https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/skateboarding-in-the-olympics/">reached out to 33 professional skaters</a> for their opinion on the arrival of Olympic Skateboarding. Responses ranged from excitement to revulsion.</p>
<p>For many skaters, competition is an afterthought. Take John Cardiel, for example. Hailed as a legend in the skate subculture, Cardiel was known for his high-speed style and daredevil risks. His reputation evolved on the ground, by seeking out the most challenging and interesting landscapes he could skate. His “part” tapes remain popular and, although he was a sponsored professional, he views skating as something more than a sport. </p>
<p>“To me, skateboarding is all about individuality and originality,” <a href="https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/skateboarding-in-the-olympics/">Cardiel told <em>Thrasher</em></a>. “It has nothing to do with highest, furthest, longest. Skating being an Olympic sport contradicts everything that I believe skateboarding to be.” </p>
<p>Cardiel’s career peaked in the 1990s before skateboarding was thoroughly commercialised via the X-Games and comparable events. But for skaters that rose to prominence in the 2000s, like American Olympian Nyjah Huston, the Olympics is another opportunity to expand the sport.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man skateboarding on a ramp" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414404/original/file-20210803-23-11p3njj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American skateboarder Nyjah Huston competes in the men’s Street Final during an Olympic qualifying skateboard event.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Huston has won 12 X-Games gold medals and four world championships and his view of the Olympics couldn’t be more different than Cardiel’s: “I’m excited about the opportunity to be able to skate in the Olympics! Whether people like it or not, skateboarding is bound to grow into bigger things like this sooner or later. So, in my eyes, it might as well be now.”</p>
<h2>Silver lining</h2>
<p>2017 Vans Park Series World Champion Nora Vasconcellos has spent her young career balancing competition with the more traditional “part” videos that made Cardiel an icon of the sport. Although women skated from the beginning, opportunities have lagged behind the men. Vasconcellos hopes that the Olympics can help improve the lot of female skaters. </p>
<p>“I don’t care because skateboarding will always be skateboarding to me,” Vasconcellos told <em>Thrasher</em>. “If anything, it’s good because as women skaters we now have more contests to go to and travel opportunities. It totally changed snowboarding for the women. Once snowboarding was in the Olympics, women snowboarders were really able to just live off putting out video parts. The more girls who are making a living skateboarding, the more diversity there can be.”</p>
<p>The IOC’s interest in skateboarding, of course, is financial. Like a greedy vampire, it scans the sportscape in search of popular, youthful sports, capable of revitalizing its viewership. It will be up to the athletes to use the creativity, daring, and camaraderie skateboarding is known for to resist from the inside and preserve what they can of the skater subculture, lest the sport and art be separated, forever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MacIntosh Ross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although it’s now an Olympic sport, at its core skateboarding is still a counter-cultural activity that represents creativity, community and personal expression.MacIntosh Ross, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1150722019-05-02T14:28:01Z2019-05-02T14:28:01ZHow LGBTQ people are resisting Bolsonaro’s Brazil through art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268040/original/file-20190408-2905-uukldi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2015%2C1512&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Graffiti commemorating Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco who was shot dead in an apparent assassination.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emanoelle Lima/photo by Catherine McNamara</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil in October 2018 and took office in January 2019. Since then, the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights has chosen to remove the legal protection status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people. Some politicians are now pushing for a ban on talking about <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jair-bolsanaro-brazil-first-day-executive-orders-indigenous-lands-lgbt-privatisation-gun-control-a8709801.html">gender diversity and sexual orientation in schools</a>. </p>
<p>Bathroom laws pertaining to which toilet facilities trans people are allowed to use and bills defining what constitutes a family, same sex marriage and laws enabling trans people to change their legal name are also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/lgbt-rights-under-attack-in-brazil-under-new-far-right-president/2019/02/17/b24e1dcc-1b28-11e9-b8e6-567190c2fd08_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ec95f4d14b08">seen to be under threat</a>.</p>
<p>Brazil has a reputation as one of the most violent countries in the world and is known as the <a href="http://www.rioonwatch.org/?p=37249">LGBT “murder capital”</a> – 167 trans people were <a href="https://transrespect.org/en/tmm-update-trans-day-of-remembrance-2018/">reported murdered</a> between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018 alone. In the lead up to and since Bolsonaro’s election, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45829440">LGBT hate crime has increased</a>. </p>
<p>No wonder that many Brazilian LGBTQ people are <a href="https://medium.com/@henriquemota/brazil-no-heaven-for-lgbt-people-df6d85c15fd1">worried that they are becoming isolated</a> from the rest of the world. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/18/marielle-franco-brazil-favelas-mourn-death-champion">Marielle Franco</a> – a young politician who took a strong stance against police violence – was murdered in Rio de Janeiro in March 2018.</p>
<p>She was a bisexual black woman who grew up in the Maré favela and pushed for social justice for marginalised people in the city. She was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/18/marielle-franco-brazil-favelas-mourn-death-champion">reportedly targeted by professional killers</a>.</p>
<p>In Brazil, military police patrol the streets and are independent from the municipal police who carry out investigations. In March 2019, a year after her murder, it was reported that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47538871">two ex-military police had been arrested</a> for the killing.</p>
<p>Theusa Passareli – a 21-year-old art student who identified as genderqueer or non-binary – was <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Genderqueer-Student-Murdered-and-Burnt-in-Rio-Favela-20180507-0021.html">murdered in April 2018</a>, killed on their way home from a party.</p>
<p>Their work was incomplete in Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janiero’s design studio when I visited in November 2018 and will stay to commemorate their memory, as the university and the trans community mourn the murder of another young person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268039/original/file-20190408-2909-1nfgube.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Resin on glass by Theusa Passareli.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catherine McNamara</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A safe place to protest</h2>
<p>I was in Rio for a short residency with the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/projetotransarte/">TransArte festival</a> – a three day art show that explores gender identity and sexuality. The festival brings together trans people and allies to exchange ideas, make and share work, and celebrate the strengths of the LGBT community in Brazil within a place of safety. </p>
<p>It’s not easy to protest when faced with violence, nor is it easy to <a href="http://escoladeteatromartinspenna.com.br/equipe/">enjoy culture</a> – particularly for people living in poverty where basic needs are difficult to meet. Trans artists have said that <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvewy5/the-acting-course-preparing-trans-stars-for-their-close-up">being trans is a barrier to participating</a> in the arts, but “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569780701825195">safe spaces</a>” such as the TransArte festival allow <a href="https://www.newtactics.org/conversation/cultural-resistance-power-music-and-visual-art-protest">protest art</a> to flourish and create opportunities for LGBTQ people to express themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268038/original/file-20190408-2901-1bicgiy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trans and LGB artists, activists and educators from Rio de Janeiro and London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">TransArte Festival Team</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A theatre company led by trans people created <a href="https://www.kitredstone.com/come-as-you-are">Come As You Are</a> – a series of autobiographical stories with physical theatre and improvisation. The stories were about family – supportive and loving family as a source of strength, and familial rejection as a result of being trans. </p>
<p>They explored life as trans men and women in a culture of toxic masculinity, normativity and police brutality. A photography exhibition of several artists included <a href="http://jornalempoderado.com.br/meuprimeiroabusopolicial-o-relato-de-sobrevivencia-de-bernardo-de-castro-gomes/">Bernardo de Castro Gomes</a>, whose work also explored his identity as a black trans man facing intimidation, harassment and violence. </p>
<p>Queer drag artists such as Le Circo de la Drag spoke about their political performance – using their bodies to resist toxic masculinity and defy the threats of violence they often receive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272202/original/file-20190502-103071-wz0nkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Le Circo de la drag pay tribute to Marielle Franco and Theusa Passareli.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marianna Cartaxo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show <a href="https://medium.com/conta-preta/dandara-vital-eu-sou-feminina-demais-para-interpretar-uma-travesti-e-minha-voz-%C3%A9-grossa-demais-40ce97f1e189">Monster, Whore, Bitch – Waldirene’s Dreams</a>, directed by Dandara Vital, compiled the everyday experiences of Brazilian trans people interwoven with a re-telling of the story of Waldirene – the first trans woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Brazil in December 1971, at the height of the military dictatorship.</p>
<p>Resistance is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/nov/07/brazil-artists-death-threats-censorship-intimidation-jair-bolsonaro">clearly flourishing in Brazil</a> against the odds and not only within festivals like TransArte. A Portuguese translation of <a href="https://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/jo-clifford/">Jo Clifford’s</a> play The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven was due to open in Londrina, a city in southern Brazil, but the venue cancelled at the very last moment.</p>
<p>The lead, a trans woman called Renata Carvalho, received death threats. The company moved to a semi-derelict space where they performed by torchlight instead, despite injunctions from both Pentecostal and Catholic groups to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46551824">stop the production</a>.</p>
<p>My own experiences working with the TransArte festival team in Rio have shown me the value of safe places free from judgement and hostility. The people we worked with told us that being there in solidarity with the trans communities of Rio felt like a powerful action in itself, resisting the culture of violence that thrives in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine McNamara co-founded and is a Trustee for Gendered Intelligence. She received funding from the British Council to support the residency in Brazil. </span></em></p>Violence against LGBTQ people in Brazil is at an all-time high, but artists refuse to be intimidated.Catherine McNamara, Head of School (Art, Design and Performance), Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869102017-11-08T11:19:07Z2017-11-08T11:19:07ZThe magazine that inspired Rolling Stone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193610/original/file-20171107-1055-1k844nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'When you look back on it, where else would those articles appear? The Saturday Evening Post?'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Lehr/The Conversation via flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine has arrived, and not without fanfare. Joe Hagan’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=m4EkDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=sticky%20fingers%20joe%20hagan&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">biography</a> of co-founder Jann Wenner appeared in October to stellar reviews, and earlier this month, HBO aired <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/reviews/tv-review-rolling-stone-stories-from-the-edge-1202607495/">Alex Gibney’s documentary film</a> about the magazine’s history. Wenner’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/business/rolling-stone-magazine-sale.html">announcement</a> that he was planning to sell his company’s stake in Rolling Stone also prompted a flurry of retrospective tributes.</p>
<p>Conceived during the Summer of Love in 1967, Rolling Stone was always a creature of the San Francisco counterculture. From the outset, the magazine touted Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and other San Francisco bands. Well before that, co-founder Ralph J. Gleason was featuring the Haight-Ashbury’s vibrant music scene in his San Francisco Chronicle column. </p>
<p>But Rolling Stone’s identity can also be traced to two other sources: Berkeley’s culture of dissent and Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker. </p>
<p>The Berkeley influence was strong and direct. The magazine’s early staff writers were steeped in Berkeley’s ardent campus activism, and their views on politics, drugs and music informed the magazine’s coverage. Wenner wrote a music column for the student newspaper and covered the free speech movement for a local radio station. Even more significant for Wenner, perhaps, was the example of Gleason, who combined an impressive body of music criticism with public support for student activists. Wenner spent hours at Gleason’s Berkeley home, soaking up his insights on music and journalism.</p>
<p>Rolling Stone’s Berkeley roots were important, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5jf6K9MMcSUC&lpg=PP1&dq=a%20bomb%20in%20every%20issue&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">but the Ramparts influence ran even deeper</a>. Ramparts was by no means a hippie magazine, but its rebellious spirit, flair for publicity and professional design would all leave their mark on Wenner and Gleason’s fledgling magazine. </p>
<h2>A bomb in every issue</h2>
<p>Founded in 1962 as a Catholic literary quarterly, Ramparts initially ran articles by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton">Thomas Merton</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Griffin">John Howard Griffin</a> and other Catholic intellectuals. But when a young Warren Hinckle became editor in 1964, he converted Ramparts into a monthly, shifted its focus to politics and hired Dugald Stermer as art director. </p>
<p>Hinckle also recruited Robert Scheer, a former graduate student at UC Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies, to write about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Scheer and his colleagues challenged U.S. government pronouncements about the war and routinely lampooned the mainstream media’s Vietnam coverage. </p>
<p>Once Hinckle, Stermer and Scheer joined forces, Ramparts achieved liftoff. It adopted a cutting-edge design, forged links to the Black Panther Party, exposed CIA activities and published the diaries of Che Guevara and staff writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldridge_Cleaver">Eldridge Cleaver</a>.</p>
<p>A Ramparts photo-essay, “<a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1967jan-00045">The Children of Vietnam</a>,” persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the war, and the title of a Time magazine article about Ramparts, “<a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,843165,00.html">A Bomb in Every Issue</a>,” described the muckraker’s explosive impact. In 1966, Ramparts earned the George Polk Award for excellence in magazine journalism, and its circulation climbed to almost 250,000. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193600/original/file-20171107-1061-bz4mys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From left to right: Ramparts magazine editor Warren Hinckle, assistant managing editor Sol Stern and writer Robert Scheer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-CA-USA-APHS285245-Editor-Warren-Hin-/a7947b66921a41fcad87291acf32b233/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ramparts also became a seedbed for Rolling Stone. Gleason, who was a contributing editor at Ramparts, secured a job for Wenner at the magazine’s spinoff newspaper, the Sunday Ramparts. While there, Wenner picked up layout ideas from Stermer and encountered the work of Hunter S. Thompson, whose bestselling book about the Hells Angels appeared in 1967. Wenner also learned the value of showmanship from the free-spending Hinckle, who frequently echoed playwright George M. Cohan’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ur3pu3KGNK0C&pg=PA621&lpg=PA621&dq=%22Whatever+you+do,+kid,+always+serve+it+with+a+little+dressing.%22&source=bl&ots=WYuz43fVCl&sig=0UQq8hB9eEwCmBKapqVzzfELtkY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj64eyF4qzXAhVI6CYKHVsNCNIQ6AEINzAD#v=onepage&q=%22Whatever%20you%20do%2C%20kid%2C%20always%20serve%20it%20with%20a%20little%20dressing.%22&f=false">motto</a> “Whatever you do, kid, always serve it with a little dressing.”</p>
<p>Ironically, Hinckle played an indirect role in the creation of Rolling Stone. Gleason had planned to write about the Summer of Love at Ramparts, but Hinckle ran his own cover article, “<a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1967mar-00005?View=PDF">A Social History of the Hippies</a>,” in the March 1967 issue without informing him. A furious Gleason resigned from the magazine, and Wenner lost his job when Hinckle shut down the Sunday Ramparts. That summer, the two men began working on their own publication. By alienating Gleason, laying off Wenner and demonstrating that a “<a href="https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/fall-2009-constant-change/radical-slick">radical slick</a>” had broad appeal, Hinckle cleared the way for Rolling Stone.</p>
<p>Despite reaching a broad audience, Ramparts never stabilized its finances. After running through two private fortunes, it filed for bankruptcy in 1969. Hinckle left to start Scanlan’s Monthly, where he paired Thompson with illustrator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Steadman">Ralph Steadman</a> to cover the Kentucky Derby; <a href="http://www.gonzogallery.com/books/scanlans-monthly-issue-no-4-the-kentucky-derby">that article</a> is now considered the first example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism">gonzo journalism</a>.</p>
<h2>The voice of its generation</h2>
<p>Rolling Stone’s first issue appeared in November 1967, but the magazine didn’t come into its own until 1969. </p>
<p>In December of that year, the notorious Altamont free concert <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-altamont-festival-brings-the-1960s-to-a-violent-end">devolved into lethal chaos</a>. Several Rolling Stone staff writers witnessed the mayhem, much of which was attributed to Hells Angels, but other media outlets missed the story. Gleason insisted that the magazine cover Altamont as if it were World War II, and its “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rolling-stones-disaster-at-altamont-let-it-bleed-19700121">Let It Bleed</a>” issue landed Rolling Stone a National Magazine Award for Specialized Journalism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193602/original/file-20171107-1032-1wqxxm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rolling Stone writer Hunter S. Thompson takes notes while listening to testimony at a trial in West Palm Beach, Flaorida in 1982.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-FL-USA-APHS903-Hunter-S-Thompson/2cee9cc0e04f42819ddc50ef8dbd47c6/2/0">Ray Fairall/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having established itself as “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/how-rolling-stone-shaped-narratives-of-woodstock-altamont-w464690">the voice of its generation</a>,” Rolling Stone continued its ascent. After Scanlan’s tanked in 1971, Wenner recruited Thompson and Steadman, published their most notable work, and turned Thompson into a cultural celebrity. Wenner also hired Annie Liebovitz as the magazine’s chief photographer in 1973. </p>
<p>Gleason <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/04/archives/ralph-j-gleason-jazz-critic-dead-coast-writer-and-editor-58-was.html?_r=0">died of a heart attack in 1975</a>, the same year Ramparts closed its doors for good. Two years later, Rolling Stone decamped for New York City. Although Rolling Stone’s reputation waxed and waned for decades, it retained its ability to break big stories. In 2008, staff writer Matt Taibbi’s political commentary earned Rolling Stone a National Magazine Award, and his <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405">2010 takedown of Goldman Sachs</a> rattled Wall Street. Since then, the magazine has collected two Polk Awards for stories on the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Rolling Stone’s overall record is decidedly mixed. (Consider, for example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html">its misbegotten account</a> of rape culture at the University of Virginia, which appeared in 2014.) But as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5jf6K9MMcSUC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT6&dq=%22When+you+look+back+on+it,+where+else+would+those+articles+appear?+The+Saturday+Evening+Post?%22&source=bl&ots=JX0pQSl92o&sig=45AKsuRsKZvXbwogpVQci9iLIsA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil27GJ7qzXAhVC7CYKHWx7BkcQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22When%20you%20look%20back%20on%20it%2C%20where%20else%20would%20those%20articles%20appear%3F%20The%20Saturday%20Evening%20Post%3F%22&f=false">one Ramparts staff writer observed</a> after that magazine perished, “When you look back on it, where else would those articles appear? The Saturday Evening Post?” </p>
<p>So it is with Rolling Stone: No other rock magazine could have matched its coverage of the Manson family or the Patty Hearst saga. For all its flaws, Rolling Stone accomplished a rare feat. Like Ramparts, it created a distinctive niche in the national media ecology; unlike its precursor, it maintained that niche for five decades.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ramparts started as a Catholic literary magazine. But when Warren Hinckle took the helm, he developed a layout, voice and rebellious spirit that Rolling Stone would go on to mimic.Peter Richardson, Coordinator, American Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866062017-11-01T22:37:17Z2017-11-01T22:37:17ZCrop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192709/original/file-20171031-18693-14unifg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An intricate crop circle spans a diameter of more than 45 metres in a barley field close to Barbury Castle near Wroughton, England, about 130 kilometres west of London, in 2008. The circle is noteworthy for its complexity, representing the first 10 digits of the mathematical constant pi, or 3.141592654.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucy_Pringle_Aerial_Shot_of_Pi_Crop_Circle_-_panoramio.jpg">Lucy Pringle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicaalexander/13-episodes-of-the-x-files-to-watch-this-hallowe-1030w">paranormal mainstream</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike UFOs, ghosts and <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sasquatch-court-bc-1.4375801">sasquatches</a>, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/12/surge-crop-circles-caused-drone-users-police-say/">At least 30 appeared in England last summer</a>. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001. </p>
<p>Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/geography/news-and-events/news-archives/news-2015/20151113-paul-kingsbury-sshrc-grant-awarded.html">my ongoing four-year research project</a>, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.</p>
<p>Recent literature in the social sciences on <a href="http://www.paranormalculturesresearch.com">paranormal cultures</a> argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Co-habiting-with-Ghosts-Knowledge-Experience-Belief-and-the-Domestic/Lipman/p/book/9781409467724">people’s lives</a> in the West.</p>
<p>Because the <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/paranormal">paranormal</a> refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life. </p>
<p>Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream. </p>
<h2>Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific</h2>
<p>Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream. </p>
<p>Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IRdrt8nPyy8?wmode=transparent&start=12" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1990s TV series, <em>The X-Files</em>, which followed FBI agents investigating strange phenomena, has regained popularity and returned to production amid rising interest in the paranormal.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-07-26/scientific-crop-circle-research-held-back-by-ufo-links/7660712">a lack of critical studies</a> on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.</p>
<p>Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cryptid">cryptids</a> such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people’s everyday lives.</p>
<p>My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes. </p>
<h2>Rationality conflicts with crop circles’ mystery</h2>
<p>Crop circle research or “cereology” exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.</p>
<p>No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard’s book <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8468070-discourse-figure">Discourse, Figure</a></em>. </p>
<p>The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192744/original/file-20171031-18700-13qz7po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crop circle enthusiast from Dublin lies on the ground to connect with what he believes are sacred energies in a crop circle in Wiltshire, England, in July.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Paul Kingsbury)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Case in point: Events at the <a href="http://temporarytemples.co.uk/event/summer-lectures-crop-circle-conference-2017">2017 Summer Lectures Crop Circle Conference</a> in Devizes, England, illustrated the difficulty of researching crop circles.</p>
<p>One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: “Crop circle closed.” The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.</p>
<p>Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the “Crop circle closed” sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle. </p>
<p>For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was “calling out” to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred. </p>
<p>The researchers had differing views on whether a “Crop circle closed” sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the “call” of the crop circle.</p>
<p>The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a <a href="http://web.mit.edu/4.299/Students/diop/relevant.html">sacred geometry</a> workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles. </p>
<h2>Interpreting paranormal cultures</h2>
<p>As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles. </p>
<p>Lyotard aligns these events with “figural space” — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery. </p>
<p>Despite claims by “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/crop-circles-the-art-of-the-hoax-2524283/">circle-makers</a>” that they are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10217151/Crop-circles-demystified-how-the-patterns-are-created.html">human-made</a>, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation. </p>
<p>According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers’ questions.</p>
<p>Furthermore, finding and getting to the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/26540-crop-circles.html">crop circles</a> — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.</p>
<p>Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people’s desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Kingsbury receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Crop circles are global phenomena gaining attention as paranormal culture becomes mainstream, along with a hybrid approach that emulates scientific investigation.Paul Kingsbury, Professor, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/841132017-10-09T23:15:47Z2017-10-09T23:15:47Z50 years ago, John and Yoko came to Canada to give peace a chance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189109/original/file-20171006-25749-1t45lwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C2000%2C1392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Dec. 23, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono went to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to meet Pierre Trudeau. The Canadian prime minister was the only world leader to meet with the peace activists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Bregg)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago this Christmas season, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Canada to launch one of the most unique and celebrated counter-cultural protests of the turbulent 1960s.</p>
<p>Lennon and Ono visited Canada several times in 1969, a year when the Vietnam War and the massive demonstrations against it reached new levels of intensity. </p>
<p>The famous Beatle and his new bride <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/12/15/john-lennon-yoko-ono-war-is-over-poster-campaign-launched/">arrived in Toronto on Dec. 15, 1969</a>, as part of the launch of their global “War is Over!” billboard campaign. A few days later, the couple <a href="https://happymag.tv/watch-a-long-lost-interview-where-john-and-yoko-discuss-their-war-is-over-campaign/">sat down with Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan to discuss the billboard initiative</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1107256010773798913"}"></div></p>
<p>And on Dec. 23, Lennon and Ono achieved what seems to have been among their top priorities as the leading peace activists of the era: they met the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau. According to the Beatles Bible website, it was <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/12/23/john-lennon-yoko-ono-meet-canadian-prime-minister-pierre-trudeau/">the only time the couple was able to take their peace campaign directly to a world leader</a>.</p>
<p>Canada was a favourite place for John and Yoko in 1969. During their first visit in the spring of that year, they staged their famous “<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/on-this-day-in-montreal-john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-s-bed-in-1.3602576">Bed-In for Peace</a>” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal, lying down together for eight days in front of the world’s media to publicize their message of peace and, in the middle of it all, <a href="https://youtu.be/OF91o0HenhU">recording their anti-war anthem <em>Give Peace a Chance</em></a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal: Dozens of journalists and celebrities attended, many of whom are mentioned in the lyrics. Lennon and Tommy Smothers on acoustic guitar.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following Montréal, the couple travelled in June to the University of Ottawa, where <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rock-fights-for-gun-control/">student leader Allan Rock hosted them</a>. Rock, Canada’s future United Nations ambassador, then took them in his car on a tour of the city, which included a stop at the prime minister’s official residence. Trudeau, they learned, was not in, but Lennon stood at the doorstep and wrote him a note before he returned to the car and they pulled away.</p>
<p>The second visit took place in September 1969 when Lennon, Ono and a hastily assembled version of the Plastic Ono Band (which for this gig included Eric Clapton) flew at the last minute from London to Toronto to take part in an all-day rock ‘n’ roll festival held at the city’s Varsity Stadium — and produced a <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/john-lennon/albums/live-peace-in-toronto-1969/">live recording</a>. Less than a month earlier, another <a href="http://www.woodstock.com/about/">rock ‘n’ roll festival — at Woodstock</a> in upstate New York — had taken the American youth movement to its highest peak and given it a heady, almost fantastic, sense of its own power and purpose. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono perform in their first public appearance as the Plastic Ono Band, at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium in September 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In their crusade for peace, Lennnon and Ono asked difficult questions, crucially relevant today. </p>
<p>How do we effectively protest against social injustices and war? It’s easy to deplore it. How do we all come together to <em>stop</em> it? Lennon and Ono did not, of course, put an end to violence. But they thought creatively and courageously about uniting people in opposition to it, and their example can inspire us today.</p>
<h2>New hope for peace</h2>
<p>In Europe, Lennon said: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beatles-McLuhan-Understanding-Electric-Age/dp/0810884321">We got a lot of hope from Woodstock</a>.” If so many people could gather together for peace and not war, he said, perhaps counter-cultural forces could actually change the world for the better.</p>
<p>Their Toronto show was a fraction of the size of Woodstock, but Lennon was exhilarated by the experience. He closed his set with the song he most wanted the crowd to hear: <em>Give Peace a Chance</em>.</p>
<p>Almost three months to the day, Lennon and Ono returned to Canada, this time to announce a music festival to take place outside Toronto in the summer of 1970, billed to be far bigger than Woodstock.</p>
<p>The couple had renewed their efforts to meet Trudeau, and formal negotiations between their staff and Trudeau’s office were under way. Other world leaders — including British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and U.S. President Richard Nixon – did not want to know John Lennon. He was the dangerous Beatle, the “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/when-john-lennons-jesus-controversy-turned-ugly-w431153">we are more popular than Jesus</a>” Beatle. </p>
<p>Just a year earlier, he had been convicted on drug possession charges and posed naked with Yoko on the jacket of their <em>Two Virgins</em> album. A month earlier, he had returned his MBE medal to the Queen in yet another snub to “The Establishment.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s 1968 ‘Two Virgins’ LP Sleeve.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of this stopped Trudeau from agreeing to meet him. From a political point of view, of course, Trudeau undoubtedly recognized that posing with one of the most famous rock stars in the world was an opportunity to boost his popularity among younger voters. But it’s also easy to imagine that Lennon’s iconoclasm appealed to Trudeau, and that he saw in Lennon an ally on issues such as effective peace activism and the escalating horrors of the Vietnam War.</p>
<h2>A meeting of the minds</h2>
<p>Lennon and Ono met Trudeau on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. After introductions and a brief photo session, they were ushered into Trudeau’s office. Lennon was nervous when the meeting began but, according to Ono, Trudeau immediately put him at his ease by telling him that he liked his book (<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/in-his-own-write-a-spaniard-in-the-works-by-john-lennon-book-review-all-you-need-is-love-of-wordplay-9920692.html">presumably either <em>In his Own Write</em> from 1964 or <em>A Spaniard in the Works</em> from 1965</a>). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band, Live at Toronto, Varsity Stadium, 1969.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their primary topic of conversation was the Cold War. They agreed mutual trust had to be created so that “disarmament and peaceful diplomatic relations could begin.” Each of them — Trudeau and Lennon — would work “<a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=jrv4ZPlub2UC&rdid=book-jrv4ZPlub2UC&rdot=1&source=gbs_vpt_read&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_viewport">in very different ways toward this goal</a>.”
Although Trudeau was more than 20 years older than Lennon and the two men came from such very different worlds, it was a remarkable meeting of minds, personalities and agendas. The meeting was supposed to last 15 minutes. It lasted 50. </p>
<p>After Lennon and Ono left Trudeau, they met the media. “If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau, there would be peace,” Lennon told them. Later, Trudeau remarked: “<em>Give Peace a Chance</em> has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.”</p>
<p>Nine days later, the 1960s were over and a new decade had begun. Lennon, back in London in January, wrote and recorded <em>Instant Karma!</em>, one of his greatest singles as a solo artist: “Why in the world are we here? / Surely not to live in pain and fear.” By the spring, however, plans for the massive peace concert outside Toronto had collapsed, and soon after Lennon’s life was overtaken by public disputes and personal demons. </p>
<p>Trudeau, meanwhile, entered his third year as prime minister in April, and by autumn, faced the biggest challenge of his political career with <a href="http://historyofrights.ca/history/october-crisis/">the FLQ crisis and the invoking of the War Measures Act</a>. Within a year of their meeting, peace for both Lennon and Trudeau must have seemed further away than ever.</p>
<p>It’s easy to look back on Lennon’s activism and dismiss it as naive, as many did at the time and more have done since. That’s unfair. What Lennon was trying to do was to create hope.</p>
<p>Lennon looked squarely at the violence, misery and abuse that still thrives all around us. He responded with a model of peaceful protest, both on an individual level and in much larger ways, to activate the energies of resistance and to unite the popular with the political. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon, right, and his wife, Yoko Ono, at The Hit Factory, a recording studio in New York on Aug. 22, 1980, four months before the former Beatle was murdered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Sands</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon was a peace activist who died at the hands of an assassin. Three years after Lennon’s death in 1980, Trudeau set out on the final major undertaking of his political career: his “peace initiative.” It was different from Lennon and Ono’s peace mission to Canada, yet it is possible to see in their crusade a precedent for Trudeau’s own initiative. </p>
<p>After visiting several countries on both sides of the Cold War divide, Trudeau brought his peace mission to a close with a speech to the Canadian House of Commons in February 1984. His initiative may not have accomplished all that he had wished. But as he recalled in his 1993 <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau/dp/0771085885">Memoirs</a></em>: “Let it be said that we have lived up to our ideals; and that we have done what we could to lift the shadow of war.” In 1969, and especially in their three visits to Canada, Lennon and Ono, too, did what they could “to lift the shadow of war” and give peace a chance. </p>
<p>With violence raging and political movements of intolerance and isolation gaining so much ground today, we might draw inspiration from their words.</p>
<p>It’s now commonplace for pop icons and political leaders to meet and use their respective positions to champion progressive ideals. Half a century ago, when Trudeau opened his door to Lennon, that was not the case. Their extraordinary meeting marks the first time that a rock hero and a world leader met face to face to discuss the past, the present and the future. Their 50 minutes together highlighted the importance of peace to both men, as well as their shared commitment to raising political consciousness and mobilizing the popular forces of compassion and acceptance. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan interviews John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Toronto in December 1969.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Morrison receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Canada on a peace mission: They met with leaders and asked difficult questions, relevant today. How do we effectively protest against social injustices and war?Robert Morrison, British Academy Global Professor, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804192017-07-04T14:42:20Z2017-07-04T14:42:20ZFrom the margins, reggae in South Africa continues to struggle for human dignity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176593/original/file-20170703-7743-13e9e81.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cape Town reggae artist, Teba Shumba.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tuomas Järvenpää</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anthropologist <a href="http://yfile-archive.news.yorku.ca/2005/11/02/carole-yawney-rastafari-scholar-and-social-activist/">Carole Yawney</a> has documented how on the eve of South Africa’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">first democratic elections</a> in 1994 the African National Congress (ANC) distributed an electoral leaflet in townships with the following <a href="http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/CA/00/40/02/06/00001/PDF.pdf">message</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Greetings I'n'I! … The ANC recognises that Rastas are part and parcel of the oppressed masses. We all know of the important role the international Rasta movement has played in the liberation struggle in bringing to the attention of the world the message of our struggle through music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC was trying to acknowledge and capitalise on the role reggae music and the Rastafarian movement played in the struggle against the apartheid regime. Jamaican reggae was essential in bringing international attention to the South African political struggle.</p>
<p>Jamaican artists addressed their lyrical messages directly to the liberation movements of southern Africa. Some of the most notable examples include <a href="https://genius.com/Peter-tosh-apartheid-lyrics">“Fight Apartheid”</a> (1977) by Peter Tosh, <a href="http://www.songplaces.com/Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe/">“Zimbabwe”</a>(1979) by Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer’s <a href="https://genius.com/Bunny-wailer-botha-the-mosquito-lyrics">“Botha the Mosquito”</a> (1986).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bunny Wailer with his song ‘Botha the Mosquito’, from the album ‘Liberation’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As early as the 1970s young people in South Africa’s townships had adopted Rasta beliefs and reggae music as a part of their anti-establishment counterculture. The first wave of <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/reggae-south-africa">homegrown reggae</a> followed quickly. Artists such <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/carlos-djedje-pioneer-african-reggae">Carlos Djedje</a>, <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/colbert-mukwevho">Colbert Mukwevho</a> and <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/legends-sa-music-lucky-dube">Lucky Dube</a> managed to defy the state censorship. They launched the genre as one of the most popular music styles in the country in the 1980s and early 1990s.</p>
<p>During the second part of the nineties in democratic South Africa, reggae lost much of its former visibility and commercial potential. This was partly because it was so deeply and specifically connected to the struggle years and the protest against apartheid. </p>
<p>Yet, the Rastafarian counterculture continued to hold relevance in marginalised urban settings. Those are the areas where it had initially been rooted back in the 1970s. In this new post-apartheid era, the protest spirit of reggae turned to voice concerns over the socioeconomic inequalities that continued to escalate throughout the 1990s and 2000s.</p>
<p>Reggae and Rastafari are currently <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-14-the-rise-and-of-rastafari">flourishing</a> especially in the Western Cape province and its capital, Cape Town. </p>
<h2>Township reggae circuit</h2>
<p>I first started doing anthropological <a href="http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-2424-7/index_en.html">research</a> on Capetonian reggae in 2013. I assumed somewhat naively that the township reggae circuit of the city would be relatively closed from outsiders, especially from white foreigners like me. But it soon became apparent that I was actually travelling along a well beaten path during my field research. </p>
<p>Reggae musicians held wide social connections to foreign artists, producers and managers across the city as well as across the world. Many were using online platforms to collaborate with individuals, some of whom they had never met.</p>
<p>This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, I’d embarked on the research partly because of the international circulation of South African reggae music. Four years earlier I had become fascinated by Capetonian reggae music in Finland, my home country. There a Finnish reggae band, Suhinators, had released <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Suhinators-Suhinators/release/1764267">an album</a> featuring two Capetonian vocalists, <a href="https://teba.bandcamp.com/">Teba Shumba</a> and <a href="http://www.crosbybolani.com/">Crosby Bolani</a>. </p>
<p>I remember being captivated by their music, particularly their militant lyrical style that seemed exotic and out of the ordinary to me. In Finland reggae music isn’t politicised in similar fashion.</p>
<p>In Cape Town, I learned that this collaboration between Capetonian and Finnish reggae artists wasn’t an isolated case. Teba Shumba also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XgZYFpEm7U">works</a> with a Brazilian music producer, for example. Crosby Bolani further collaborates with hip-hop legend <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dj-krush-mn0000949143">DJ Krush</a>. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/daddy-spencer-1">Daddy Spencer</a> voices <a href="http://segnaledigitale.org/dev/en/albums/digi-signa-013/">tracks</a> with the Italian production team <a href="http://segnaledigitale.org/dev/en/">Segnale Digitale</a>. <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/black-dillinger">Black Dillinger</a> tours European music festivals. These are just a few of the recent intercontinental ventures of Capetonian reggae musicians.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Crosby Bolani collaborating with DJ Krush.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, well-established Capetonian singers <a href="http://gugszoro.weebly.com/">Zoro</a> and <a href="http://vido-reggae.de/">Vido Jelashe</a> emigrated to Europe some years ago, but they still draw from township reality in their lyrical storytelling. </p>
<h2>Street cred via the ghetto</h2>
<p>In fact the lyrical and visual depictions of Cape Town’s ghetto conditions are central in rendering the artists with street credibility in all of these collaborations. In this sense, Capetonian reggae music is a part of a broader musical trend, where the metaphor of the ghetto has become central in the formation of transnational musical connections.</p>
<p>Cultural anthropologist Prof <a href="http://www.uva.nl/profiel/j/a/r.k.jaffe/r.k.jaffe.html">Rivke Jaffe</a> <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01121.x/abstract">states</a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ghetto-based identifications allow the mobilisation of a broader, transnational belonging against the injustice of this immobility, helping to undermine the stigma of poverty and social marginality. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Identification with Rastafarian reggae music and its visual and lyrical narratives has indeed offered South African musicians inclusion in a global story of exclusion and injustice.</p>
<p>Rivke continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ironically, it is the collective frame of immobility… which connects ghetto dwellers worldwide. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This rings true for the Cape Town reggae scene. It’s practically invisible and inaudible in the main music venues of the city where the township audiences are not seen as a lucrative target group. Instead this township scene has formed a vibrant existence in YouTube music videos and in foreign music festivals. </p>
<p>Based on my experience as a researcher it seems that the main political significance of reggae music in general does not lie in its explicitly political lyrics. Instead it’s in the grassroots cultural connection that it has enabled. </p>
<p>Yet the question remains whether these international cultural connections are able to sustain solidarity between marginalised groups of people. Or is South African reggae music, for example, consumed abroad in ways which enforce stereotypes about the “notorious hoods” of the African cities among middle-class white audiences? </p>
<p>In addition, the financial rewards from these collaborations and tours are often very modest or non-existent for South African reggae musicians. </p>
<p>The musicians are very aware of the risk of financial or symbolic exploitation in the international circulation of their music. But what they find worthwhile are the symbolic rewards, such as the possibility to share a festival stage with Jamaican artists. Experiences like these are powerful because they once again grant outside recognition for the struggle for human dignity in South African cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Authors' fieldwork in Cape Town was realized as a part of the research project “Youth Music and the Construction of Social
Subjectivities and Communities in Post-apartheid South Africa” led by Tuulikki Pietilä and based at
the University of Helsinki in the discipline of social and cultural anthropology and funded by the Academy of Finland (grant number 265976).</span></em></p>Reggae in South Africa has lost its visibility and prominence inside the country after apartheid. But local artists have built up extensive international links.Tuomas Järvenpää, Teacher in media culture and communication studies, University of Eastern FinlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/790642017-06-09T13:54:10Z2017-06-09T13:54:10ZHow did the VW camper turn into a £90,000 icon?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172962/original/file-20170608-32312-boxcnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C43%2C2281%2C1455&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fijian_scion/7240459610/in/photolist-c2Pfow-VuhNto-7Kp2bm-8fJebt-7M5FsH-J8R78R-8spcog-5q87xp-dfqfMA-c2Pftd-VxQqVv-ntLwuZ-8kwNWX-ntLE69-qs5DzG-nJta6H-nQiihj-nLxzgP-nsgz4u-nQd4YJ-nDRRfz-nVoaWe-8AmZih-nNjo4W-nJHAHE-ne4oWq-nPphkc-z8f19s-fVfoZ5-nJdKwb-ntHPaY-nt2dLC-nsgzgy-nWjT99-nMWA36-nxShDW-nDWkA5-swrsBn-nhvizo-6fw3tb-nAqUgy-sEWbHJ-nVFj5i-nKyBGC-6j1QCn-nuozXP-ntLEq7-suo31D-nWqwBB-nMj12v">NMK Photography/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Only a handful of cars have ever managed to be considered both cute and cool at the same time. Fewer still acquire the kind of status that makes them sought-after collectors’ pieces in old age. Volkswagen’s original camper van has been firmly in this category for some time, and its position appeared to be confirmed after auctioneers set a top guide price at a <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/3738150/rare-first-generation-of-classic-60s-vw-camper-van-to-sell-for-the-same-price-as-a-brand-new-aston-martin/">record £90,000</a> for a pristine example due for sale.</p>
<p>These days, the VW camper is a ubiquitous feature of festival season or the summer surf scene, but it started life as a direct descendant of that other German classic, the Beetle. It came about only because of a suggestion and accompanying drawings made in 1947 by <a href="http://www.benpon.com/index.php/history">Dutch VW importer Ben Pon</a> which imagined a cargo carrying vehicle or transporter on the chassis of the VW Beetle.</p>
<p>The concept of a small transporter was not new to the world. Europe’s bakers, tradesmen, plumbers, and others had been relying on compact vehicles with around half a ton of load capacity for decades. What was new after the World War II though was the idea of shortening the vehicle as much as possible to make it easier to manoeuvre in European cities, and to maximise cargo space. </p>
<p>VW wasn’t the only manufacturer trying to plug this gap in the market. All delivered an improvement over the long-bonneted, space-inefficient vehicles from before the war, but equally they all still had at least a bit of a “nose” which took up a sizeable portion of the vehicle’s overall length. Even worse, the pug-nosed vehicles built <a href="http://hvanworld.co.uk/">mostly by French companies</a> managed to keep the length in check, but at the expense of driver comfort, pushing their engines in between the front seats to save space.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173140/original/file-20170609-20857-1qs7hnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pug-nosed Citroen H.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sidibousaid/33664136625/in/photolist-ThMuYH-FZxkCm-5BYYQp-9BnSj5-6tFs73-3Lm4Fh-4dDyKF-4LbwK1-3xrHAY-6rXwZg-okSw5F-ne8mDT-54aM2a-czNxnf-cZAiRA-cZAkXs-mRiTW-7MV4hB-hUr1xr-8KshQj-cxuXqA-8JXB8z-ecHeH7-j2JWii-a2KLxE-ppKsfE-5oE8FL-ebeSaS-nx1Pna-ebeNpd-e87JRB-7MZ3Em-77TgY8-bsW73S-5oE8CS-egpfSF-77TpH8-oYFE69-77TiYz-CV38Cp-2usb1p-hXV78F-77XdCG-cZAjR7-oYFW3Y-aK5Rjg-ao16i6-56WvW-Sn7yrB-Kwfi3">Simon Harrod/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Affection</h2>
<p>The VW van – sometimes known as the Type 2 (the Beetle was Type 1) – changed all this by shifting its air-cooled engine to the back altogether, allowing the driver and passenger to enjoy a relatively spacious compartment without much engine noise or engine heat. Driving the Type 2 was, in fact, a surprisingly refined and comparably quiet affair because of this, but also because of the very advanced suspension system VW employed.</p>
<p>This was an independent suspension for all four wheels, adapted from the Beetle. It did away with the crude, rigid axles and leaf springs that made rival vans a punishing experience, and offered road holding and handling that was superior even to some family cars. It might seem a quaintly ramshackle drive by modern comparisons, but the advanced and unconventional technology the van used in the middle of the last century helped build the reputation and customer affection that survives to this day. </p>
<p>Body construction was adaptable, and a large number of different types emerged over time, including delivery vans and micro passenger buses with any number of windows and window configurations. There were pickups, crew cabs with four doors, and, obviously, campers – some with folding roofs or raised roofs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173141/original/file-20170609-20829-1tpexoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a field of its own.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/vdubjoss/">Joss Wickson/Instagram</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This cheap, durable, economical, comfortable vehicle spread all over the world, <a href="https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/productionfigures.php">gaining a following</a> everywhere it went. Its popularity reached the point where VW decided to produce it in more countries, including Australia, Argentina, and Brazil. Production <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/dec/18/last-volkswagen-camper-vans-made-brazil-in-pictures">continued in Latin America</a> well over four decades after production of the Type 2 had ceased in Germany in 1967.</p>
<h2>Counterculture</h2>
<p>No competitor has ever managed to duplicate the factors that made the VW van such a success, or find the secret sauce behind its charisma and desirability.</p>
<p>One key reason for this may well be coincidence. You see, the VW Type 2, in all its guises, became closely associated with the hippie movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and with the progressive intellectual concepts of the time. An image was built that lasts till today. Mention the word “hippie van”, and no one thinks of a Toyota. The image that comes to mind is a flower-adorned VW camper with big eyes, being driven down a coastal highway in California by counterculture types in flared trousers, playing guitars and nursing impossible hairdos on beaches south of San Francisco.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172987/original/file-20170608-6975-dhocq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peace, love and brand loyalty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lulworth-united-kingdom-august-02-german-154668983?src=_ngsWEhHBZ9H_vGuGZ2jUw-1-6">RG-vc/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>VW really lucked out by having a monopoly at the right time as the sole purveyor of friendly-looking, economical campers that were easily recognisable as non-American just when that counterculture movement struck in the US. Friendly people with flowers in their hair began to drive them, live in them, attend open air festivals in them, and generally made them into the vehicle we all associate with the hippie movement to this day.</p>
<p>That combination of simple, wholesome German design and a dope-fuelled, tree-hugging spirit fulfilled some fundamental needs. Many can afford and run a small, reliable, well-engineered vehicle, especially when you can also live in it. Fuel consumption was low by comparison with US trucks at the time, and the possibilities for personalisation and adaptation allowed a break from conformity.</p>
<p>Driving a Type 2 meant being a rebel, and so it came about that the Type 2 spirit remains very much alive and valued among festival goers, middle-class enthusiasts and collectors alike. Whether endorsing a mainstream hippie image actually honours the real hippie founding spirit is a debate for another time, but it doesn’t matter; the vehicle symbolises the philosophy in one handy package, and that’s that.</p>
<p>VW has never quite managed to rekindle the concept; the Type 2 has been a hard act to follow for its maker as well as its rivals. The <a href="https://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/range/transporter-t6?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=vwcv_transporter_model_exact&utm_term=_vw_t6_&mkwid=ssm9ca3Ja%7Cpcrid%7C163889321931%7Cpkw%7Cvw%20t6%7Cpmt%7Ce%7Cpdv%7Cc%7C&gclid=CJHQ35fgsNQCFc0K0wodUQsDeg&mkwid=ssm9ca3Ja_163889321931_vw%20t6_e_c&mtid=vdvv2y1xd0&slid=&product_id=">current version</a> is a refined, quality vehicle but frankly rather dull. Perhaps, though, the next VW to capture the imagination of enthusiasts with £90,000 to spare could come from the new frontier of automotive tech, just as the Type 2 did in its time. No one can fail to see the powerful echoes of the original VW camper in the company’s plans for the ID Buzz – a familiar looking, timely, electric, <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2017/01/11/volkswagen-self-driving-electric-vw-microbus-id-buzz-design-transport/">self-driving van</a> launched earlier this year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Ebbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Auctioneers have put a record price tag on the ultimate symbol of 60s counterculture and vintage nostalgia.Chris Ebbert, Senior Lecturer in Product Design, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/787772017-06-06T14:54:27Z2017-06-06T14:54:27ZSculptures, slides and slavery: a new way of telling Lusophone African stories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172410/original/file-20170606-15219-1m9x2fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ângela Ferreira's 'Wattle and Daub' - performance by Selma Uamusse at 'Old School’, Lisbon in February 2016.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vera Marmelo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Johannesburg Art Gallery is hosting Ângela Ferreira’s solo exhibition, “South Facing”. Ferreira’s work is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism particularly in the Global South. <a href="http://angelaferreira.info/">Ferreira</a> is both artist and academic. With her dual African Portuguese identity Ferreira’s work is rooted in South Africa, Mozambique and Portugal. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to her.</em></p>
<p><strong>You are based in Lisbon. Do you still identify as an African artist?</strong></p>
<p>Mine is a complicated personal story, but not unusual in southern Africa. I was born in Mozambique, studied in Cape Town and hold both Portuguese and South African passports. I am a Luso-South African. My critical roots are very solidly grounded in South Africa, and I presently teach and live in Lisbon. </p>
<p>Yes, I identify as an African artist. My conceptually driven and subtly political practice is not part of the mainstream production in the South African art context of the moment but I would like to believe that I still have something to contribute in this milieu. “South Facing” is a good example of the rich intersections between Mozambique, South Africa and Portugal which I draw from in my work. I intend to pursue my life project of exploring and digging out meaning in this area.</p>
<p><strong>Please tell us about “Wattle and Daub” (2016) which forms part of “South Facing”.</strong></p>
<p>This work evolved as a response to an invitation to devise a new work for performance space called “Old School” in Lisbon. “Old School” is located in an area of the city known as “Poço dos Negros” which means “well of the black people”. Historically it housed the water well which served Lisbon’s black community from the 1700s. At that time most of this community were slaves.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ge5BZjVVKpQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jorge Ben Jor with his song ‘Zumbi’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Wattle and Daub” is based on Jorge Ben Jor’s 1974 song, “Zumbi”. It’s about Brazilian slave escapee communities in their settlement Quilombos, under the leadership of “Zumbi” dos Palmares. Zumbi was a slave escapee himself and led the free slaves from the clutches of the Portuguese slave owners to the mountains where they lived as free communities. </p>
<p>The song’s lyrics describes the scene of a slave auction, ending with hopeful speculation about what will happen when Zumbi arrives. Zumbi has become a symbol of liberation in Brazilian history. The refrain in the song “Angola, Congo, Benguela, Monjolo, Cabinda, Mina, Quiloa, Rebollo” evokes the African origins of the slaves who were up for sale.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/158999995" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The performance of ‘Wattle and Daub’ in Lisbon in 2016.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Wattle and Daub” consists of a projected image of the building of the old slave market in Lagos, Portugal. In the image the building is undergoing renovation and is partially covered up by scaffolding. There is a wattle and daub structure which makes up a freestanding fence in front of the slide projection.</p>
<p>My starting point was an image of the building of the old slave market in Lagos, Algarve – that’s in the south of Portugal. That is the slide that is projected on the wall. I chose to work with an image where the building is partially covered by scaffolding.</p>
<p>In my sculpture I am constructing a new scaffold in front of the slide projection, using a construction technique which would have been common among the slave escapee communities - wattle and daub. The 14 drawings on the wall tell the story of the song, the Lagos slave market building, the sale of slaves both in Portugal and in Brazil, and life in the Quilombos. </p>
<p>The song about Zumbi is then performed through the sculpture as a homage to these escapee slave communities, their leader Zumbi, the Quilombos and Jorge Ben Jor’s celebratory song. The video of the performance is an integral part of the work.</p>
<p><strong>Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s song “Stone Free” is also referenced in “South Facing” – tell us more.</strong></p>
<p>“South Facing” includes a work called “Study for Hendrix/Cullinan Shaft and Underground Cinema (After R Smithson)” (2012), which is part of a larger body work called precisely the same as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jimi-hendrix-mn0000354105">Jimi Hendrix</a>’s song “Stone Free”. This project which was first shown in London at Marlborough Contemporary – it marked the beginning of my investigations into the history of mining.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172269/original/file-20170605-16845-seu91p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ângela Ferreira, Hendrix Cullinan Shaft, (2012), Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Stone Free” links two holes, two spaces, two locations. The Cullinan Diamond Mine, source of one of the largest diamonds ever unearthed, acts as the first reference point for the show. Loaded with symbolic value, mines in South
Africa have always appeared as powerful images of the political and economic structures that they sustained.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RH1Pxi-uJY0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing ‘Stone Free’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second reference point, the Chislehurst Caves in London, are a warren of mines and tunnels that became a site of counter-culture in the 1960s. The caves were an underground music venue. Hendrix, who performed there, is a key figure for the exhibition, bridging not only musical cultures, but also an African-American identity via an adopted home in London, just yards from the gallery. One of his songs lends the show its title.</p>
<p>Although Hendrix was not an openly political figure, his person and his music have come to represent the very embodiment of revolution and liberation. He dramatically revolutionised rock music and the image of the African-American musician. I am led to believe that he left the USA to live in London in order to liberate himself from the set of musical expectations that were usually imposed on black musicians, and which he could not adhere to. </p>
<p>The meaning of the expression of being “stone” free is ambiguous, as are many of Hendrix’s lyrics, but seemed appropriate to point towards artistically and critically conceiving of liberation from the oppressive history of mining, particularly in Africa.</p>
<p><em>The exhibition runs until July 30, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span> Ministério da Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes, University of the Witwatersrand / Wits City Institute, Camões - Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, Camões - Centro Cultural Português (Maputo), Embassy of Portugal in South Africa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian,
City of Joburg, Friends of JAG, Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa,
Business and Arts South Africa</span></em></p>A new art exhibition in Johannesburg mines the rich intersections between Mozambique, South Africa and Portugal.Ângela Ferreira, Lecturer in Fine Arts, Universidade de Lisboa Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725982017-03-07T12:50:28Z2017-03-07T12:50:28ZHow an ancient Egyptian god spurred the rise of Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159184/original/image-20170302-14724-1eu5bim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"Have you seen what @realDonaldTrump just tweeted?!"</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14786581543/">Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump’s presidency is well underway, but many observers are still trying to understand how he won the office in the first place. Plenty of explanations are circulating, from Hillary Clinton’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/20/the-worst-candidate-of-2016/?utm_term=.0b7ae4e11ef3">weaknesses</a> as a candidate to pervasive <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2016/11/hillary-clinton-lost-because-her-gender-and-it-hurts-hell">sexism</a> and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-road-to-victory/507203/">class disenfranchisement</a> in the Rust Belt. But whatever the truth, those who worked tirelessly on behalf of Trump have got what they were after. </p>
<p>A small subset of these campaigners is worth special attention. Not so much because of their political convictions but because of their unrestrained fervour to fulfil an ancient Egyptian prophecy involving Trump, a cartoon frog, and an online counterculture.</p>
<p>The story starts with the infamous online image board 4chan, which has been a weather-vane of internet subculture since its conception in 2003. 4chan is divided into sub-forums about topics ranging from video games and anime to politics. Users communicate largely through memes – images somehow grounded in pop culture and featuring a recurring character, figure or phrase. Around 2010, 4chan users began posting and reposting the image of a cartoon frog, <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog">Pepe</a>. By 2015, his wrinkly, wide-eyed face had become a staple meme within the community.</p>
<p>The sub-forum “/pol/” caters to the internet’s extreme fringe: anarchists, communists, far-right extremists and white supremacists. /pol/ is 4chan’s second most popular sub-forum, and is one of the main forces that set the tone for online fringe political discussion.</p>
<p>Pepe the frog and /pol/ first collided with the outside world in June of 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy for president of the united states. Trump, with his aversion to “political correctness” and penchant for flair and showmanship, was /pol/’s immediate candidate of choice. And so, Pepe the frog was edited to wear a “Make America Great Again” hat, and began appearing in hundreds of Trump-supporting forum posts.</p>
<p>At that very time, an event of religious significance to /pol/ contributors was approaching. </p>
<p>Each post published on 4chan bears an identifying number, assigned consecutively by order of publication. Because of the huge number of posts published every day, this number is practically random. 4chan has an old tradition of users trying to have their posts obtain certain special numbers, known as “gets”. The most precious “gets” are round numbers (such as 1m) or those that repeat all their digits. By October of 2015, /pol/ was approaching its <a href="https://pepethefrogfaith.wordpress.com/">77777777th post</a>, seen to be of particular importance because the number 7 is often associated with good luck and fortune. The post that would “get” that number was sure to gain legendary status within the community.</p>
<p>As it happened, the 77777777th “get” was for the message “Trump will win”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=59&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=59&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=59&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=75&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=75&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159165/original/image-20170302-14709-1wmnpza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=75&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 77777777th post on 4chan’s /pol/ sub-forum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sent /pol/ and the broader 4chan community into paroxysms of amazement and glee. To fulfil this prophecy, the sub-forum started an online campaign in support of Trump. Users on /pol/ believed that the best way they could help Trump’s chances of victory was by creating and spreading pro-Trump internet memes outside of 4chan. They called it the “meme war”: if they could expose regular social media users (“normies”) to as many pro-Trump memes as possible, Trump would forever dominate the online news cycle, giving him a better chance of winning the primaries and maybe even the presidency.</p>
<p>It was from this melting pot that the cult of Kek emerged.</p>
<h2>Hail Trump</h2>
<p>The word “Kek”, originally a Korean onomatopoeia for a raspy laugh, had long been used on 4chan as a replacement for “lol” (laughing out loud). One day, a /pol/ contributor <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cult-of-kek">discovered</a> that Kek is also the name of an ancient Egyptian frog god.</p>
<p>The similarities between Kek and Pepe were striking enough as it was, but Kek also has a female alter ego, or nemesis, that takes the form of a snake. This was quickly taken to symbolise Clinton, a universally reviled character within the /pol/ community. What’s more, to our modern eyes, the hieroglyphs supposedly used to write the name Kek in ancient Egyptian even strongly resemble a man sitting in front of his computer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159163/original/image-20170302-14714-recbo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A user’s collage of Kek/Pepe memes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keklord.png">Prophet of kek999/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of this, incidentally, is simply incorrect. According to an Egyptologist we contacted, Kek – which perhaps fittingly means “darkness” in ancient Egyptian – is not in fact a frog god per se, but rather one of four male Egyptian gods who are usually depicted with frog’s heads. Their female counterparts are depicted with serpentine heads. The hieroglyphs on the frog statuette above actually spell “Heqet”, which is the real name of the Egyptian frog goddess often associated with fertility and procreation.</p>
<p>Historical inaccuracies notwithstanding, this series of coincidences proved too much for the 4chan community to ignore, and the cult of Kek was born. The frog-headed Kek became the father, Pepe the holy spirit, and Trump the son, sent to Earth to fulfil a divine destiny.</p>
<p>Kek’s followers busied themselves disseminating Pepe memes everywhere on the mainstream internet. The Clinton campaign mistakenly attributed their efforts to a Nazi-esque ideology, and <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/donald-trump-pepe-the-frog-and-white-supremacists-an-explainer/">declared</a> Pepe a public enemy – a grave misunderstanding of online counterculture. Until then, Pepe had been a harmless meme on the mainstream internet, with celebrities like Katy Perry retweeting images of him; sudden demonisation by the Clinton campaign endowed the cult with a remarkable legitimacy.</p>
<p>Kek cultists and 4chan’s Trump followers flocked to vote in <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/09/27/trump-online-polls/">online post-debate polls</a>, racking up huge Trump margins. Trump repeatedly cited these results as proof of his debating prowess, although the polls concerned allowed people to vote more than once. This allowed him to present a narrative of unstoppable victory, even in the face of what would normally have been campaign-destroying scandals.</p>
<p>What this saga means for the future role of the internet in political campaigning isn’t yet clear, but a precedent has been set: no matter how bizarre or misinformed, the collective power of tens of thousands of internet cultists appears to works wonders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What connects a cartoon frog, misappropriated mythology and the US’s 45th president?Adrià Salvador Palau, PhD Student in Asset Management, University of CambridgeJon Roozenbeek, PhD Student in Slavonic Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/713112017-01-20T18:09:19Z2017-01-20T18:09:19ZThe Trump era has begun – how can we make sense of it?<p>Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the United States. </p>
<p>The country he will oversee is, to him, a dark and troubled place. In <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/donald-trumps-full-inauguration-speech-transcript-annotated/?utm_term=.410e1e8e4ae6">his first speech as its president</a>, he described a tragedy of “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape”. With a promise to end this “American carnage”, he built up to his signature applause line: “Together, we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together we will make America great again.”</p>
<p>As Trump’s election as president in itself <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-poisoning-and-dividing-america-donald-trump-has-won-an-ugly-victory-68493">makes plain</a>, America is indeed undergoing an excruciatingly painful reinvention. We cannot yet know where it will lead, and making sense of it will be no easy task. The last time America was this confused and disturbed, it spawned a whole cultural project dedicated to simply conveying the reality of what was happening. </p>
<p>Reflecting on the 1960 <a href="http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2021078,00.html">televised debates</a> between presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the novelist Philip Roth <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/writing-american-fiction/">lamented</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of the American reality … The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist … on the TV screen, as a real public image, a political fact, my mind balked at taking [Nixon] in. Whatever else the television debates produced in me, I should like to point out, as a literary curiosity, that they also produced a type of professional envy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sense that reality was outrunning the capacities of writers to represent it was not new, but tellingly articulated by Roth as a challenge occasioned by the growth of televisual media and the transformation of politics into spectacle. His comments indicated something profound and shattering: an epochal shift in the “American reality.” Prescient stuff, given today’s laments about a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-post-truth-era-of-trump-is-just-what-nietzsche-predicted-69093">post-truth</a>” society.</p>
<h2>Superman comes to the supermarket</h2>
<p>It is not coincidental that Roth was writing at the start of a period of intense social and political unrest in the US. As he pilloried many contemporary American writers for failing to respond to this epochal change, he noted one exception: “There is Norman Mailer. And he is an interesting example, I think, of one in whom our era has provoked such a magnificent disgust that dealing with it in fiction has almost come to seem, for him, beside the point.” </p>
<p>Sure enough, Mailer helped fashion a “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1972/05/notes-on-the-new-journalism/376276/">new journalism</a>” that could cope with the emerging society of the spectacle in the 1960s. In his 1960 essay on Kennedy’s election campaign, <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/">Superman Comes to the Supermarket</a>, Mailer described the president-to-be as an “existential hero” who could tap into the drives that roil the national unconscious. This reflected Mailer’s very particular vision of American history:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics, which is concrete, factual, practical, and unbelievably dull … and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153670/original/image-20170120-5254-169fn2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Style and substance, in balance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_John_F._Kennedy_and_First_Lady_Jacqueline_Kennedy_Arrive_at_Inaugural_Ball.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Kennedy, Mailer saw someone who could fuse these historical currents and potentially renew the nation: “Only a hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation.” To be sure, he recognised the dangers in celebrating a “superman” as leader, but reckoned Kennedy struck the right balance between rational substance and romantic style.</p>
<p>Later, with his hero assassinated in Dallas and the decade descending into protest and chaos, Mailer became a more jaundiced witness, if no less engaged. In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html">The Armies of the Night</a>, his account of the <a href="https://www.usmarshals.gov/history/civilian/1967b.htm">1967 march on the Pentagon</a> by legions of protesters, he argued that the US had entered the “crazy house of history,” reflecting the growing absurdity of events in late 1960s America. Yet he was smitten by the “idea of a revolution which preceded ideology.” </p>
<p>In the carnivalesque figures of the protesters he saw a flicker of existential promise:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were close to being assembled from all the intersections between history and the comic books, between legend and television, the Biblical archetypes and the movies … the aesthetic at last was in the politics – the dress ball was going into battle.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153652/original/image-20170120-5251-b382il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The March on the Pentagon, 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_Reactions,_The_March_on_the_Pentagon_-_NARA_-_192605.tif">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was to be a last hurrah for a counter-cultural politics that foundered on the mediocrity of the American mainstream. The centre held, just. Mailer’s perspective may have been perversely romantic, but this was also its power as a dissenting vision, attuned to “the dream life of the nation.”</p>
<h2>Celebrity comes to the White House</h2>
<p>American reality now seems to be undergoing another seismic shift, again in sync with a cycle of violence and civil unrest. And once again, reality appears to be outrunning American writers as they struggle to explain it, to make it credible. Step forward another Übermensch. Is Trump an existential hero in the mode Mailer described? And if he really is someone “who reveals the character of the country to itself”, what does he reveal about the character of the US today? </p>
<p>Trump has channelled the discontents of the nation, and tapped into angers and resentments that are more than political. He dares to say what should not be said, shocking the political and cultural elites, speaking to and for the “real Americans” in their language, giving voice to their inarticulate anger and thwarted dreams. He eschews the discourse of decency and decorum, bragging that he has “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/03/politics/donald-trump-small-hands-marco-rubio/">no problem</a>” with the size of his penis.</p>
<p>Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” is in some part an articulation and legitimisation of what has been disavowed in the making of a liberal democracy. He promises national renewal, but not the progressive, forward-looking renewal promised by Kennedy. Instead, he offers a regressive, <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-slogan-betrays-a-renewed-political-fixation-on-the-past-66470">backward-looking</a> nationalism.</p>
<p>For Mailer, Kennedy’s heroism was inherent in his ability to balance glamorous style with political substance. Trump displays no such ability – he displays an excess of style and a deficit of substance. His heroism, such as it is, marks a new stage in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/rock-star-tv-icon-president-but-what-is-donald-trump-67978">aestheticisation of politics</a>, in which entertainment and political life have converged as never before.</p>
<p>Trump’s celebrity is the lifeblood of his appeal. He astutely understands his currency as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/apr/22/trump-im-gonna-be-so-presidential-that-you-people-will-be-so-bored-video">performer</a> – “I will be so presidential”, he promised – and as a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2015/12/02/what-art-of-the-deal-tells-us-about-donald-trump-and-his-tax-views/&refURL=https://www.google.ie/&referrer=https://www.google.ie/">producer</a> – “I play to people’s fantasies … I call it truthful hyperbole”.</p>
<p>Trump is the superman unleashed as celebrity phantasm, a figure of libidinal enjoyment who leeringly embodies the obscene underside of liberal democracy. And as was his campaign, so his presidency will be shadowed by neo-fascist subtexts and authoritarian tendencies. Witness his convictions that “at the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America”, and that “we all bleed the same red blood of patriots”. </p>
<p>As in the 1960s, today’s cultural and political turmoil is playing out in struggles over identity, representation and recognition – but in a more profound sense, the American reality itself has changed. This is not identity politics as we knew it; this is the politics of “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/191795?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">wounded attachments</a>”, resentment and grievance, the politics of all-or-nothing.</p>
<p>Trump’s gift for seizing attention and peddling fantasy plugs him into the zeitgeist and bemuses those who believe lies should have consequences. For many liberal, educated Americans, Trump’s political ascension is a confusing assault on their sense of reality. For writers and intellectuals it is an affront to their abilities, à la Roth, to make credible the new American reality. </p>
<p>Maybe this new reality will find or produce its own Mailer. I hope whoever it is shares that writer’s “magnificent disgust.” Even as Trump was driven to his inauguration, legions of protesters gathered in the city, across the US, and beyond. Perhaps new armies of the night are stirring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Kennedy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump will preside over a new American reality as it takes shape. How can we understand it?Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies, University College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/693902017-01-06T12:27:57Z2017-01-06T12:27:57ZNew globalism: a counterculture that could redraw the world map<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151733/original/image-20170104-18650-ei5i8.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattimattila/5961251984/">Matti Mattila</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past few decades, globalisation has been the status quo. Advancements in communication and transport technology have made the world far smaller than it once was, and governments and businesses everywhere have long since sought to make this notion profitable. This has manifested in free-trade agreements, economic and political unions and, in Europe, the unprecedented common citizenship of 500m people across 28 countries.</p>
<p>But after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/eu-referendum-2016">Brexit</a> vote, after Donald Trump’s victory, and with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-marine-le-pen-could-become-the-next-french-president-68765">Marine Le Pen’s</a> French presidential campaign on the horizon, globalised nations are finding themselves divided down the middle on ideological lines. So entrenched are the beliefs on each side of the divide that they invoke a counterculture of their own, threatening to spurn the society they once shared.</p>
<p>In 1996, political scientist <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/clashofcivilizations.htm">Samuel Huntington</a> hypothesised that identity politics would become the fulcrum of global conflict. He described the fundamental bonds of nation as “history, language, culture, tradition and, most importantly, religion”. For him, these characteristics bind nations together above all, and do so in opposition to those on the outside.</p>
<p>Huntington foresaw a heightened awareness of cultural differences as a result of globalisation. Regional cultures, he predicted, would see their own identity through differences with their neighbours. Detractors of Huntington, such as economist Amartya Sen, warned that such a homogenised view of cultural groups was a mistake as most valued diversity as a defining characteristic. In reality, they were both correct. But not entirely.</p>
<h2>New priorities</h2>
<p>Language, culture, tradition and religion are no longer enough to bind the regions of the Western world. There has been a markedly political transformation. Identity within Western culture has unravelled into a question of how outsiders are, or should be, viewed. Working-class voters, traditionally the base of social democratic parties, are turning towards the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/immigration-dominating-brexit-debate_us_576034dbe4b053d433066561">anti-immigration populism</a> of the right. This in itself is nothing new, but for the first time traditional notions of “left” and “right” are being replaced. In the US, it’s <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21702750-farewell-left-versus-right-contest-matters-now-open-against-closed-new">for or against</a> the Mexican wall. In the UK, it’s <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/12/has-brexit-indyref-changed-political-axis-leave-vs-remain">“Remain” or “Leave”</a>.</p>
<p>On the other side of the aisle, globalists are equally determined to preserve a common citizenship. Luxembourg MEP Charles Goerens, for example, proposed that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/eu-brexit-associate-citizenship-member-states-theresa-may-freedom-of-movement-a7415936.html">“associate” EU citizenship</a> could allow citizens of former member states to opt-in voluntarily. Here, a new kind of transnational citizenship would be on offer – one that would be invulnerable to the whims of nation-state isolationism.</p>
<h2>Division and union</h2>
<p>The existing geography of nationhood then, at least in terms of nation-state unions, is under pressure from both globalists and anti-globalists simultaneously. Right-wing <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/the-netherlands-mark-rutte-tries-to-keep-a-lid-on-nexit-brexit-eu-jan-roos-geert-wilders/">populist movements</a> in Europe are pushing for more countries to leave the EU, while the UK wrestles with internal disputes. It’s not just the familiar spectres of regional nationalism that threaten to dismantle the UK now either.</p>
<p>In London, city mayor Sadiq Khan wants a “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sadiq-khan-says-plans-for-post-brexit-london-work-permits-are-being-discussed-with-the-government-a7334176.html">London work permit</a>” to sidestep the EU immigration restrictions that look to become an inevitable part of Brexit. There are even murmurings of a full <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-latest-london-independence-time-to-leave-uk-eu-referendum-sadiq-khan-boris-johnson-a7100601.html">London independence</a> movement. In the US the notion of <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/22/calexit-supporters-for-california-to-secede-take-first-steps-report.html">Californian independence</a> (“Calexit”) has been gaining traction since the election of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>While right-wing populists seek to destroy the globalised world in pursuit of a traditional nationalism, these new independence movements seek to do the opposite: to liberate themselves from their historical identity in order to forge worldwide relationships.</p>
<p>Herein lies a striking similarity between the music subcultures I study and current geopolitical trends. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/2821">Scholars</a> in my own field have found that music lovers – goths, for example – can feel they have more in common with other members of their musical subculture, even if they live thousands of miles away, than with people in their geographical community. </p>
<p>In the same sense, internationalism has become a subcultural identity. A social democrat in the UK is likely to have more in common with a social democrat in France or Germany than with a nationalist in their home town. The prospect of individual EU citizenship (which seems <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-citizenship-keep-freedom-of-movement-guy-verhofstadt-chief-negotiator-opt-in-passports-a7465271.html">increasingly possible</a>), alongside desperate attempts for British citizens to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/19/huge-increase-britons-seeking-citizenship-eu-states-brexit-looms">seek citizenship</a> in other EU states, is proof of this. Irish passport applications <a href="http://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/heres-how-many-people-applied-11714306">doubled overnight</a> after the Brexit vote, while Trump’s election saw the Canadian immigration homepage <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/10/100000-americans-crashed-canadian-immigration-site/93587034/">crash</a>.</p>
<p>Globalisation may have paved the way for the populist right to flourish in response but, in opening up the world through technology, the barriers of geography have been diminished permanently.</p>
<h2>After the end</h2>
<p>As Trump’s election was assured, Florian Philippot, the vice-president of Le Pen’s Front National, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-president-us-election-result-front-national-marine-le-pen-jean-marie-far-right-world-a7406426.html">tweeted</a>: “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built.”</p>
<p>This is momentarily true for the physical world, in the form of existing governmental power structures. But the ideological sphere of internationalism is still intact. Imagine a world, within our lifetime, in which the people of California, Scotland, Catalonia, London, and Berlin shared free movement and common citizenship, but where visas were required to visit Florida or Plymouth. Once, not too long ago, such an idea would have been absurd, but no more – we have already witnessed the unimaginable. Is the possibility of a world map shaped by ideological nationhood so extraordinary?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rio Goldhammer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Imagine a world in which the people of California and London shared common citizenship but needed a visa to go to Florida or Cornwall.Rio Goldhammer, Doctoral Researcher in Leisure Studies, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648812016-09-05T20:11:12Z2016-09-05T20:11:12ZWith energy, ideas and cheek to spare, Richard Neville was the boy of OZ<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136554/original/image-20160905-10501-vqd67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pages one and two of issue 31 of OZ magazine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">UPS via Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week saw the passing of Sydney-born Richard Neville – Australian <em>enfant terrible</em> of the 1960s, editor of OZ magazine (published from 1963-73) and leading spokesperson for the counterculture. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136549/original/image-20160905-25189-1mn5y4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Issue one of OZ. (Click to enlarge.)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In looking at Neville’s life, both in regards to his writing and more importantly his activism and public eloquence, his impact on the counterculture movement is clear, and the times were indeed a-changing, as Bob Dylan proclaimed in 1963. </p>
<p>In the early 1960s, a new tension was arising between conservative norms and a generation of students and disillusioned youth who challenged the status quo. As an arts student at the University of New South Wales, Neville became the features editor of the student newspaper, Tharunka, where he gained a reputation for inciting controversy and developing pranks against the university’s vice-chancellor. </p>
<p>Just a few short years later, Neville suggested the idea for a new magazine.</p>
<p>OZ first hit the streets of Sydney on April Fool’s Day 1963, after Neville and a group of friends had informally founded OZ at his family’s Mosman home. OZ courted controversy from issue one, in its merciless satire of the conservative establishment, and for raising issues considered immoral or taboo, such as abortion and sex. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136548/original/image-20160905-25171-1yk5lbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Issue six of OZ. (Click to enlarge.)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 1964, Neville and his co-editors Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh narrowly escaped jail terms for charges of obscenity arising from the cover of OZ issue six, which shows the editors pretending to urinate in the recently unveiled Tom Bass sculpture on the P&O building in Sydney.</p>
<p>The 1960s were the beginning of a radical shift in Western society, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. </p>
<p>The anti-war movement, an explosion in recreational drug use, sexual liberation, human rights, freedom of speech, the lessening of censorship, lampooning of politicians and the political process, music, the environment, and adoption of alternative lifestyles; these matters took hold of Neville and his generation as he was let loose in London at the height of the “swinging sixties”.</p>
<p>In 1967 the London-based OZ was launched in Hyde Park. He wrote of the event: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new OZ, shimmering gold in its karma-sutra gate fold and celebrating free love and spiritual alternatives, matches the mood of the moment. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Supported by friends such as the artist Martin Sharp, Neville was able to turn OZ magazine into an international beacon of the underground counterculture movement, much to the consternation of the authorities. The subsequent OZ trial in 1971 – again for obscenity – took its toll on Neville and fellow editors Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis. </p>
<p>Although the flame of energetic opposition to conservative norms was diminished, it was never extinguished. Upon his return to Australia after 1972 he met his partner Julie Clarke and turned his life to writing, often promoting the counterculture as many of its elements were adopted by mainstream culture.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136552/original/image-20160905-10541-1e1brpm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Issue four of OZ. (Click to enlarge.) zoomable=</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After several years based in New York writing for The New York Times and other prominent magazines, Neville and Clarke returned to Australia and moved to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. </p>
<p>The ideas he was attacked for in the 1960s – from championing solar power to talking openly about sex – gradually crept into the national discourse. </p>
<p>Unlike many of his counterculture contemporaries, he wanted to improve capitalist and democratic systems, not smash them. He shaped a new career as a “futurist”: someone who promoted forward-looking alternatives to outdated conventions, from environmental business practices to how the dole supports the arts. </p>
<p>Neville’s original thinking and creative capacity opened new channels for him, making regular appearances on the Mike Walsh Show in the 1980s. He used this rather conservative platform to continue to challenge Australia’s conservative standard – although his very presence was a sign they was starting to change. </p>
<p>Neville was very much of his time, whether it be the smart-alec university student of the early 1960s who launched OZ Sydney; the drug smoking, long-haired hippie of London and the OZ trial during the late ‘60s and early '70s; through to the family man, writer and public speaker of the '80s and '90s. All his manifestations revealed Neville as a Peter Pan-like figure, full of energy, enthusiasm and cheek. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136545/original/image-20160905-25156-9nzcqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Wollongong</span></span>
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<p>He played an especially significant role in the cultural transformation of Australian society during an extended period of upheaval from the early 60s through to the late 70s. Much of his activity was recorded in his 1995 autobiography <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12123428">Hippie Hippie Shake</a>, edited with the help of his old London OZ co-editor Jim Anderson.</p>
<p>In recent years he had retired to a quiet life with his wife Julie in his Blue Mountains retreat. When the University of Wollongong approached him in 2014 with the proposal to digitise OZ magazine and making it available to students, researchers and the general public, he approached the topic with his usual enthusiasm. </p>
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<p>In an interview the following year he reflected on the significance of OZ and his role on the edge. There was a toll – a number of legal trials, time in a London prison – but there was never any backing away from the importance of questioning the Establishment, putting its activities under a critical spotlight, and using satire to withering effect. </p>
<p>Richard Neville’s death in some ways marks the end of the transformative 1960s. Half a century later much of the spirit of the '60s lives on all around us, though we may be unaware of the debt we owe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Richard Neville was a man of his times: a smart-alec student in the 60s; a drug-smoking hippie on trial in the 70s; to a family man, writer and public speaker in the 80s and 90s.Rebecca Daly, Associate Director, Collections & Scholarly Communications, University of WollongongMichael Organ, Manager Repository Services, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.