C
next decade. In 1953, 20th Century Fox introduced CinemaScope, which pro-
jected a wide-angle image on a broad screen. The industry also tried novelty fea-
tures: Smell-O-Vision and Aroma-Rama piped smells into the theaters to coincide
with events shown on the screen. Three-dimensional images, viewed through spe-
cial glasses supplied by the theaters, appeared to leap into the audience.
A Subculture Emerges
Although the mass media found a wide audience for their portrayals of mostly
white popular culture, dissenting voices rang out throughout the 1950s. The mes-
sages of the beat movement in literature, and of rock ‘n’ roll in music, clashed
with the tidy suburban view of life and set the stage for the counterculture that
would burst forth in the late 1960s.
THE BEAT MOVEMENT
Centered in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York
City’s Greenwich Village, the beat movement expressed the social and literary
nonconformity of artists, poets, and writers. The word beat originally meant
“weary” but came to refer as well to a musical beat.
Followers of this movement, called beats or beatniks, lived nonconformist
lives. They tended to shun regular work and sought a higher consciousness
through Zen Buddhism, music, and, sometimes, drugs.
Many beat poets and writers believed in imposing as little structure as
possible on their artistic works, which often had a free, open form. They
read their poetry aloud in coffeehouses and other gathering places. Works
that capture the essence of this era include Allen Ginsberg’s long, free-
verse poem, Howl, published in 1956, and Jack Kerouac’s novel of the
movement, On the Road, published in 1957. This novel describes a nomadic
search across America for authentic experiences, people, and values.
A PERSONAL VOICE JACK KEROUAC
“ [T]he only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who never yawn or say
a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman
candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
”
—On the Road
Many mainstream Americans found this lifestyle less enchanting. Look mag-
azine proclaimed, “There’s nothing really new about the beat philosophy. It con-
sists merely of the average American’s value scale—turned inside out. The goals of
the Beat are not watching TV, not wearing gray flannel, not owning a home in the
suburbs, and especially—not working.” Nonetheless, the beatnik attitudes, way of
life, and literature attracted the attention of the media and fired the imaginations
of many college students.
African Americans and Rock ‘n’ Roll
While beats expressed themselves in unstructured literature, musicians in the 1950s
added electronic instruments to traditional blues music, creating rhythm and blues.
In 1951, a Cleveland, Ohio, radio disc jockey named Alan Freed was among the
first to play the music. This audience was mostly white but the music usually was
produced by African-American musicians. Freed’s listeners responded enthusiasti-
cally, and Freed began promoting the new music that grew out of rhythm and
blues and country and pop. He called the music rock ‘n’ roll, a name that has
come to mean music that’s both black and white—music that is American.
The Postwar Boom 861
D
C. Answer They
concentrated on
what they did
best—local
news, weather,
and music pro-
gramming on
radio; size,
color, and
stereophonic
sound in movies.
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
C
Summarizing
How did radio
and movies
maintain their
appeal in the
1950s?
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
D
Analyzing
Causes
Why do you
think many young
Americans were
attracted to the
beat movement?
▼
Novelist Jack
Kerouac’s On the
Road, published in
1957, sold over
500,000 copies.
D. Answer
Teenagers look-
ing for alterna-
tives to the
conformity and
consumerism of
their parents
found a cele-
bration of
poverty, uncon-
formity, and art
that reflected
im-mediate sen-
sory experience.
