Beat generation

The term beat generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: "This is the beat generation"). The adjective "beat" (introduced by Herbert Huncke) had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out", but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat".

The Beatnik Stereotype

:Beatnik redirects here. There is also a Beatnik programming language.

Related Topics:
Beatnik - Beatnik programming language

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The term Beatnik was coined by Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958 as a derogatory term, a reference to the Russian satellite Sputnik, which managed to suggest that the beats were (1) "way out there" and (2) pro-Communist. This term stuck and became the popular label associated with a new stereotype of men with goatees and berets playing bongos while women wearing black leotards dance.

Related Topics:
Herb Caen - San Francisco Chronicle - 1958 - Sputnik - Communist - Goatee - Beret - Bongos

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A classic example of the beatnik image is the character Maynard G. Krebs played by Bob Denver on the Dobie Gillis television show that ran from 1959 to 1963. The general beat stereotype also owed something to some of the popular film actors emerging during the early and mid 1950s (for instance, Marlon Brando and James Dean) who had youthful, adventurous, "rebel" images. A sensationalist Hollywood interpretation of the sub-culture can be seen in the 1959 film The Beat Generation.

Related Topics:
Maynard G. Krebs - Bob Denver - Dobie Gillis - 1959 - 1963 - Marlon Brando - James Dean - 1959 - The Beat Generation

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A more recent example of this stereotype can be seen in the cartoon, Doug: Doug's sister, Judy, dresses and talks in the manner of a beatnik.

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