C-CS

Counter-Cultural Configurations

ABSTRACT

Configurations enable cultures. Various cultural institutions promulgate configurations. The TV and film industries are particularly important sources of cultural configurations. Cultures regulate the behavior of their members by showing what are acceptable and and unacceptable practices. However, institutions can produce desires in their audiences. Mainstream cultures are invariably opposed by counter-cultures. Their opposition results in culture wars. On the concepts "good" & "bad." Culture wars end when the victorious culture removes the opposing culture by wiping it out or by incorporating it in a modified form.

Configurations enable cultures

A culture is primarily a way of living, a set of practices which are inculcated in the members of that culture by the institutions which authorize them on the basis of the beliefs that constitute the authorizing institution.

Raymond Williams identifies three common meanings of the term, "culture": 1 "a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development"; 2 "a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group"; 3 "the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity" --the "most widespread use" (from Raymond Williams's Keywords, 80). We can combine William's sense into the complex definition of CULTURE AS "A PARTICULAR WAY OF LIFE, WHETHER OF A PEOPLE, A PERIOD OR A GROUP" IN WHICH "THE WORKS AND PRACTICES OF INTELLECTUAL AND ESPECIALLY ARTISTIC ACTIVITY" FORM "A GENERAL PROCESS OF INTELLECTUAL, SPIRITUAL, AND AESTHETIC DEVELOPMENT."

Thus, cultures are made up, in large measure, of configurations. They establish and maintain our cultural institutions.

[Configurations enable cultures] [Cultural institutions promulgate configurations[
[Cultures regulate the behavior] [Institutions produce desires] [Counter-cultures]
[Culture wars] ["good" & "bad."] [How Culture wars end]

Various cultural institutions promulgate configurations

Take getting married as an instance of a cultural practice central to the specificity of a particular culture. The marriage ceremony ritual is authorized by the institution of marriage (as a religious or civil service) which is founded and maintained on the basis of a beliefs like monogamy, incest taboos, and so forth. Thus you have a ritual, which establishes a custom as legitimate. The legitimacy of this ritualized custom is maintained by the threat of punishment--being demoted in the social order of things.

Another example is our legal system. This cultural institution is identified with "courts of law" and the various practices associated with trial procedures. Beliefs in our legal system are configured in various court room films and TV shows. Perry Mason and Matlock are configurations of our legal system. So is Law and Order.

Cultures regulate the behavior of their members by showing what is acceptable and what is unacceptable

In Ken Burn's production, the War, one of the motifs in the early episodes recounts the difficulties in turning civilians who believed that killing another person was wrong into soldiers who turned killing into an "art form." As one of the survivor's of the invasion of Guadalcanal recalls, he found it hard to kill another person until he saw some of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers. After that, he remarks, I began to kill Japs. I hunted them.

Configuring Japanese soldiers as "little monkeys" who were bestial and dangerous threats to human life and decency, a tactic in films such as Bataan, changed the beliefs of men who previously thought it wrong to kill another human being. As one American soldier says, "But we're not killing men, we're killing animals."

Though this example is an extreme case, configurations do influence behavior. The life of Christ, air Jordan, Rocky Balboa or Rambo, provide patterns of behavior that are imitated by the persons who identify with these figures.

Institutions can produce desires in their audiences

Under normal conditions the configurations of our cultural practices re-produce practices that have a long-standing status in a culture. However, advertisers have discovered that it is not only possible to use existing desires to sell products but also possible to create desires for something completely new by associating it with well established motives.

Commercials are configurations of "displaced" desire. Taking a normal motive (affiliation, accomplishment), ads suggest that the way to intimacy or success is by means of their products. For the ad to be effective, the viewer has to identify with the person in the ad who appears to be on the way to intimacy, success, power, or gratification.

Mainstream cultures are opposed by counter-cultures

Mainstream culture and its institutions have an array of configurations that maintain them by acculturating persons to the practices they require. The army needs killers and it trains persons to kill by configuring enemies as "killable" beings, usually by depicting them as inhuman beasts. Businesses need reliable and docile workers and supplies models of behavior that persons must imitate if they wish to be successful in business--wear suits and ties, be prompt, be informed, work overtime, etc. Mainstream cultures invariably inspire counter-cultures.

One of the most interesting examples of the relations between mainstream culture and counter-culture is the rise and importance of "exploitation" films. In the 1940s and early 1950s, a production code was enforced for pictures coming out of the Hollywood studio system. By the late 1950s television was cutting into the profits of major American film producers. As a result, producers loosened the moral standards of the codes and began producing films about very controversial subjects:

fornication (From the Terrace), adultery (Portrait in Black), incest (The Last Sunset), prostitution (Let No Man Write My Epitaph), pimping (Girl of the Night), nymphomania (The Fugitive Kind), voyeurism (The Bramble Bush), frigidity (Two Loves), rape (Sanctuary), homosexuality (Tea and Sympathy), cannibalism (Suddenly Last Summer), abortion (The Best of Everything) and necrophilia (Psycho). (Internet source no longer available.)

These subjects were treated as serious dramas. However, the looser standards and the pressure of profit margins soon resulted in a more sensationalist mode. Exacerbating Hollywood's problems was the emergence of independent film companies who were producing films at a fraction of the cost of major productions. To compensate for the lack of quality production, the independent studios exploited the attraction that sex, violence, and stereotypes held for many people, in particular younger audiences who quickly became the main movie-going audience. American Inter-national Pictures (AIP), the largest independent film maker, lead the way, specializing in "sensational horror and science fiction films."

The classic, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, was made for less than $125,000 but grossed $2 million and caused traffic jams at drive-in theaters. The pictures themselves hardly matched up to their lurid advertising campaigns; the monster in It Conquered the World, for example, is a laughably oversized turnip with crablike arms. But what these films lacked in plot, characterization and special effects they made up for in visual impact, featuring what were for the time trenchant sexual, violent and horrific images. AIP also released black-humor pictures, A Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960), and a series based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Gangster films like Machine Gun Kelly and I Mobster (both 1958) and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) predated the graphic violence of Bonnie and Clyde. (Internet source no longer available.)

Roger Corman was AIP's main producer who gathered together a stable of young directors and actors who recognized that working for AIP provided a much better opportunity than trying to make their way in the old boy networks of Hollywood. In the 1960's Corman, taking advantage of what has been termed, "the youth rebellion," produced two counter-cultural films that not only generated enormous controversy but also enormous profits. The Wild Angels was a biker film that used actual bikers (Hell's Angels) with professional actors mixed in (Peter Fonda). The second was The Trip, which a reviewer claimed was "an "hour-and-half commercial for LSD."

... but Variety recognized its youthful appeal: "As a far-out, free-floating LSD freak-out, 'The Trip' should provide enough psychedelic jolts, sex-sational scenes and mind-blowing montages and optical effects to prove a box office magnet for the youth market." (Internet source no longer available.)

The Trip and The Wild Angels were the immediate precursor's of Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda and Denis Hooper. The AIP formulaic plot, as developed by Roger Corman--featuring sex, violence, fast action, and humor--was quickly incorporated into the mainstream Hollywood film industry.

Though virtually unknown to the general public, Corman played a key role in the American cinema. He ran what amounted to a quasi-film school at AIP and then New World Pictures, giving many young and talented filmmakers their initial opportunities. His understudies got involved in every aspect of filmmaking—budgeting, scheduling, editing, shooting and directing. They acquired invaluable experience working on the nonunion, low-budget features that Corman produced for the youth market; their inexpensive labor helped keep production budgets down. (Internet source no longer available.)

May of the directors and actors who began their careers with Corman went on to Hollywood. The list is quite impressive--

A surprising number of Corman's proteges came to prominence in Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s and exerted a tremendous influence on the cinema. Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most prestigious directors of his generation, directed his first feature for AIP, Dementia 13 (1963). Coppola captured critical praise and stunning commercial success by advancing the gangster genre with The Godfather (1972) and the war film with Apocalypse Now (1979). Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat (New World, 1974), which dealt with psychosurgery, predated the award-winning One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) starring Jack Nicholson, whose career began at AIP. Demme went on to make Something Wild (1986), the award-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993). Peter Bogdanovich made the cult classic Targets (1968) with Corman and later directed The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). Martin Scorsese directed Boxcar Bertha (1972) for Corman. His illustrious film credits include Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Age of Innocence (1993) and Casino (1995). Corman also gave Jonathan Kaplan ( TheAccused [1988] ) and Ron Howard (Night Shift [1982] , Cocoon [1985] , Backdraft [1991] , Apollo 13 [1995] ) their first directorial opportunities. (Internet source no longer available.)

Probably the most telling fact about the extent to which Hollywood used the "exploitation film" formula is that Roger Corman was one of the actors in The Godfather because one of his proteges was directing the film--Francis Ford Coppola.

Counter-cultural opposition to mainstream culture results in culture wars

The idea of "cultural conflict" may sound abstract, but as we have seen, it involves real individuals who are not unlike many people we know, or perhaps even ourselves. Their lives—their thoughts, emotions, beliefs, activities, and relationships, and maybe ours too—are a central part of the way the contemporary culture war unfolds. ( James Davidson Hunter, (1992) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define Ameria, Chapter 2,"The Anatomy of Cultural Conflict" New York: Basic Books, 52)

The conflicts center on behavior patterns but are usually argued with respect to the values and beliefs at stake. Many cultural conflicts involve religious beliefs and religious groups frequently object to configurations of sexuality or desecration.

But in the final analysis, whatever else may be involved, cultural conflict is about power—a struggle to achieve or maintain the power to define reality.

The power to define reality is not an abstract power. Indeed, as we have seen, nothing less is at stake than a sense of justice and fair play, an assurance that life is as it should be, indeed, nothing less is at stake than a way of life. And because the conflict ultimately involves a struggle for power, a variety of other tangible factors are invariably involved, including money (a great deal of it), reputation, livelihood, and a considerable array of other resources. To be sure, cultural conflict is serious business. ( James Davidson Hunter, (1992) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define Ameria, Chapter 2,"The Anatomy of Cultural Conflict" New York: Basic Books, 52)

Though it may seem an exaggeration to talk about "defining reality," there is little doubt that films such as The Wild Angels, The Trip, Easy Rider, and many others mentioned above (all made for the large baby boomers audience) were seen by that audience as a more accurate picture of social reality than the conventional genres that had been Hollywood staples before the baby boomers became consumers.

Another cultural skirmish with the opposite result was the portrayal of African Americans in Hollywood films. Stereotypical configurations of African Americans in films was quite common up to the 1940s. The New Negro movement was aimed at changing the way the movie industry portrayed African Americans. Similarly, the Legion of Decency reviewed and ranked films for their objectionable content, mostly sex and violence. Hollywood complied.

Ironically, in order to become directors of films, blacks started out as independent film makers and exploited the underside of their culture. Perhaps the most famous black independent film director was Melvin Van Peebles, whose son is now a Hollywood producer/director.

On the concepts "good" & "bad."

Depictions of cultural practices that were deemed acceptable were given the label "good" behavior and those deemed unacceptable were given the label "bad" behavior. To enforce the restriction of unacceptable practices, they were treated as moral issues in the culture wars.

In The Language of Morals, Richard Hare discusses the concept "good" at length. He notes that the word is ordinarily used to identify what the speaker or writer considers desirable—worth doing, worth having. As an adjective the word is empty of semantic content other than "desirable." To say, this is a good car is the equivalent of saying I find this car desirable (meaning I would like to have it or I like having it). The qualities that make it desirable are not known unless specified.

how culture wars end

The Tristan Legend was a counter-cultural configuration at its inception but now being "in-love" has been incorporated into the institution of marriage. Perhaps more instructive is the fact that mainstream Hollywood productions incorporated the "exploitation" formula of independent film makers, foremost among them AIP and Roger Corman.

On the other hand, ads for smoking were quite common on TV. The most famous instance was the Marlboro Man, a lanky handsome cowboy on his horse. The ads were paid for by the cigarette industry. They configured the practice of smoking as a profoundly masculine mode of behavior. However, various medical groups objected to the practice and managed to get the ads off TV so that the Marlboro configuration of masculinity would not be imitated by young persons who did not smoke. They succeeded.

Culture wars are constantly enacted in our culture. They have much to do with changing behavioral patterns.

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