Decline of the counterculture in the USA in the second half of XX century

• Main Authors: I. M. Barchiy, O. I. Shafranyosh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publishing House "Grani" 2014-06-01
• Series: Granì
• Subjects: контркультура; хіпі; везермени; хепенінг; ескейпізм; комуна; тероризм
• Online Access: https://grani.org.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/574

This article analyzes the main causes of the crisis in social, political and artistic trends of the counterculture. The effects and impact of youth counterculture movements on a base of contemporary American culture was investigated. Since the early 70’s, these movements came into crisis phase and their decline began. The crisis was systemic in its nature, as far as it took place under the influence of a combination of various factors. Decline causes of the counterculture can be classified as social, political and artistic ones. The social factors include the failure of commune lifestyle experiment, changing hippie movement into mass trend, deviant behavior of its carriers (alcoholism, drug addiction), change of generations and the economic crisis of the 70s. Political factors are next: the lack of constructiveness of the ideology of a «New Left,» which criticized the existing order without offering solutions for the actual problems, the lack of a clear organizational structure, the end of the Vietnam war, terroristic and criminal nature of some radical movements of the «new left.» In the art vector of counterculture movements, which was mostly identified with music, the crisis factors were connected with the pop orientation of rock music, commercialization of subculture art and transforming it into the next fashion trend. Counterculture failed and began to decline, but the great amount of its values and ideals were dissolved in a general culture and were perceived by American society, including the pacifist, anti­racist, feminist, green, anti­globalization youth trends. There appeared the new forms of youth social movements that were created on the sample of beatniks, hippies or the «New Left».