What do these movies have in common?

1. What do these movies have in common? • Midnight Run • Convoy • Thelma and Louise • Motorcycle Diaries • Smokey and the Bandit • Mad Max • Planes, Trains, and Automobiles • Cannonball Run • Easy Rider • Little Miss Sunshine • The Muppet Movie • National Lampoon’s Vacation • Bonnie and Clyde • Into the Wild • Road Trip

2. What do these books have in common? • Road Fever • The Lost Continent • Blue Highways • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas • Travels with Charley • Into the Wild • The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

3. Getting on the road—an archetype • Have you ever taken a road trip? • Why do people often decide to “hit the road”?

4. Find yourself • Rebellion • Dissatisfied with the times • Need something new • Looking for something • Need to break away…

5. Why might someone have the need to do leave his or her milieu and look for something else “on the road”?

6. zeitgeist • German . the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time. • the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

7. zeitgeist • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP29Baxs0K0

8. Zeitgeist of the 60s?

9. What is the Zeitgeist of your generation? • Write down three characteristics of your generation. Remember—GENERAL TRENDS—moral, intellectual; GENERAL thoughts and feelings--not specific Wexford trends.

10. Share your characteristics with your group members. Work with what you have.

11. Family, sobriety, hard work, material possessions Confidence in American Supremacy Pre-Civil Rights movement Antiestablishment Alternative lifestyle Experimentation Flexible sexuality Inventive arts Post WWII Attitude Beat Attitude

12. Beat Beliefs • Freedom • Individuality • Experimentation • Style of writing • Inspired by bop jazz • “We love everything - Billy Graham, the Top Ten, Rock and Roll, Zen, apple pie, Eisenhower - we dig it all.”

13. If you were going to create a television show about your generation, what would it include? Use your lists. • You have 15 minutes to create a one minute scene from your show.

14. Create a scene from your show. • Act out a one minute scene • Give your show a name.

15. Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation

16. DISCLAIMER • Throughout this unit, we will be discussing and addressing topics of a mature nature. Drug use, sex, and other activities of a questionable kind play prevalent roles in this story. Please handle this material appropriately, maintaining a level of maturity and sophistication normally expected from an Honors class.

17. What’s BEAT? • Times Square hustler Herbert Huncke introduced Kerouac to the term meaning “down and out, poor and exhausted”

18. BEATNIK • Herb Coen coined the term to reference West Coast youth • Fashioned after the Russian term Sputnik

19. Beat Roots • “exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out, sleepless, wide-eyed, perceptive, rejected by society, on your own, streetwise” • The Beatitudes • Beat Generation: “describing a new sort of stance toward reality, behind which a new sort of consciousness lay.”

20. Kerouac’s other intended meanings • Beatific—bestowing blessings, bliss, happiness • A beatific vision—a direct knowledge of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven

21. Beatitudes • Eight sayings of Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The word is from the Latinbeatus, meaning “blessed,” and each of the Beatitudes begins with the word blessed. They include “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

22. Kerouac’s Definition • It’s a kind of furtiveness… Like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge… a kind of beatness… and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world… So I guess you might say we’re a ‘Beat Generation.’

23. Kerouac on Steve Allen Show • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCF6hgEfto

24. Kerouac on the Beats • But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality ... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls ... woe in fact unto those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! ... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back.

25. Jack Kerouac • Born in Massachusetts in 1922 • French-Canadian Family • Profoundly effected by the death of his eldest brother, Gerard • “Joual” was first language • Inspired by “The Shadow” and Thomas Wolfe • First published in 1950

26. Kerouac continued • Received football scholarship to Columbia University • Had a short-lived college career • Joined Merchant Marine • Married a total of three times • Lived with his mother nearly his entire life • Died in 1969 from complications from alcoholism

27. Kerouac… And Cobain? • Genuinely miserable • Leaders of movements which turned into “fads.” grunge movement • Disliked followers of these “fads” - poseurs • Died at peak Nirvana • Died when young

28. I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not. Kurt Cobain

29. After two World Wars many Americans felt hopeless and bitter. • Others hid under a façade of complacency and conformity—trying to become part of the American Dream

30. The Beats rejected society’s institutionalized religions and sought new spirituality through heightened individual experiences.

31. Drugs and the Beats • Benzedrine (benny) • Tea • Amphetamines • Alcohol

32. Kerouac had little patience with “hipsters” wearing goatees and berets—he referred to them as POSEURS and conformists • Kerouac disassociated himself with the beatniks as they evolved into HIPPIES in the sixties

33. The Merry Pranksters 1960s (1964) Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) Lead by Ken Kesey—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Thomas Wolfe--The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

34. Further… • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDSes1bQjKM

35. Further

36. Ken Kesey

37. Ken Kesey with restored Further

38. Major Works • On the Road by Kerouac • Howl by Allen Ginsberg • Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

39. On the Road • Written in three weeks • Interesting medium • Semi-autobiographical • Roman a clef • Episodic novel

40. 120 feet long

43. Currently owned by Jim Irsay, owner of the Colt’s • Purchased in 2002 for 2.2 million

44. Kerouac’s manuscript • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyS1EEVFbs

45. Style • Spontaneous prose • Stream of consciousness • Disregard of grammar

46. Roman a Clef - characters and their counterparts