Are You a Rebel? Or are You Just another Sheep following the Non-conformity Flock?
“It's like living on the outside of society and seeing what a crock of shit it is, but then approaching it again with a sense of humor. I mean, when you're able to see society as this sort of funky, funny illusion, it makes it easier to deal with it because there is no rhyme or reason to the way it works.”
RuPaul, on fringe culture (Genre, March '99)
Rebellion. *It's about articulating that little inner voice that's in all of us, the voice which resists being assimilated into the mass conformity that is American society. The quality of our interaction has diminished so much that we barely recognize each other as human. The “American way of life” has destroyed our individuality while pretending to cater to it, and the natural interdependence of society has been compromised by the shrieks of mass media and the cubicle farms they call workplaces. We are all gearing up for some heavy shit, all around the world. The yuppies are putting together their silly stock option plans, the Pakistanis are aching for jihad against India, the major labels are trying harder than ever to saturate our culture with Limp Bizkit bullshit and kill Napster while they're at it. To me, it fits together like a puzzle. It's all related. This is more than a complaint about social differences. It's about human nature. Stick around; I think I can prove this. The hippie and freak hordes would have us believe than they are the sole bastions of non-conformity and acceptance left in America. They are not.
I really dislike stories like Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling. Not all ugly ducklings turn into swans. Some of us turn into ugly ducks. We need to learn to accept it, and to find that being an ugly duck isn't really necessarily all that bad, because going with the flock isn't always the best or most satisfying way to go, even if it does seem like the easiest. I was never one who "fit in" with my peers. From the day I began school at the age of five, it was obvious that I was somehow different from the rest of them. Since I was hyperactive, kind of shy, and too intellectual to be popular, I rarely had many friends, and at times found myself a subject of ridicule, mocking, and outright abuse. My first ploy, which lasted for a number of years, was to attempt to conform. This was very muc...
... middle of paper ...
...tandards, but these standards were made by conformity. The union itself is some form of rebellion. By being apart of that group, he conformed to the “rebel’s” standards.
A cultural movement is a cultural movement; be it hippie, skater punk, raver trash or otherwise. Nobody wants the whole world to live in peace as one big happy family. It's contrary to instinct. We all want to be the bottisavatta in the flowing robes who dictates the gospel to the rest of the world. And that's not the way things work. This world has winners and losers, geeks and popular kids. Junior high repeats itself until you are dead. So what's a rebel to do? I don't know. Try reading. Jack Kerouac is not still a best selling author because of his cool Gap khakis. A nation of people didn't follow Lenin into almost 80 years of collectivist silliness because of his natty goatee and adorable accent. Or try remembering these simple rules:
1.) Rebellion is free.
2.) Rebellion does not come in six different colors.
3.) Rebellion does not have a soundtrack and a movie deal in the works.
4.) Rebellion is not found in a piercing store, tattoo parlor, drug store, hash pipe or a Quentin Tarrantino movie.
Resistance to civil government can represent how individualism affects not only the people escaping from the human norms of society but also those who control them. The Human Norm’s of society are to go through life and to listen to whatever your government says. All with the purpose of trying to prevent chaos which would result in the down fall of civilized society. The government is a crucial factor in every To a certain extent it is allowable but at the risk of its own society or people being unable to explore the truths of what they believe is a costly consequence. A man should be allowed to resist his own government if he truly believes what is being done is wrong and therefore not agreeing with his own perception on how life works. This...
High school can be a place full of cliques and groups of friends but some people aren’t always in cliques. If there is a person who doesn’t always like the same things as other people they might not fit in with a group of people. In high school a person may become different and not find a group of friends that they fit in with. With no group of friends a person in high school may start to become an outcast. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak used Melinda to show that any high school student can become an outcast.
Rebel Without a Cause is an unconventional story with a conventional, classical approach to storytelling. The film follows the seven traits of Classical Hollywood Cinema and is adapted to the hybridization of film noir, which was primarily a style of B movies, and teen drama films, which was newly emerging in the 50s.
Counterculture is a group of people who reject the values of the dominant culture. It was viewed as a threat to the society because they attempt to find the alternative use of value to guide their life. They always see themselves as a life that is trapped to follow the dominant culture, which it was faulty, oppressive and dehumanizing. There are two subgroups in Counterculture Capitalists: Hippies and Political Radicals. The difference between Hippies and Political Radicals are the lifestyle and attitudes toward the society. Hippies are freer flowing and loving who wanted a peace while Political Radicals are more active against the political issues and wanted to get the political issues resolved
...of a Slave Rebel and the Unmaking of a Slave Rebellion.” Journal of the Early Republic. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007. 705-720. Print.
Heath, Joseph, and Andrew Potter. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.
Music has been around for thousands of years. Music has progressed since that time and has slowly become what it is today. Though music has been around for such a long time, protest music just started to develop in the Vietnam Era, the year 1954. The war started the era of protest which, in turn, created a new form of music which incorporated a specific type of lyric that was a way of expressing protest through the song. Since music in this era was already a big thing, artists thought it would be a good idea to get their political viewpoints out there. They did it through something that affected everybody in that time and space. The artists view spread quickly through the country because of the catchy tune and the viewpoints that are listed. In the United States of America, it is a very common thing to conform to others in a group (Conformity…). Since conformity is such a common occurrence in a large group, all the artist has to do is find a couple of people in the group, group being an audience, who agree with the artist and the rest will unfold on its own. The artist will keep on performing while the word of him and his music will spread from person to person. Conformity will ultimately bring people together on the same viewpoint until eventually, there are thousands of people there with the artist to protest. These artists have grown over time along with the style of music that they bring along with them. Protest music still exists today and is one of the most effective forms of protest that we have.
society with his own sense of humor, but however it still leaves a very good
Another major sub-culture of rock music the still uses the anti-authority culture and anti-authority message in their music and personas are the punks. The punks accomplish their anti-authority message and present their anti-authority culture by doing everything possible to protest against the authorities at be, that is the clothes they wear are meant to be a protest, their hair is a protest, their attitude is a protest, and etcetera. While the punks and the hippies differ greatly on their interpretations of anti-authority culture and how to present said culture as the 1970s faded in to the 1980s the public opinion of hardline sub-cultures began to shift to a moderate interpretation of rock music and the anti-authority message accompanying rock music, there was now a heavy commercialization. Instead of the anti-authority message present in prior rock music there was instead a more materialistic focus which focused more on becoming famous, and being on television, then there was a focus on the anti-authority
Unlike the society before this movement, the hippie did not try to change America through violence, the hippie tried to change things through peace and love. The Hippie Movement was a moment during the mid 1960s through the early 1070s where sex, drugs and Rock-n-Roll, was at the forefront of mainstream society. No one really knows the true definition of a Hippie, but a formal definition describes the hippie as one who does not conform to social standards, advocating a liberal attitude and lifestyle. Phoebe Thompson wrote, “Being a hippie is a choice of philosophy. Hippies are generally antithetical to structured hierarchies, such as church, government, and social castes. The ultimate goal of the hippie movement is peace, attainable only through love and toleration of the earth and each other. Finally, a hippie needs freedom, both physical freedom to experience life and mental freeness to remain open-minded” (Thompson12-13). Many questions are asked when trying to figure out how this movement reached so many of America’s youth, and what qualities defined a hippie as a hippie?
A large majority of teens want to fit in and feel like they belong, but how far are they willing to go to fit in? The more they want to fit in the more likely they will be easily influenced by suggestions from others. During my second week of eighth grade, I felt like I wasn’t fitting in and that everyone was silently judging me and criticizing me. Of course now that I think about I don’t think anyone really cared about me, but I was more self-conscious about myself then. One day during lunch my friends and I sat next to a couple of girls who were known as the “popular” girls and I thought that maybe I would fit in more if I was friends with them. I spent the rest of that lunch hour trying to build up the courage to talk to them and at last minute I told the friendliest looking girl, that I loved her shirt and I asked her what store she bought it from. She told me that it was from Free People; she then gushed about the store and told me how everything there was amazing. She suggested that I should check it out sometime so I did. I, of course couldn’t wait to shop there. I told myself that if I shopped at Free People, I could maybe fit in with her and even be a part of the popu...
...ord which represented a freed man and at that point he could continue fighting on his own accord or go back to where he came from.
These three characteristics-a will to stay and fight instead of running, intelligence, and great leadership-are all necessary to the successful rebel. Both Madison Washington of Frederick Douglass' The Heroic Slave and Henry Blake of Martin Delaney's Blake or the Huts of America embodied these characteristics and serve as good examples of the heroic slave rebel.
In one journal entry I wrote, I brought to light that the popular group is something that every one of us, for some reason feels as though we need to be a part of. This is from my own experience and things I have observed throughout my four-year career in high school. I think it was perhaps worse in junior high, however. When you are in seventh and eighth grade you are not sure of who you are and are desperately searching around for something to belong to, to be a part of. Why is this, why are we a society that are most often drawn to the most popular, "cool" and "beautiful" that high school has to offer? Why is acceptance the most important thing to us, is belonging really as important as losing your own sense of self? Who you hang out with, who your closest friends are as an adolescent without a doubt help to shape who you are. And it's funny that you seem to end up being friends with the ones who are the same type of people as you. Same fashion sense, taste in music or cars and movies. When searching for an identity in high school, it is hard not to just attempt to pick up the one that seems the most socially acceptable. I know that my personal experiences include these conforming characteristics. Still as a freshman in college I am constantly looking at the fashion of my peers, wondering to myself "do they think I fit in"? This was especially true the first few weeks of college when I wasn't sure who my good friends were going to be; I made sure that I dressed as well as I could everyday, in all the new clothes I had bought specifically for college.
I remember a time a few years back when I had a group of fairly close friends. We would always hang out with eachother and we would await the day at which we were to enter high school together. When we finally reached high school, there where now a whole new group of people that were older than I. I still had my group of friends, but gradually I started to lose one of them. My friend was going against my other schoolmate, and before I knew it I was hurling the same insults as they were. It was all part of a process; a process, I thought, was going to make me popular. I thought that if I could make someone look lower than I was, I would gain self-confidence and become more popular.