Today’s reading gives us a brief overview of the fundamentals of the 1968 Youth Protests. While we spent most of our time right after World War II and in the 1950s, I found myself really interested in the idea of protesting for the ability to protest. We are told on page 26 that, “For the most part, in the late 1950s the spirit of rebellion remained unfocused, diffused, and non-specific. Symptomatic for the state of affairs was the following exchange in the cult film The Wild Ones. When Marlon Brando, the leader of a biker gang, was asked: ‘What are you rebelling against?’, he answered: ‘What have you got?'”.
My questions are simple: What is interesting to you in this chapter? I know that I am madly in love with the title communist being assigned to Brando because they could not find a better way to summarize “‘radical’, ‘unorthodox’ , ‘anti-authoritarian’ , or ‘uncompromisingly oppositional'” (30). Other food for thought, you probably know someone who was in their teens or twenties in the 50s and 60s, what do you think those people where doing? We finally reached a part of history were we personally know people who lived threw it!
Also, here are The Beatles doing their thing. I was looking for a meme, but could not find one.
What I like the most about this chapter is how much we can relate to the students of the 1960s. We also being college students, are also living through a very turbulent time in history. Regardless of your political party or personal convictions, I think many of us can agree that creativity is discouraged in today’s society! If you look at our K through 12 educational system, I think you can see what I’m talking about. If you look at today’s politics, there is no nuance the media and celebrities force you into two beliefs. This is what is talked about in the chapters that we read. Part of the revolution of the 1960s in Germany was looking back at the Nazi past of the country in wanting those who had ties to the Nazi party removed from power. When I was reading this on a different website just to get a little background on the revolutions of 1968 it made me think about the cultural struggle that we are going through today in America. Being from North Carolina I have seen the cultural struggle over Confederate era statues and symbols. A big part of cultural revolutions is how we think about history and how we think about the people who wrote it.