Photo of The Night of the Barricades, Paris, May 10th 1968. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/studentenunruhen-in-paris-1968-polizei-und-pflastersteine-news-photo/1174040596.
by Yulia Pechhenkina
Across Paris in 1968, cursive graffiti denouncing consumerism and authoritative institutions painted the streets, illustrating plainly the transcending principles of leftist counterculture groups. One of the most iconic pronouncements was “sous les pavés, la plage,” or “Under the Cobblestone, the beach.” The quote, inspired by the Situationist International (SI) and the act of Parisian students uprooting cobblestones to reveal the natural ground beneath, reflected the philosophy that humans, by nature, are free creatures, bountiful with potential and creativity.[1] However, institutions, whether academic or governmental, shape society and culture, forcing individuals into trite passivity.
The Situationists, a group of avant-garde creatives and Marxist intellectuals, argued that in the post-war age, people lived through “spectacles,” a concise term for the apathetic consumption of media and “capitalistic induced desires.”[2] Consequently, the human experience was drained of authenticity as capitalism enforced conformity rather than encouraging creative expression. Thus, the Situationist vision of utopia required the abolition of institutions that inhibited individuals from living honestly, a concept growing in popularity among contemporary counterculture groups internationally. In the same vein, however, the late 1960s counterculture movement’s desire to uproot society’s oppressive norms permeated through a revolution of spectacles. As the world’s events and imaginations were regurgitated through images and the television screen, the younger generation became illuminated by their own constraints and potential. Moreover, counterculture activists’ subversion of societal conventions occurred through grandiose displays of irreverence designed to capture the public’s attention, particularly in 1968. The new defiant generation revolted through words, creative endeavors, aesthetics, and spontaneous protests, fundamentally transforming society. The revolutions’ most thought-provoking, striking visuals were being televised, printed, and consumed.
The hollow dirge of consumerism rang the loudest amidst the fifties’ advertisement age. Pastel ads of white nuclear families, men in the driver’s seat, and women in aprons fueled the consumptive and cultural practices of the Western World. Transcending borders, the youth of this period emerged from a global order degraded by war and poverty that quickly transfigured into one “of unprecedented prosperity, consumption, and mobility” enabled by advancements in both the market and technology.[3] The American consumer, devoted to buying more and better products, was “praised as a patriotic citizen.”[4] One’s national allegiances were seemingly attached to consumption and productivity. Intellectuals, creatives, and young students argued that such practices depersonalized the individual. American beatnik Allen Ginsberg expresses in his 1955 poem “Supermarket in California” that this society of abundance alienated individuals who did not conform to cultural expectations. He writes: “In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!”[5] Ginsberg, as a gay man, felt estranged from American society where the public space was dominated by the conventional heteronormative archetypical family, whose principles he believed lied in material decadence. By contrast, Ginsberg’s beliefs are defined by love, creativity, and spirituality reflected in his admiration of his muse.
Ginsberg, the situationists, and radical students contended that consumer culture diluted the human experience of living authentically. Situationist Guy Debord defined “spectacle” as “not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”[6] In other words, how individuals connect is influenced by the media they consume. “Spectacles” are an instrument of capitalism that mold society into conformity, hence the alienation Ginsberg described. However, if what Debord says is true then it is possible that “spectacles” may work in the inverse, inspiring individuals to connect the media they ingest to themselves and their circumstances. While the advertisement age of the fifties as well as Cold War paranoia did encourage homogeneity, mass media was an undeniable contribution to the 60’s youth generation’s desire for individualism and liberation. Perhaps film and music producers saw the writing on the wall, thus appealing to the brewing “sentiments and transformed subjectivities” of the next generation of consumers.[7] Regardless, much of the credit must be in the hands of the cultural nuances experienced by the youth themselves.
Under the tension of the imagination spawned by the Mexican Revolution and an authoritative one-party government, the cosmopolitan youth of Mexico City found their selfhood and emotions being affirmed by films. American characters such as Superman, James Dean, and Snow White muddled the gender dichotomy of passive femininity and active masculinity. For young males, movies like Rebel Without a Cause illustrated general anti-authority themes but more significantly showcased how “tender solidarity” could resolve conflict rather than aggression. Young girls found inspiration in masculine characters of action and power in war, science fiction, and cowboy films.[8] These movies were revolutionary as they revealed the patriarchal and institutional constraints present in the youth’s upbringing—authoritative family dynamics, education, and politics. Mexican radical student activist Paco Ignacio Taibo II was one such youth, who described movies as a tool of subversion. Though he denounced the “reactionary dream factory” of mass media, he cites The Battle of Algiers as an influential piece for the counterculture movement in Mexico.[9] The film inspired resistance against oppressive systems, provoking internal reflection on one’s subordination and potential to lead transformation. As Mexican students received highly disciplined pre-university education, which defined their generation as “critical players in the development of democracy,” the media fed their idealism for revolution.[10] Films, literature, and figures that illuminated themes of heroism, empathy, communication, and rebellion were vital in forming a defiant counterculture generation.
In the context of the Cold War, students in Mexico were not unique in their highly ideological education. Whether in the capitalist West or the communist Eastern bloc, ideas of liberation, equality, and livelihood suffused early education. Despite educators feeding students idealistic expectations, pedagogy was conversely authoritative.[11] The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) declared that the university discouraged discussion of controversy that questioned how society can be improved. Passion was labeled “unscholastic” as the university was not a space meant to inspire creativity or critical thinking.[12] Rather, the institution’s purpose was to produce “cogs ensuring the functioning of society.”[13] The hypocrisy in higher education reflected the constraints experienced by participants of the counterculture movement. As the older, more affluent generation established the moral and ethical standards of society, young students felt their concerns were overlooked, and their authentic expression of identity was restricted by the existing establishment. Therefore, it is unsurprising that a 1968 poll showed that a greater number of students identified with Che Guevara than any of the presidential candidates. Guevara’s execution in Bolivia caused him to be “frozen in time as the perpetual revolutionary.”[14] He was a young martyr, a symbol of action and dedication that inspired students to participate actively in their liberation.
Though Che in life was a revolutionary who advocated for the purging of vice and saw violence as an essential tactic for self-actualization, in death, he was transformed by a single image. Alberto Korda’s 1960 portrait of Guevara was released to the public posthumously, His stoic, masculine gaze paired with unkempt, wild hair became an anti-establishment symbol adopted into counter-culture iconography.[15] Student movements who paraded his portrait or sang his name in their protests were disinterested in his revolutionary violence. Non-violent demonstrators such as Mark Rudd valorized Che’s spirit of resistance, linking individual struggle with a yearning for transformation.[16] Furthermore, Che’s call to action “to liberate ourselves at any price” stimulated the youth’s imagination of the thrill of revolution, particularly due to the restrictive nature of their social circumstances.[17] His ghost connected the student movements together internationally; as Taibo described, “Che was a guy who was everywhere even though he was dead. He was dead—but he belonged to us.”[18] At the 1968 trial of the Chicago 8, Che’s portrait, as well as the NLF flag, decorated the defense table. In France, Che’s face, along with other communist figures, was plastered on Parisian walls. Though the various youth movements altered Che from his original attributes of discipline to one of bohemian characteristics, his image was forever immortalized due to student’s attachment to the icon. Ultimately, Che’s portrait diminishes his call for transnational violent action as he becomes a commodified symbol by the turn of the century.[19]
For anti-imperialist movements, violence was the primary strategy to disrupt the colonial order. As Frantz Fanon quoted in The Wretched of the Earth, “The last shall be first and the last.”[20] Since colonialism initiates a forceful infliction of power, it is argued that its conclusion will follow a similar path. For the counterculture movement, students and young activists’ grievances primarily pointed to capitalism as the commencing destructive force in society. It was capitalism that brought young souls to Vietnam, attributed one’s value to productivity, and enforced racial and gender inequality. Therefore, capitalism must be destroyed by an instrument of its own creation, such as “spectacles.” Echoing Fanon, Abbie Hoffman crassly declared, “We are going to wreck this fuckin society. If we don’t, the society is going to wreck itself anyways, so we might as well have fun doing it.”[21]
While Che and Fanon had guerilla warfare, the Yippies, led by Abbi Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, had guerilla theater. From throwing fake and real dollar bills on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange to the “exorcism of the Pentagon,” the Yippies were masters at captivating audiences through ostentatious forms of expression.[22] Perhaps their most provocative spectacle was their presidential nomination of Pigasus the Immortal. Outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Yippies danced throughout the streets, hoisting the 146-pound pig and chanting “We want pig” to mock the political establishment, highlighting the absurdity of the political process.[23] The candidate did not make it past democratic primaries however, as Pigasus was detained along with Rubin and Hoffman for what would become the Chicago 8. However, the satirical act demonstrates how the counterculture grasped the public’s imagination, bringing awareness to their call for peace abroad and reevaluating America’s internal institutions.
In France, the Situationists and youth demonstrators followed a similar course of revolution as the Yippies. Détournement, or rerouting in French, was the practice of taking pre-existing expressions of capitalism and transforming it “into a superior construction of a milieu.”[24] Within the art world, détournement influenced punk culture and 1980s pop art; however, as a revolutionary strategy it inspired Parisian students. From March to June of 1968, Paris was haunted by social upheaval as strikes and mass protests against De Gaulle’s government swept through the city, giving rise to a fervent atmosphere of political dissent and a longing for societal transformation. Following the police disruption of student protests at Sorbonne University, demonstrators overturned cars, symbols of consumptive power, to bar police officers from entering where the students congregated in what is called the “night of the barricades.”[25] The police, dressed in protective riot gear and armed with tear gas and water cannons, attacked student protestors, who uprooted cobblestones to defend themselves.[26] The utilization of both cars and stones in their protest served as a symbolic rebellion, wielding objects associated with capitalism to challenge oppressive institutions.
Following the summer of 1968, the consumer culture and the authoritative institutions that the countercultural movements of France, Mexico, and the United States sought to uproot remained firmly intact. The Vietnam War surged forward several years after the debacle at the DNC; machines had not taken the place of the worker, and not everyone took on the role of producer and consumer as the Situationists had hoped. However, youth movements transnationally succeeded in subverting cultural norms and societal taboos partly due to the movement’s use of media. Inspired by films of their upbringing, full of heroic and emotionally imbued characters, the revolting generation noted the constraints of the gender dichotomy and dogmatic nature of governance and education, especially in the context of the Cold War. This is not to say that the TV alone spurred them to action. It was not solely the rise of entertainment media that ingrained the youth with a desire to revolt. The grievances outlined by students, intellectuals, and creatives against the government, colleges, and other institutions were not fictitious. The common culture operated in binaries that individuals such as Taibo, Hoffman, Ginsberg, and many more sought to disrupt as it dismissed ideas and those that did not meet the status quo.
Although likely unintentional, the counterculture’s use of imagery and media inadvertently ushered in another era of consumptive practices. Che’s portrait, subversive films, rock music, fashion, and any symbol pertaining to anti-establishment fell prey to gross commodification. Even the whimsical Beatles film, The Yellow Submarine, as delightful and humorous as it is, sells the psychedelic aesthetics and ideology of the counterculture movement into a family-friendly movie. The revolution became reworked into another product to sell. If beneath the cobblestone lies the sand, ultimately the sand gets refined into the glimmering glass of a television screen, sold, and bought.
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[1] “Beneath the Pavement, the Beach: Paris in 1968 | Department of History,” The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK History Department, June 12, 2020), https://history.utk.edu/beneath-the-pavement-the-beach-paris-in-1968/.
[2] Eric Zolov, “Paris,” History 373: Global Sixties (class lecture, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, November 1, 2023).
[3] Mary Kay Vaughan, “Mexico 1968” in The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties ed. Chen Jian et al. (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 150.
[4] “The Rise of American Consumerism | American Experience | PBS,” PBS.org, accessed Nov 27, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tupperware-consumer/.
[5] Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California,” Poetry Foundation, 2015, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california.
[6] Guy Debord, “Society of the Spectacle,” Marxists.org, 1967, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.html.
[7] Vaughan, “Mexico 1968,” 154.
[8] Vaughan, “Mexico 1968,” 152-153.
[9] Paco Ignacio Taibo II, ’68, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), 18.
[10] Vaughan, “Mexico 1968,” 150.
[11] Vaughan, “Mexico 1968,” 150.
[12] Tom Hayden, The Port Huron Statement (Port Huron: Students for a Democratic Society, 1962), 3.
[13] Daniel Cohn-Bendit, “Interview by Jean-Paul Sartre (20 May 1968)” in The Global Revolutions of 1968 ed. Jeremi Suri (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 140.
[14] Jeremy Prestholdt, “Resurrecting Che: Radicalism, the Transnational Imagination, and the Politics of Heroes,” Journal of Global History vol. 7, no. 3 (November 2012): 507.
[15] Eric Zolov, “Che,” History 373: Global Sixties (class lecture, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, October 23, 2023).
[16] Prestholdt, “Resurrecting Che: Radicalism, the Transnational Imagination, and the Politics of Heroes,” 526.
[17] Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental,”Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America Special Supplement, (1967), 3.
[18] Paco Ignacio Taibo II, ’68, 17.
[19] Prestholdt, “Resurrecting Che: Radicalism, the Transnational Imagination, and the Politics of Heroes,” 526.
[20] Frantz Fanon, “Concerning Violence,” in On Violence: A Reader ed. Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 37.
[21] Abbie Hoffman, “Interview (1969),” in The Global Revolutions of 1968 ed. Jeremi Suri (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 209.
[22] Martin Carey, Exorcise the Pentagon, 1967, Poster, Roz Payne Sixties Archive, accessed November 27, 2023, https://rozsixties.unl.edu/items/show/542#:~:text=Famously%2C%20in%20a%20bit%20of.
[23] Dave Roos, “At the 1968 DNC, Yippies Found Their Voice – HISTORY,” www.history.com, August 26, 2020, https://www.history.com/news/yippies-1968-dnc-convention.
[24] “The Tombs of Guy Debord (Working Title 3.3) | Mass Review,” massreview.org, accessed November 27, 2023, https://massreview.org/node/7338#:~:text=D%C3%A9tournement%3A%20Short%20for%20%E2%80%9Cd%C3% A9tournement%20of.
[25] Eric Zolov, “Paris,” History 373: Global Sixties (class lecture, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, 1 November 2023).
[26] Alissa J. Rubin, “May 1968: A Month of Revolution Pushed France into the Modern World,” The New York Times, May 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/france-may-1968-revolution.html.