Tropical ginsberg

TV was the perfect gadget for the youth, with its pre-edited
images ready to be easily assimilated, and its perpetual pleasure tone
that seemed to distort the facts of life. Teenagers were a gigantic
economic market, virgin, unexplored, innocent, and ready to spend its
bucks without a great deal of questioning. This “ambience” proved to be
fertile land for television. The best mass media technicians knew quite
well that teenagers would conform themselves to whatever they – mass
media technicians – created. The identity of the product would become
the identity of the consumer. Gradually, the iconic image of the 1950s
countercultural rebel began to be minutely elaborated by mass media
technicians. These technicians knew quite well what young kids, with a
potencial for rebellion, wanted: a martyr, an icon.
American kids, who still bore the invisible scars of a molested
infancy, began to be bombarded every single day with TV images which
gave them their martyr, and icon; something they could identify with.
Television offered a living fetish, the rebel without a cause, who was
also disturbed, ready to burst, and mad about life and everything else.
Rebellious kids, who had been forced to live a quiet and paternally
abiding life, were fed psyche food with the asset of the rebellious beat
image created by television. “Era o começo da televisão, e os beats
foram a primeira contracultura semiótica.” 108 The raw erotic power of
the anarchic beats was ready to be commercialized as a product, thanks
to the effulgent capability of television of “reproducing countercultural
movements and values.”
The combination of the “big brother” presence of television, with
the viril power of the 1950s youth, helped to bolster the beat revolution.
The beats were perfect for commercializing, they could either become a
symbol of disgust, or platonic admiration, depending upon the director’s
view and purpose. Whereas they had a somewhat mystic aura
surrounding their every move, thanks to Jack Kerouac and Neal
Cassady, they were also stigmatized as slackers, rebels, vagrants, bums,
as vague as cheap sylogisms, and as superficial as a relationship
between businessmen. Nevertheless, the beats were instantly
worshipped by thousands of teenagers and youngsters, who desperately
sought to cross the line, and walk on the wild side of life. The beats
became some sort of igniting spark that suggested that something hip
and cool was happening, and that things could, at last, change. The huge
amount of mass media exposure – condemning the beats or praising
108 Goffman, Ken and Dan Joy. Contracultura Através dos Tempos: Do Mito de Prometeu à
Cultura Digital. Trans. Alexandre Martins. Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 2007. 266.
53