The Role of Violence in the US Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s as It Is Related to Film - Essay Example

As the ‘utopian’ nature of the new technologically advanced world began to move forward, however, many people needed to find new challenges outside of the needs of survival in order to motivate achievement. Some of those challenges included revolutionizing the culture and in the 1960s, movements that worked towards emancipating the culture from oppressions that were suppressing the rights of women and those of minority races began to rise.

In addition, the Vietnam conflict was providing a resource from which to galvanize many people towards looking at the government with a more critical eye. The war provided fuel for those who believed that the motivations of the government in the use of its people no longer represented the best interests of the nation. The time period of the 1960s was framed by a society that was trying to find a way in which to best situate the culture in order to provide for the most enlightened version of the American ideals.

Emancipating women, African Americans, Hispanics, the military, and even attitudes about sex seemed to be the way toward creating a society that no longer impressed upon some of its people oppression that prevented them from reaching their goals within the context of the ‘American dream. What had seemed so perfect in the 1950s was revealed for a facade that was hiding a plethora of social problems that could now be revealed as the freedoms that technology and the rise of the media presented an open door through which causes could stake their claims and make social revolutions out of injustices that were occurring.

The media arts, such as literature and film, began to reflect the desires of those who were firmly situated in the counterculture revolutions of the period, expressing anger through violence. The expressions of violence created a sensationalized point of view, however, often galvanizing people in a direction that did not promote the improvement of society but that incited anarchy. The connection between social revolution and violence in film and literature is defined by the shifts that can be observed in the cultural attitudes of the 1960s and the 1970s.

Specific changes, especially and readily available in the example of film, provide a frame for understanding how society changed from a glossy representation of idealized values to a peeled back, raw version of social construction in which the flaws of the culture were finally exposed. In exposing those flaws, however, the artful representations became increasingly violent having an effect on the way in which some people would view the causes, some who were against those causes and others who were part of the movement. 2. Charles Starkweather In 1958 Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Anne Fugate, both teenagers with the girl being only fourteen, went on a murderous spree that shook the image of security that people of the United States had about their relationships with law, safety, and with the control that they felt that they had over their society.

The late 1950s represented a time in penal history where reforms were being considered as the nature of the criminal mind was discussed in terms of society’s responsibility informing individuals who were inclined toward criminal behavior. Therefore, reforms were deeply intent on abolishing the death penalty, improving prison conditions and creating rehabilitation for those who had committed crimes.