We Can Be Together’: American Countercultural Music, Film and the trappings of the mainstream

Bobdylan_counterculture Link for this Post:We Can Be Together’: American Countercultural Music, Film and the trappings of the mainstream Mike Leader on the Wild Tyme Blog

Here is an excerpt from Mike Leader’s insighful essay:

The counterculture of the 1960s featured important innovations in the form and message of art. However, the means for production, promotion and wide distribution of such modes as music and film were in the hands of the major record labels or film production studios. This resulted in an intriguing, often conflicted, relationship between the necessarily provocative and inventive aspects of countercultural expression, and the ‘trappings’ of popular culture. Countercultural expression was often on a localised, individual, or minority scale, usually defined against the mainstream or dominant society; it was feared that actively courting with the mainstream, in the form of the music or film business, would result in compromising the message or expression itself. In the realm of music, the shift from performing as the primary avenue of dissemination, to record sales and marketing, presents a potential conflict in terms of the artist’s integrity as the ‘art’ shifts to ‘product’.
There was a similarly difficult situation in the film industry, where the dominance of the major film studios was seen to stifle the creativity of the medium. However, in the late 1960s, a series of films directed by younger directors, starring younger stars and about relevant issues, brought about a renaissance in Hollywood, and the old generation of studio bosses gave wave to a new group of producers more happy to grant freedom of expression to countercultural and visionary newcomers. This essay will primarily focus on the musical career of Bob Dylan, but, by way of comparison or contrast, further references will be drawn from both music and film.
Indeed, this complicated relationship between the popular and the countercultural is especially seen in Bob Dylan’s career. In fact, it can be argued that his shrewd and profitable courting with the mainstream has been subsumed by cult and myth. As one of the most influential artists in Western music of the 20th century, Dylan’s reputation in terms of furthering the form is secure; however, his public image is almost by nature conflicted. Wilfred Mellers displays this multi-layered image, introducing his study of Dylan by describing him as ‘a singing poet-composer, he is a quasi-folk musician, an artist and a commercial operator’ (1984, p.13). Dylan’s particular flashpoints of mythology and controversy have all involved the clash of the precious and the popular; the most prominent of these is his progression from acoustic, socially-minded folk music, to electrified rock with increasingly abstract, personal lyrics. The period between March 1965 and July 1966, during which time Dylan released the albums Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and had landmark performances at the Newport Folk Festival and on tour in Europe, was one of the more controversial career moves in 20th century music. The hostilities that greeted the incorporation of electric guitars and rock-inspired arrangements were motivated by the apprehension that Dylan had abandoned ‘serious’ music, in favour of fame and fortune.