me and my dad were arguing over hippies and punks?

[KatherineD]

i was watching the movie Across The Universe and my dad commented that he didn't like the beatles when he was my age and the whole hippie idea because they were so anti establishment anti war blah blah blah and i say well when you were my age you were a punk Rancid, Clash, Exploited music like that which did nothing but preach anti government drugs and violence. and that hippies at least had a cause the war, civil rights, women's rights...blah blah blah him talking...blah blah blah he also said that they always show cops attacking people in protest and riots but they never show the rioters destroying property blowing up cop cars hazing people and starting stuff making the police use force by then i didn't really want to talk to him anymore and i was like whatever.
but if you understand what my words up there mean can i get ur opinon on it

 

[EllieB]

I think your father is thinking of the extremist hippies. A majority of hippies, like a majority of every other group, is nothing like the extremists. And even then, I think he's looking at it from a skewed view. Looking at it objectively, you have a group of people protesting, who are losing their right to protest and get pushed to bigger and bigger protests which end with the kind of things your dad remembers. And on the other end, you have normal every day people who just see a big scene and destroyed stuff, and then they get angry and give the government grief. And then the government tries to quiet down the group even more, and then the group gets even more out of control. And then you get the extremists your dad remembers.

It's a vicious cycle, and one that created a stigma of hippies being out of control protesters and government officials being out of control in their quest to keep order and quiet the protests.

As far as not liking the Beatles, the Beatles werent even really that great. I mean they were great during the era, but truly listen to their music and you'll find they suck. They're also not really hippies. The hippie bands were groups like the Grateful Dead. The Beatles were that era's Jonas Brothers. World wide phenomenons, lots of screaming teenagers, weird look, but if you really look at the band, and I mean REALLY look at the band, they werent very good. lol.

 

[Claire]

The whole punk movement was a backlash to the beat generation and the hippie movement.

I'm not really booksmart on the subject but I know enough about the culture first hand to say that the punk movement was about reclaiming the ego that the hippies had chosen dismiss.