The Concept of An Alternative Culture
- See also: List of subcultures and History of subcultures in the 20th century
The concept of alternative culture is rooted in the development of new views of adolescence during the 1950s in Western Europe and North America. This development, in conjunction with the emergence of the teddy boy and the release of the US films The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), saw adolescents in North America and Western Europe collectively express a form of rebellion against the values of their parents and authority in general. The reasons for this rejection of traditional social codes and attitudes were usually personal, but were at the same time easier to define when asserted as part of a group.
The current understanding of alternative culture came about in the early 1990s, when strands of youth culture, counter culture, and various subcultures came together prompted by corporate influences. The high-profile exceptions to this have been hip hop culture and the Riot Grrrl movement. The recreational use of time by both women and people of color has been reported upon, but usually with disdain.
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Famous quotes containing the words concept, alternative and/or culture:
“The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)