Tamara Dobson: the archetype for strong black female role models

Who here remembers “Blaxploitation" films?  

As a cinematic genre, this subset of ethnocentric, low-budget 1970s action releases wasn’t particularly noteworthy, although it was historically significant for being the first box office product to specifically target an urban, African American audience and also served as major platform for several funk and soul artists.

Movies such as Shaft and Superfly won little critical acclaim within the film industry, but they did attract a new demographic to the silver screen, filled many an inner city theater on any given weekend and fostered the notion of a black hero at an important moment following the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and the peak of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Those two Blaxploitation films in particular also elevated the careers of musicians Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, earning Hayes a Grammy and an Academy Award.  Mayfield's solo, “Super Fly” is ranked 69th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.



Tamara Dobson, AKA Cleopatra Jones



Actor Richard Rountree made Shaft something of a cultural icon, and gave black men in the United States a role model to cheer for; but what about black women? If Shaft had a sister it would have been Cleopatra Jones, the bad-ass martial arts momma played by Amazonian 6-foot-2 actress/model Tamara Dobson.

Cleopatra Jones was a unique hybrid, a marriage of secret agent and funk goddess. She packed the punch and panache of James Bond with the soul and style of Dianna Ross. Beautiful yet lethal, she attracted admiration and commanded respect. Her name alone conjured images of African royalty while hinting at the every-day struggles of the average black gal on the streets.

In a time when “everybody was kung-fu fighting,” no one did it with more panache and sex appeal than Dobson. It was a bold new vision that built on the foundations created just 15 years earlier by the likes of Lena Horne and Diane Carroll, and created a whole new pop culture icon.

"With her flashy style - huge Afro, big hats, leather-trimmed fur coats - Cleopatra was, in the words of the drug traffickers she battled, '10 miles of bad road,'" Time magazine reported, upon Dobson's death in 2006 at age 59.

Dobson was no doubt the archetype for Teresa Graves’ performance in the short-lived 1974 television series, Get Christie Love.  You can bet she also inspired novelist Elmore Leonard’s character Jackie Brown in his novel, Rum Punch, which was later made into a feature length film by director Quentin Terrentino. 

The strong-black-woman persona that Dobson projected on screen as Cleopatra Jones likely later influenced the muscular aesthetic of Grace Jones, quite possibly inspired the Williams sisters of tennis fame and perhaps even gave impetus to the iron resolve of the first African American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. It almost certainly inspired actress Pam Grier for her most recognized performance.

I could even go as far as linking the moxie of foxy Cleopatra Jones to Beyonce, Opra Winfrey or Michelle Obama. The fact is, today’s empowered black women who project unabashed confidence, independence and strength, certainly owe a debt of gratitude to the late, great Tamara Dobson.

A Fitting Tribute to William Gocher

From Nat Young to Mark Occhilupo, I’ve always had a deep respect for Australian surfers. Characters such as Mark Richards and Rabbit Bartholemew were known as “the Bronzed Aussies” in my day, a cadre of outlandish athletes from Down Under who took Hawaii’s North Shore by storm. Others such as Tommy Carroll and Gary “Kong” Elkerton continued to push the envelope in competitive wave riding, and have left a lasting legacy in the sport.

  Funny though, all of the legendary Australian watermen mentioned above would have been branded as scofflaws and petty criminals if it weren’t for the defiance of a certain newspaper editor and the spirit of public disobedience later made famous by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of course, many Australians are the direct descendents of felons, convicts and criminals, thus earning the self-deprecating nickname “Connies.” During the 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of British criminals were transported to penal colonies on the Australian continent. It is rather ironic then, that stodgier elements of Victorian morality such as bans on public bathing would pervade Australian culture until the turn of the 20th Century.  

An unclad Bather: once considered a threat to public decency

In the days when Duke Kahanamoku was first learning to swim in Hawaii, daylight bathing was considered a threat to public decency and order in Australia. In fact, it was banned until 1902, when a newspaper editor by the name of William Gocher forced the issue by defying the law and bathing during daylight hours. One might call Gocher the”Ned Kelly” of costumed beach-goers. Kelly was a rebel folk hero in 19th Century Oz, sort of an Outback Jesse James. It was that sort of outlaw spirit that lead to defiance regarding a ban on “cossies” or costumes, as the Australians call their bathing suits. Authorities refused to prosecute Gocher, making him sort of a cause célèbre, or an ocean-going Lady Godiva in Australian society.

Gocher’s defiant will would ultimately open the door widely for bathing, and later surfing at Australian beaches. Unfortunately, the newer, more open attitudes toward public bathing also lead to a dramatic rise in drownings, which eventually gave rise to one of the world’s great corps of lifeguards.


Modern swimwear: Gocher's legacy


If the Australians in their Victorian modesty seemed a little more backward than the happy-go-lucky, loin cloth-clad Hawiians of Duke’s day, it would serve well to remind readers that Missionaries practically banned surfing in the Islands for the same puritanical reasons.  Travel magazine images of scantily clad wahines consorting with half-naked beach boys and frolicking in licentious repose on the sands of Waikiki raised a bellowing outcry from the crusading censors of the day.

 Swimwear and beach apparel have undergone many transformations since then, and style and taste are still debated today on beaches from Biarritz to Bikini Atoll. One can still hear the ridicule and disgust among the crowds at Windansea or Waimea Bay when a corpulent hodad in bun huggers parades his pale, flabby backside across the sand.

Serena Wilson

Serena Wilson was the godmother of belly dancing in America. She passed away in 2007 at age 73. 

For the the better part of four decades Wilson performed at major concert venues in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, bringing respectability to a tradition that was previously scorned by many as low brow or burlesque. 


The legendary Serena Wilson


 In Egypt, Wilson was revered as an "artiste". Her credentials were impressive, including numerous appearances with the New York Opera Company as lead dancer in "Aida." When the Metkal Kenawi musicians of Egypt made their only New York appearance, she was the dancer they invited to perform with them.

In her later years, Wilson had choreographed the Egyptian folkloric show at Club Ibis, a lavish Egyptian nightclub in New York. A critic with Dance Magazine once wrote that her performance was "Better than anything I saw in the Middle East."

The Village Voice,  in a review of Wilson's troupe's performance at the Lincoln Center in 2001, wrote that  "Her dancers, working those rhumba, chiftetelli, and kashlimar rhythms, showed classic Serena training -- elegant carriage, willowy arms and hips that make tiny flicks like a clock's second hand." 

Here is a poem written by Wilson to be read as a prelude to her dancing:

I am a woman, wrapped in chiffon and jewels,
Thin silks and girdle of gold. I stretch my arms...
The embrace encompasses a universe.
I can control a quiver in my hips, Tell a thousand stories with my eyes,
Skip with child-like glee, the smile of experience on my lips.
Glide in innocence, endure with age.
Spin like a dervish; undulate in sensuality...
Excite, promise, create, change, tease, mock,
Unveil my passion.
Untiringly seduce the world as I move my body, For I am a woman... I am the dancer.

 

Here is a video of Wilson dancing:

Jim Morrison and the Rock and Roll Circus

A controversial book by Sam Bernett claims that rock legend Jim Morrison died in a toilet stall at the Parisian club Rock 'n' Roll Circus, after what Bernett believes was a heroin overdose.

 

Bernett was the manager at Rock 'n' Roll Circus, a hip hangout on the Rue de Seine where celebrities of the day would rendezvous for live music, poetry readings and a taste of the 60s psychedelic scene. They say that filmmaker Roman Polanski was a regular there. So was Maryanne Faithful, a folk singer-turned actress who had earned a reputation as a muse for the Rolling Stones.

 

Jim Morrison in Paris in 1971, not long before his death.

 

Interestingly, the Stones later produced a video titled "Rock and Roll Circus." I'm not sure if there was any connection with the night club, but it's entirely possible. 

 

Anyway, according to Bernett, at approximately 1 a.m. on July 3, 1971, Morrison dropped in for a visit at the Rock and Roll Circus accompanied by two alleged drug dealers. They all disappeared and  later, a bouncer was said to have broken into a locked toilet stall to discover an unconscious Morrison. 

 

Bernett claims he summoned a doctor who was hanging out at the club to examine the Doors front man.  "When we found him dead, he had a little foam on his nose, and some blood too, and the doctor said, 'That must be an overdose of heroin,'" Bernett recalls in his book. He adds that he did not see Morrison doing any heroin that night, but notes that the singer was known to sniff the drug because he was afraid of needles.

 

Apparently, the two drug dealers insisted Morrison had only passed out, and that they carried him out of the club. Bernett says he wanted to call paramedics to the scene, but the club's owner ordered him to keep quiet to avert a scandal. I guess he sat on the truth all these years (if you believe it) and only came clean recently as he attempted to cash in on a book.

Bernett believes the dealers brought Morrison's body home and dropped it into the bathtub, a last attempt to revive him. The official story (whitewash?) is that the legendary rock martyr went to a movie in Paris, came home, listened to some records and died of heart failure in his bathtub. No autopsy was ever performed.

Homage to Vic Morrow/Artie West

I just added a Vic Morrow tribute page to my Facebook friend's list. 

 

"Vic who," you might be asking. His heyday was slightly ahead of my time. He had a breakout role in Blackboard Jungle, a 1955 release chronicling the cultural emergence of restless youth and opening the door for a young musical genre called rock n roll. But more about that later.

Vic Morrow's daughter: Jennifer Jason-Leigh

 

Morrow died in a freak accident in 1982 while on the set of Twilight Zone: the Movie, so he's probably not much of an icon among the twenty-somethings, though his daughter might be. Have you heard of Jennifer Jason-Leigh? Check out her acting versitility in the comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, and the intense drama Rush. I hear that she was also very good in The Last Exit to Brooklyn, although I didn't see that film. Anyway, I digress. Back to Vic.

 

Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders

 

Long before I appreciated the cultural and historical significance of his role in Blackboard Jungle, I dug Morrow's role as Sgt. Saunders in the World War II television series Combat. He had this nihilistic expression, the poker face of a platoon leader who gambled with his men's lives in the French countryside of 1944 Nazi-occupied Europe. It was a quality drama that still runs in syndications on some cable channels today.

 

A scene from the Blackboard Jungle

Ah, but the knife-wielding role of Artie West! Now that was true art. Before Artie West, teenage rebellion and juvenile delinquency weren't really a force to be reckoned with. Sure, the Bowery Boys, and maybe young Frankie Sinatra and his legion of benign bobby-soxers pre-dated Vic Morrow's fine performance. No one had begun to appreciate the impact that Elvis Presely would have, let alone fathomed a future shaped by Blackboard Jungle that would spawn the Beastie Boys or Marilyn Manson and his legion of porn starlette fans. 

 

Vic Morrow as Artie West

 

Artie West, the lugubrious gang leader, the proverbial leader of the pack who holds sway over and intimidates his peers. Artie's hatred for Mr. Dadier or any authority figure is immediate and passionate, sparked by a near rape in the school library. Remember, this was very, very edgy subject matter during President Eisenhower's first term.  

 

Another seminal film dealing with teenage angst, Rebel without a Cause, was also released in 1955. Ah, but Blackboard Jungle featured Bill Haley's hit single, "Rock Around the Clock," a song credited with ushering in the entire rock n roll era. Haley had recorded the tune a year before in 1954, but it was relegated to the B-side of an obscure 45 and really didnt' catch fire until it rolled with Blackboard Jungle's opening credits. 

 

Morrow was able to parlay his youthful tough guy image into numerous roles as robbers and hoodlums including the character "Shark" alongside Elvis Presely in the 1959 film, King Creole. He was a steady television actor throughout the 1960s and 70s before assuming his final role as Bill Connor in Twilight Zone: The Movie. 

Vic Morrow in Twilight Zone: The Movie

 

The film, which was produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by John Landis, included four vignettes. Morrow's character, the embittered Bill Connor, is introduced as an angry bigot in a bar, hurling insults at Jews, blacks and Asians. (Ironically, Morrow himself was Jewish) Connor leaves the bar and steps into a series of scenes, including: Nazi-occupied France where SS troops chase him, mistaking him for a Jew; the Jim Crow Deep South where Ku Klux Klansmen see him as black and try to lynch him; and finally .Vietnam, where he is attacked by American soldiers who think he is the enemy.

 

It was during the filming of the Vietnam sequence that Morrow was killed in a freak helicopter crash. Morrow stood in a river while film technicians fired off various pyrothechnics. The resulting flames engulfed the chopper, blinding the pilot and sending his vehicle careening out of control. Morrow was subsequently decaptitated by the rotor blade.

 

Vic Morrow's tombstone

 

The director, John Landis, delivered an awkward eulogy at Morrow's funeral which was widely criticized as callous and self-serving. According to one account, Landis said "Tragedy can strike in an instant, but film is immortal... This performance must not be lost.  It was Vic's last gift to us."

 

In a sense, I suppose that Landis was right about that.

 

A Magic Moment in 1965

December, 1965. It is the Beat Generation brain trust's last reunion at City Lights.

All the notable West Coast poets are present, Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg Gary Goodrow, Robert LaVigne, Michael McClure, Lew Welch," just to name a few.


Bob Dylan has just finished a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater, and he is hiding from his fans in the basement of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's famous bookstore with McClure and Ginsberg. Are they getting high?

As a swarm of admirers begin to break through the basement door, Dylan, Ginsberg and McClure climb out a window with Robby Robertson and photographer Larry Keenan and escape down a back alley.


Safe for the moment, pausing to catch a smoke, Keenan snaps an image of this quartet of Beat icons, and the magical moment is captured for posterity.

Modigliani and Hebuterne: A Tragic Love Affair

I have always been fascinated with great artists and their muses - many of whom were great artists in their own right. Several examples come to mind: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo; Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, and a couple I have only recently discovered - Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne.

Modigliani by Hebuterne

Modigliani was the quintessential "Beautiful Loser," a dark, handsome, extremely talented, womanizing drug addict. He seemed fated to the lonely, alienated life of a tortured artist, lost amid the shallowness and illusive satisfactions of a string of short romances and one-night stands - until he met Hebuterne.

I was first exposed to Hebuterne through a certain Modigliani's portrait that mesmerized me. I googled her, took in all the information I could find and swiftly fell for her. Additional photos only strengthened and solidified my obsession with her. She was absolutely beautiful and captivating. More so than Tina Modotti in my opinion. (If you aren't familiar with Modotti, then Google her by all means. She was the epitome of burning sensuality. Edward Weston thought so, and captured her smouldering aura on film. But that's another story.)




Hebuterne by Modigliani


Hebuterne was born into a conservative Parisian family and was introduced to the art world through her brother when she was barely of age. She sat as a model for many prominent painters before striking out to be a painter herself. Eventually she met and fell in love with Modigliani, who was 15 years her senior, a struggling - some might say starving - artist. What was the attraction? I can only imagine the lure, the seduction, the sweet poison of Modigliani's artistic soul.

Against the better advice of her parents, and perhaps in conflict with her own inner voice and judgment, Hebuterne followed the path of a free spirit and ultimately stumbled into a world of misery that Kahlo and so many others follow in pursuit of a mysterious, intriguing painter surrounded by angels and demons. Hebuterne would ultimately be immortalized in over 20 Modigliani portraits, and that in itself is an amazing gift to receive from such a talented painter. Yet, the beautiful young model/painter was to be tortured in unimaginable ways by her lover's overwhelming addictions and violent outbursts.

They say that Miles Davis beat Cicily Tyson. Cher struggled for years through the dark, dingy back alleys of Gregg Allman's heroin addiction. What was it about Syd and Nancy that captured our attention and our sympathy? Could you feel Frida Kahlo's suffering captured in her brilliant canvasses? Add to this fascinating yet tragic heap, the name of Jeanne Hebuterne.




photo of Hebuterne

 After a cruel, self-destructive run, she was eventually the only one at Modigliani's side when the sickly addict died in bed at age 35. Two days later, overcome with grief, a pregnant Hebuterne committed suicide. She was only 20 years old. Hebuterne's wish was to be buried next to the very flawed man whom she loved beyond life itself.

In a final tragic act of bitterness and grief, her wealthy family ignored her wishes and interred her remains at an affluent Paris cemetary. It was several years before the family relented and placed her bones beside those of her tragic lover. Today there is a tombstone in Paris, much like Jim Morrison's - a shrine where Bohemians go at midnight to drink wine and celebrate the lives of free spirits and creative creatures, remarkable rebels who cast their lot against the winds of society and were one-by-one blown away.

Why do I empathize? Why am I drawn near to these Jackson-Pollack-like abstract human trainwrecks. Why do we stare when we drive by the horrible carnage of a highway collision? The story of Jeanne Hebuterne is like an orchid in a funeral home. A macabre yet captivating symbol of life's bittersweet sting.

A Few Thoughts Regarding Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have been described as "Romeo and Juliet in a getaway car."

Hollywood's version of Bonnie and Clyde

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway perpetuated the romantic myth, lionizing the bisexual bank robber and his muse in the Academy Award-winning 1967 film. Unlike Dunaway and Beatty's  portrayal however, Bonnie and Clyde were less glamorous, more gritty and complex. Still, the outlaw ideal of living fast and dying young that Hollywood perpetuated remains a potent part of American lore, and the adrenaline-filled scenes of bullet-dodging bad asses outgunning and outrunning the local yokel lawman to the county line - all to the backdrop of Foggy Mountain Breakdown --bolsters the almost irresistible legend of a modern-day Robin Hood and his White Trash Maid Marian.

The real Bonnie and Clyde

While the real Bonnie Parker lacked the high cheek bones and haute couture looks of Faye Dunaway, she was still a petite little peach. Standing just under five feet tall and weighing a feather-like 90 pounds, she had an affinity for fashionable and brightly-colored clothes. A talented writer who earned honors in grade school, Parker also won several literary contests in her teenage years. Married at age 15, her husband was later sentenced to five years in prison.Fraternizing with criminals, gravitating toward a life of crime, Parker became a 23-year-old martyr for the disenfranchised working class of the Steinbeck chronicled Dust Bowl, then 30 years later a pop culture icon of the rebellious Baby Boom generation.

Clyde Barrow was the fifth son of a "dirt poor tenant farmer" from a large rural Texas family. Eschewing the back-breaking work of a cotton picker, he pursued the quick and easy buck, becoming a petty criminal with a long rap sheet that preceded his bank robbing exploits. It was in Texas State Prison, serving time for auto theft, that colleagues of Barrows claim he turned from a "school boy to a rattlesnake." According to biographer John Neal Phillips, Barrow's criminal motives were was not to gain fame and fortune from robbing banks, rather to seek revenge against the Texas prison system for abuses he suffered while incarcerated.



A young Clyde Barrow

 Bonnie and Clyde lived out their brief lives in the enormous and oppressive shadow of the Great Depression. It was an era of farm foreclosures, breadlines and soup kitchens, in which the common folk of the day developed a festering resentment of the capitalist system, nattily dressed bankers and fast-talking government officials (sound familiar?). Within that context, the Barrow gang drew a generous portion of popular support. Parker played up on the sympathies, fueling the populist fires with poems and stories such as "Suicide Sal" and "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde."



The notion of two passionate outlaws terrorizing banks while romancing each other has been largely dispelled by reports that Clyde Barrow maintained homosexual relations with some of his gang members. Screen writers Robert Benton and David Newman originally penned a menage-a-trois scene with Bonnie and CW. Moss, but Warren Beatty objected to playing a bisexual, and the script was revised to imply that Barrow was impotent. I don't think Clyde's sexual ambiguity would have been as big a deal today as it was in the 1960s. In fact, it probably would have bolstered his status as a counter culture hero.

A very bad-ass Bonnie Parker

Given my generational experiences, I tend to link Bonnie and Clyde to Jim Morrison, Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers and the entire backlash against "the establishment" in the mid 1960s. It is that same sentiment of breaking on through to the other side, crossing forbidden lines and charging self-destructively head on into the dull, mundane, corrupt and soul-stealing jaws of a detatched, untrustworthy and elite-serving authority.

I would like to think that the rock and roll-like rage against the hopelessness and squalor of the post-Hoover Depression, along with the nihilistic rejection of lies and destruction during the Vietnam war and the Watergate era certainly resonate among many who are critical of our current situation; however I find that sort of defiant, rebellious posture strangely absent amid today's financial turmoil.



Whenever I hear Earl Scrugg's Foggy Mountain Breakdown, I want to drive the pedal to the metal, run a red light and break for the border. I can taste the Missouri mud and the Kansas dust as I race from the law and careen toward some unknown fate. I want to turn up the music, flip off The Man and dance on the edge for a brief self-destructive moment. Sometimes I think such thoughts are a vital valve for blowing off steam, an outlet that keeps me sane.

Bernie Boston's Enduring Statement on Flower Power

It would surprise me if you've  heard of photographer Bernie Boston, but I'm willing to wager my 1960s vinyl album collection that you're familiar with his most famous photo.

Boston captured one of the iconic images of the 1960s Vietnam war protests: a young man ( 18-year-old George Edgerly Harris III) stuffing flowers into the rifle barrels of National Guard troops during the October 22, 1967 march on the Pentagon.  The photograph, to me, became a visual Allen Ginsberg poem. It embodied the gentle soul and iron resolve of flower children who refused to accept the status quo of a complacent nation at war.

According to Boston, the Guardsmen formed a semi-circle around the protesters and pointed their rifles at the crowd. From what I know, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and other 1960s radicals had promoted the event as a supernatural occurrence in which shamans and mystics would levitate the military headquarters 10 feet off the ground. I guess the notion, as whacko as it sounds today, really freaked out the man in Washington D.C.!

It was what Allen Ginsberg termed a playful moment of "magic politics." Ginsberg himself was out on the forefront of that event, partaking in Tebetan chants in ernest hippie hopes of actually raising spirits and defying gravity. 

To say that the nonsensical plot got under the authorities' collective skin would be an understatement. The Big Man himself, President Johnson, over-reacted by deploying a huge display of force -- almost 5,000 police and Guardsmen. Supposedly, placing flowers in gun barrels was Ginsberg's idea. He wanted to create a poetic, visual example of youth against youth, a starkly contrasting portrait of cold, lethal steel against warmth, love and flower power.

Boston happened to have the best angle on the moment, positioned on a wall overlooking the odd yet alarming confrontation. His photo earned him a finalist position for the Pulitzer Prize that year. Strangely however, the newspaper he worked for didn't see much value in the historic photo and buried it on Page A12. What were they thinking?

Norman Mailer, who was at the Pentagon the day Bernie Boston snapped his defining photograph, actually won a Pulitzer prize for writing an account of the protest, titled "The Armies of the Night." Have you ever read it? I'm trying to get my hands on it, but haven't had any luck yet.

All these years later, the whole bizarre circus remains brightly stained upon my youthful imagination and sense of rebellion. Sadly, however, the key actors in that memorable drama have for the most part faded into obscurity and dust.

George Edgerly Harris III, the flower child stuffing carnations down gun barrels, died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1982. That was so early in the epidemic that the Gay community was in shock. There was no first or second wall of defense, and the disease just burned like wildfire through an entire generation of artists, writers and creative tribes members, eclipsing the casualties of Vietnam many times over.  How sad!

Abbie Hoffman committed suicide in April 1989, swallowing 150 phenobarbital pills. Or so the official story goes. His body was found surrounded by over 200 pages of hand-written notes. Was he a jaded Yippie activist who shrugged in dispair amid a wave of Yuppie consumerism and the mass transformation of the most radical generation ever into a voting block that would later put George W. Bush in power? How tragic!

Jerry Rubin, who later became a Yuppie himself, would go on to insist that "wealth creation is the real American revolution."  Ah, the poetic irony of fate! in a final act of petite rebellion, this celebrated iconoclast was struck by a car and killed in November 1994 while jaywalking on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. How futiley fitting, in a Charles Adams sort of way.

David Dellinger, suffering from poor health at age 88, died in May 2004. I am pleased to report that just three years earlier, he had hitchhiked to Quebec City to demonstrate against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Right on, Dellinger.  How inspiring!

Bernie Boston died at the age of 74, but I think his photo will live on, speaking for generations to come what the others mentioned above can no longer say.

Jack Kerouac and the Butterfly Effect

When I was a very young boy, I was frequently exposed to a group of artists, musicians and eccentrics who were close friends of my parents. Beatniks, many called them. Hipsters from the 1950s; a motley collection of painters, poets, iconoclasts and philosophers who conscientiously ran counter to the prevailing culture of the day.

Media hyped the "Beatnik" image.

The term “Beatnik” was actually something of a manufactured label, a stereotyped caricature of beret-wearing, bongo-beating coffee house bohemians meant to corral and categorized those who defied categorization. Originally coined by Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, the word “beatnik” was an amalgam of references spanning an entire decade of cultural references. It incorporated author Jack Kerouac’s phrase “Beat Generation” (originally conceived in a conversation with fellow writer John Clellon Holmes in 1948) along with the Russian suffix “nik,” an allusion to the Soviet “Sputnik” satellite launched in 1958. 

My father, the jazz musician

Considering Cold War sensibilities, the term was possibly meant as a stigma, a verbal tar-and-feathering of those who failed to fall in line, perhaps insinuating some sort of pinkish, un-American tint.
My father was a jazz musician. He had kicked around with many of the greats in his day, including Cal Tjader, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. My mother was an art major at San Diego State College. While others her aged listened to Elvis and pursued a Norman Rockwell reality, she was listening to Dave Brubeck and contemplating the more surreal boundaries of Salvador Dali.

My mother the art major

When the two of them moved in together under one roof before getting married, the family considered it “shacking up.” Neighbors frowned and family members whispered behind many a back. Peer pressure and societal norms were a confining, restrictive force to be reckoned with, and artists, musicians and eccentrics were among the few brave souls to question the rules and challenge authority.

Many who define “beatnik” associate it with the liberal use of drugs, and while it is true that my parent’s beat friends smoked and drank excessively, that’s not what made them stand out. Everyone carried a cocktail and a cigarette in those days. By 1960s, alcohol and tobacco were mainstream vice, embraced wholeheartedly by the establishment. Socially aware professionals, from journalists and physicians to actors and politicians fell pray to a certain cigarette chic and even helped to promote tobacco’s cool, sophisticated image. Edward R. Murrow smoked on air. Doctors were featured in cigarette ads. Everybody from Lucille Ball to Ronald Reagan was lighting up. Folks fell into convenient categories that identified with and were identified by their smokes. The Terryton crowd would rather “fight than switch.”

If there were two defining characteristics that set the Beat Generation apart, it may have been the rejection of materialism and the search for some deeper spiritual truth. It is almost chic today to reject the suburban ideal and eschew mainstream religion. Ah, but in the Eisenhower era, any criticism of tract homes, upward mobility or Jesus was practically tantamount to treason. You have to appreciate the rigid conformity of the day to fully grasp the price of rebellion. Consider the ripple effects of McCarthyism and Communist witch hunts; ponder the persecution (and prosecution) of homosexuals and the legal lash back against prurient or erotic literature. 

"Howl" launched an obscenity trial

Suffice it to say that the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark work, “Howl” a modern icon of American poetry, resulted in a pivotal obscenity trial.  The Beat Generation was courageous in advancing personal freedoms and liberties well in front of the hippie movement of the 1960s.

And what about Jack Kerouac's cultural infleunce on the 1960s, the decade that pretty much shaped me, my values and my sense of culture? To explain his profound impact upon my generation, let's talk for a moment about the Butterfly Effect. The notion suggests that minute variations present at the germinal stages of a dynamic system may become profoundly magnified at the system's maturity. The poetic nature of the phrase alludes to the idea that a butterfly's wings might impact miniscule changes in the wind that will ultimately give rise to a hurricane in another hemisphere.

Are you following me?  Let me see if I can make the concept slightly less abstract.  If it weren't for Jack Kerouac, there would have been no Jim Morrison. That is quite a hypothetical postulate to ponder, but think about this for a moment: "If you're working with words, it's got to be poetry," said Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek. "I grew up with Kerouac. If he hadn't wrote On The Road, the Doors would have never existed. Morrison read On The Road down in Florida, and I read it in Chicago. That sense of freedom, spirituality, and intellectuality in On The Road -- that's what I wanted in my own work."

Jack Kerouac's novel, "On the Road."

OK, now think of Tom Wolf, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey and other literary giants who emulated Kerouac's confessional, stream-of-consciousness approach to literature in the 1960s. Were they part of the generational hurricane that Kerouac set in force?  Picture Kerouac breaking out of the 1950s mindset like a psychedelic butterfly struggling from his cocoon, the faint vibrations of which would ultimately set the whole 1960s counterculture movement into motion. Rejecting his football star status, instead choosing to write poetry with "fags."

Super star of the Beat Generation, slightly before my time. More my mother's scene. Coffee house hipsters quoting Ginsberg's Howl; hanging out at Ferlinghetti's book store; rejecting convention and blazing a wild path into youthful oblivion. Teen-age rebels dying amid gruesome carnage of torn flesh and twisted steel in the time before seatbelts. Prototype for the hippie ideal; wandering tribesmen of restless dream in a world that pre-dated rock music. Charlie Parker was the sound. Going up to Harlem  to hear Miles Davis and puff some grass.  Driving across America on Benzedrine and coffee in large-engined gas guzzlers from the Golden Age of Detroit. It was still a way to Height Ashbury or Woodstock, but Kerouac was steering the nation in that direction while many of us still slept in our mother's wombs.

Tragic figure, Kerouac. He died a tortured artist, a "rock and roll suicide," to quote David Bowie; an alcoholic martyr in the mold of other beautiful losers such as Dylan Thomas, Mickey Mantle or Butch Van Artsdalen. Some might dismiss Kerouac's life as a wasted one. Natalie Merchant talked about the fascination with human train wrecks such as him an Marilyn Monroe, when discussing her song about Jack. I've heard others describe Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in the same terms, but I don't fully agree with that perspective. 



Human train wreck?



As humans, we need to be free to experiment and fail; we must have the liberty to indulge if we choose, to take life right up to the edge and stare right down in to the abyss. To deny that right is to mandate seatbelts for life itself, to place proverbial training wheels upon the bicycle of existance. It is to clutter up our human affairs with so many bumbers and air bags and rules and regulations as to stifle the joy, the thrill, the randomness and sense of wonder and adventure that is life itself.