Definitions – beat, Beat Generation, beatnik
Worthless, bereft of
value, irresponsible, anti-social, indolent. Like a dead beat.
Beat Generation (noun)
A small number of writers and artists who lead a ‘beat’ life and
who produce unconventional, un-heroic literature and art.
1958 Daily
Express 23 July 4/2 This [San Francisco] is the home and the
haunt of America's Beat generation and these are the Beatniks — or new
barbarians.
beatnik (noun):
1. A media darling stereotype prevalent from the late 1950s to present. The beatnik is universally depicted
as lazy, unmotivated, idle, worthless, cynical, world-weary, shambling,
sexually-promiscuous, godless; cheaply and shabbily clad, hyperbolic, kinetic, unkempt,
unsanitary, the butt of derision, artistic, slang-prone, politically radical, shiftless,
and behaviorally unpredictable.
Other
elements of the beatnik persona include pseudo-intellectuality, jazz
fanaticism, drug use, disassociated poetry spouting, unreflective booze influx,
and the continual cartoonish depiction and dismissal of square (conventional) thought
teamed with an identification with the Far East spiritual quest of Jack
Kerouac's rhapsodic fiction
and Allen Ginsberg’s confessional poetry.
Beatniks
seek an invisible world.
2.
A person who participates in a social movement stressing
artistic personhood, mysticism, and the abandonment of conventional societal values.
3.
broadly : (usually) a young and artistic person who bails out
of the status quo of war and money-obsessed squaredom to pursue ecstasy.
4. A person, especially a self-identifying member or follower of the
Beat Generation cultural movement, whose behavior, views, and often style of dress is emphatically
unconventional and non-conformist.
5. A conflation of the Soviet space satellite term ‘sputnik’ with
‘beat’ in an attempt to pigeonhole the far out mentality of a bohemian individual.
6. One who sniffs out the holy in any scene, scenario, or person,
however unlikely.
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