Pop Culture and the Erosion of Adulthood

The elevation of a childlike sensibility was once a peculiarity of the hippies but, since the 1990s, both politics and pop culture have been dominated by the twin motifs of the victim and the child. In fact, the virtues of vulnerability, even of madness and disability, the cults of ‘the freak’, the ‘beautiful loser’ and the ‘damaged’, have all won popular approval.

Andrew Calcutt will trace the history of these motifs back to their origins in the counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. He will argue that the counterculture, far from being liberating, has provided a ready-made verbal and visual language for today’s victim culture, and the authoritarian politics arising from it.

date:

Saturday 26 November 2016

time:

3pm to 4:45pm

admission:

£5 waged / £4 unwaged

speakers/panellists:

useful reading:

salon partners:

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The Tetley is a centre for contemporary art and learning, located in the former headquarters of the world-famous Tetley Brewery on Hunslet Road. Visit their website at: www.thetetley.org/