I always thought of them as a bunch of guys who produced good music. On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 7:48 PM, ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/09/youngpeople.history > > John Lennon controversially declared they were bigger than Jesus, and the > levels of fan hysteria and devotion they engendered made them synonymous > with the youth culture of the swinging 60s. But a Cambridge University > historian today argues that the Beatles were not heroes of the > counter-culture but capitalists who cynically exploited youth culture for > commercial gain. David Fowler claims: "They did about as much to represent > the interests of the nation's young people as the Spice Girls did in the > 1990s." > > Fowler claims that many commentators during the 1960s saw youth culture as > being all about the Beatles. But he says that just because they were > fantastically popular - maybe bigger than Jesus, as John Lennon said in 1966 > - it did not make them leaders of their generation. > > <...> > > He believes that much that has been written about the Beatles, that they > were at the forefront of a cultural movement of the young, for example, is > untrue. "They were young capitalists who, far from developing a youth > culture, were exploiting youth culture by promoting fan worship, mindless > screaming and nothing more than a passive teenage consumer." > > > --ravi > > -- > Geekery: http://ahren.org/code/ Please support: > Inanities: http://ravi.tumblr.com/ http://www.peta.org/ > Opinion: http://0sum.org/ http://greenpeace.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
-- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
