Cultural Revolution?

Are the cultural upheavals of the sixties just a media myth, recycled as endless nostalgia? The Summer of Love with its ambience of marijuana and sitar music, the glitterati of Swinging London, and student protesters battling with the police evoke a period of material properity, cultural innovation and youthful rebellion. But how far did the radical aspirations and utopian ideals go? And what is the legacy of the social, political and cultural transformations which characterized the decade? In an interdisciplinary collection of specially commissioned essays, the contributors to Cultural Revolution uncover the complex economic and political contexts in which these changes took place. Covering a wide variety of art forms - drama, television film, poetry, the novel, popular music, dance, cinema and the visual arts - they investigate how sixties’ culture became politicized, and how its inherent contradictions still have repercussions for the arts today.