My encounter with George Cotkin's text starts under a most unexpected premise: In his essay “The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom: Robert Frank's The Americans” , in which Cotkin carves out the connections between Robert Frank and the philosophies of the Beat movement artists, the most surprising statement appears quite at the beginning: Almost all theorists, says Cotkin, who have so far reviewed and analyzed Frank's work, have done so without paying closer attention to said link between the artists (21). They do mention Jack Kerouac, maybe even quote the Beat author in their texts, but, argues Cotkin, leave it at that. For a student like me, only beginning to explore Frank's oevre and trying to classify his photographs into the canon
…show more content…
He argues that Frank's major themes – automobiles, being on the road, movement – should not (only) be seen as icons of America (after all, as Cotkin points out, Frank took similar pictures in Spain or Brazil), but as essential topics of also the Beats. Furthermore Cotkin erects the theory that Frank not only covers and evokes sadness in his pictures, for example by showing how white Americans are captured in the ruling conventions of the Fifties (27) and in some “deep spiritual malaise” (25) that prevents them from living joy, but that he also offers a solution: It is the Blacks, however, who – in Cotkin's interpretation of Frank's pictures – are able to live free from conventions, who can enjoy life, even when being confronted with death, that is, when visiting a funeral (29). Frank, Cotkin adds, also shows the limits of the Blacks' social lives. One picture might frame a black protagonist as if he was in jail, another one can serve to show the class differences between a black nurse and a white baby …show more content…
However, in my eyes, he fails to establish a reliable link between his interpretations concerning the photographs of the Blacks and the Beats' philosophy. Cotkin alleges that the Beats used to “celebrate” black Americans for being, so Cotkin, “open to the possibilities of freedom” (26), an inner constitution deriving from the Blacks' very special historic situation. Besides one citation of Norman Mailer and his “The White Negro” Cotkin does not provide the reader with any further literary references. What did Kerouac write about the Blacks? How did Allen Ginsberg cover the theme in his
He argues that Frank's major themes – automobiles, being on the road, movement – should not (only) be seen as icons of America (after all, as Cotkin points out, Frank took similar pictures in Spain or Brazil), but as essential topics of also the Beats. Furthermore Cotkin erects the theory that Frank not only covers and evokes sadness in his pictures, for example by showing how white Americans are captured in the ruling conventions of the Fifties (27) and in some “deep spiritual malaise” (25) that prevents them from living joy, but that he also offers a solution: It is the Blacks, however, who – in Cotkin's interpretation of Frank's pictures – are able to live free from conventions, who can enjoy life, even when being confronted with death, that is, when visiting a funeral (29). Frank, Cotkin adds, also shows the limits of the Blacks' social lives. One picture might frame a black protagonist as if he was in jail, another one can serve to show the class differences between a black nurse and a white baby …show more content…
However, in my eyes, he fails to establish a reliable link between his interpretations concerning the photographs of the Blacks and the Beats' philosophy. Cotkin alleges that the Beats used to “celebrate” black Americans for being, so Cotkin, “open to the possibilities of freedom” (26), an inner constitution deriving from the Blacks' very special historic situation. Besides one citation of Norman Mailer and his “The White Negro” Cotkin does not provide the reader with any further literary references. What did Kerouac write about the Blacks? How did Allen Ginsberg cover the theme in his