Extended Essay
English Language and Literature
“To what extent did The Velvet Underground & Nico's 'Banana album' relate the social, political and cultural landscape of its time and how?”
Arthur Vandervoort: (Candidate Number)
Supervisor: Jonathan Jones
Session: May 2015
Word Count:
Citation Style: Chicago
Abstract:
Table of Contents
Page
1 Title Page 2 Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4 Introduction 5 “Not since the Titanic ran into that iceberg has there been such a collision as when Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable burst upon the audiences at The Trip Tuesday. For once a Happening really happened, and it took Warhol to come out from New York to show how it’s done.”
Novelist and Eastern thought expert Nancy Wilson …show more content…
In I’m Waiting for the Man, Reed describes how a character is going “up to Lexington, 1-2-5” to buy drugs. The location he refers to is a subway station in East Harlem that lies at the intersection between Lexington Ave. and East 125th street. What makes this significant is that Harlem would’ve indeed been the logical place to buy heroin at that time, with drug and crime rates being significantly higher than in the rest of the city, but also that Harlem was a significant neighborhood for the race equality movements. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Harlem and Malcolm X was assassinated there, and the neighborhood carries significant cultural …show more content…
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in Harlem and Malcolm X was assassinated there. These things have contributed to the fact that the area carries significant importance to American culture and the black rights movement.
Reed, however, does not seem to refer to any of these significant characteristics in his music. The only real reference to race in I’m Waiting for the Man is when one person asks of Reed’s character: “Hey white boy, what you doin’ uptown? / Hey white boy, you chasin’ our women around?” Reed would’ve most certainly been aware of the significance of Harlem when he was writing about it, but might’ve chosen not to write about it. This decision would’ve been in line with the almost surreal detachment from the world that was popular in New York’s art scene. Warhol’s pop art, for example, employs this same
English Language and Literature
“To what extent did The Velvet Underground & Nico's 'Banana album' relate the social, political and cultural landscape of its time and how?”
Arthur Vandervoort: (Candidate Number)
Supervisor: Jonathan Jones
Session: May 2015
Word Count:
Citation Style: Chicago
Abstract:
Table of Contents
Page
1 Title Page 2 Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4 Introduction 5 “Not since the Titanic ran into that iceberg has there been such a collision as when Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable burst upon the audiences at The Trip Tuesday. For once a Happening really happened, and it took Warhol to come out from New York to show how it’s done.”
Novelist and Eastern thought expert Nancy Wilson …show more content…
In I’m Waiting for the Man, Reed describes how a character is going “up to Lexington, 1-2-5” to buy drugs. The location he refers to is a subway station in East Harlem that lies at the intersection between Lexington Ave. and East 125th street. What makes this significant is that Harlem would’ve indeed been the logical place to buy heroin at that time, with drug and crime rates being significantly higher than in the rest of the city, but also that Harlem was a significant neighborhood for the race equality movements. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Harlem and Malcolm X was assassinated there, and the neighborhood carries significant cultural …show more content…
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in Harlem and Malcolm X was assassinated there. These things have contributed to the fact that the area carries significant importance to American culture and the black rights movement.
Reed, however, does not seem to refer to any of these significant characteristics in his music. The only real reference to race in I’m Waiting for the Man is when one person asks of Reed’s character: “Hey white boy, what you doin’ uptown? / Hey white boy, you chasin’ our women around?” Reed would’ve most certainly been aware of the significance of Harlem when he was writing about it, but might’ve chosen not to write about it. This decision would’ve been in line with the almost surreal detachment from the world that was popular in New York’s art scene. Warhol’s pop art, for example, employs this same