Demystification Of Howl: An Omniscient Narration Of The Beatniks And The Beat Poetry

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is a representative poet of the Beat Generation inAmerican literature during last century. His long poem Howl played a significant rolein American poetry world of the20thcentury. In2010, a film named Howl directed byRobert Epstein based on Ginsberg’s masterpiece Howl, drew people’s attention backto the controversial beat poet. The film dose not review the whole life of AllenGinsberg chronologically, instead, it focuses on his experiences in the1950s, mainlyaround the birth of poem Howl. The creative animation narration, the publication ofthe precious court records and the collection of Allen Ginsberg’s personal interviewsare the three highlights of the film. In addition, with the classic image of poetryreading and the jazz soundtrack, the film successfully gets out of the general masswith its unique charm. The thesis attempts to analyze the film from the above fiveaspects to illustrate how it arouses popular willingness to know and understand theso-called Beat Generation by elaborating the comparatively true frames of the figuresand society of that time.This thesis begins its analysis from the reconstruction of the poem. There is nodoubt that poem Howl is a real portraiture of the whole era background, however, tounderstand the poem is not easy. As a backbone of the film, black-and-white pictureof reading in Six Gallery bar and extremely modern poem-based animation insertionsgive comprehensive narration of the poem from abstract and representational anglesrespectively. With jazz as the soundtrack, perfectly reproduces the background hiddenbehind the frames. This will be followed by the trial on obscenity of poem Howl,which provides deeper understanding of the poem through the testimony from bothplaintiffs and defenses. This trial is essentially the social examination ofnon-mainstream culture, through which the Beat Generation make efforts to legalizethemselves, and the innocent Howl signal powerful drive for beat culture. The lastpart will mainly focus on his life and thoughts by analyzing the personal interviews ofGinsberg. At the same time, it is a good way to better comprehend the era by understanding the representative figure of the Beat Generation.The Beat Literature, which began in the1950s, has influenced ideological trendfrom its first day of existence. The film is not only wonderful narration of poem Howl,but re-explore of the Beat Literature represented by Ginsberg, which causes morepeople to reread Ginsberg and the Beat Generation.