Allen Ginsberg meeting Bob Dylan while performing (Elsa Dorfman, "Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan," wikimedia)

Performance of poem Ballad of the Skeletons(Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney, "Ballad of the Skeletons," youtube.com)

The Beat Movement can be reduced down to the core purpose of critiquing the superficiality of society. Initially, this would seem to indicate that the art and artists of this movement would not appeal to figures of mainstream pop-culture, though the opposite occurred.

As the movement became more substantial, other movements pulled ideas from the Beat Movement. The counterculture movement latched on to the idea of defying expectations and challenging traditional society. Counterculture music reflected similar opinions to that of the beatniks. The top picture to the left is indicative of this crossover, portraying Allen Ginsberg of the beat movement in conversation with Bob Dylan of the counterculture movement. Similarly, Paul McCartney, who at one point was heavily involved in the counterculture movement, produced with Allen Ginsberg the bizarre-like "Ballad of the Skeletons," which reflects the beatnik style of art.

The beatnik principle of challenging norms extended into the feminist movements and the LGBT movements of the sixties and seventies as well, providing a push to go against the traditional gender roles and the expectation of how relationships worked. In efforts to break the system of gender roles, men grew their hair long and women burned their bras. Such ideas rebelled against the society at those times, following the example of the beat movement. While the Beat Movement was highly controversial to the general public initially, the core beliefs and intentions of beatniks of criticizing society eventually heavily influenced mainstream culture in profound and permanent ways.