Following an interestingly provocative and somewhat laughable YouTube of the opening dance number from Hair I decided to buy the movie and play it for the family Christmas movie. We didn't discuss it because everybody resisted watching it until the very last hour. So I'm not sure about the reactions of the junior Bowens other than "That was a cool movie but the music sucked."
Regardless of that, I found the extent to which it must have fascinated and shocked audiences rather useful over time. But nothing came through so clearly and painfully as the dialog between two women somewhere in the final third of the film. It is the conversation that begins with the scene between the mother of Lafayette's child and Lafayette who now calls himself Hud and then culminates between she and Annie Golden.
The woman who is given no name in the film other than "Hud's Fiancee" responds:
How can people
Be so heartless
How can people
Be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people
Have no feelings
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend
I need a friend
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to give in
Easy to help out
Who say they care about
Social injustice
Blam. There is the entirety of Mrs Jellyby from Dickens' Bleak House. I found the scene in the film absolutely poignant. There is much to be said about the sexual revolution right in that scene. But it goes further to this culminating dialog:
I'm not into any heavy
preference trip...
like who the father is.
I don't care.
I think they're both beautiful.
Don't you?
But how can you not care
about that?
If a woman carries a child, don't you
think she should know who the father is?
I admit that I have this dilemma.
But it will be resolved real soon.
It's not like a big crisis or anything.
It's not like a world war.
I don't know
what you're so uptight about.
I fell in love with someone.
We had a child,
and we were gonna get married.
That's why I'm uptight.
- Yeah?
- And you're holding it up!
I'm not holding it up.
You don't see the way it is.
This is really a great thing
that's happened to all of us.
Everybody's really happy about it.
The guys are really happy.
I think it would be great
if you could be happy about it too.
- You're crazy.
- Yeah, I'm crazy.
We're all crazy.
Let's shake on it.
Let's not.
Blam again!
What's interesting about Hair in retrospect is the extent to which the charisma of the lead hippie is completely and understandably compelling. What's difficult to believe is how simple minded so many people must have been (& peasants are (?)) to take the weight of that charisma, a few drugs, costumes and street performance art into something capable of overturing the order of a great nation, even at its most insecure moment.
I cannot help but think that Hair signals the premise of the Age of Aquarius, completely and fully realized in youth culture and alternative culture in America. But there is absolutely no question in my mind that this rebellion occurered within the context of a privileged and spoiled social context, for blacks as much as for whites. All everyone wanted to do was stick their noses up at the wealthy, while appropriating their wealth whenever it seemed convenient to them. If Hair had any basis in reality whether art followed life or the other way 'round, I can most certainly feel the contempt, cynicism and hypocrisy of those Boomers who have turned against the defining creation of their generation. In one fell two hour swoop, I understand.
It helps that this weekend I have been listening closely to Steppenwolf and to Simon & Garfunkel.
There can be no question that the chaos of the time gave birth to the necessary confusion required for a complete break of faith of the mis-reckoned or misunderstood inheritance of the post-war era. I cannot help but contrast this the seriousness taken by the characters in the film The Good Shepherd. It wasn't merely some willy nilly trust fund babies this rebellion was against, but those who decided to carry the good fight into the next generation with conviction and composure which belied their own uncertainty. Dangerous peguins indeed. But the counter culture was not a complete counter-strike, it was a co-dependent howl. People who forget how to work and forget how to raise children and only sacrifice for the spontanaeity of the moment... well, they make for great dancers, lovers and friends but civilization requires much, much more.
It leaves me with yet another doubt as to whether those who invented the terms 'human rights' and 'social justice' outside of the Catholic Social Teaching knew what they were talking about at all. On the question of free love, there is no doubt in my mind that those counterculturalists were on the wrong side of history and reason.
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