hippies - 2012 - Wanderlust

Wanderlust

David Wain

2012

Apatow Productions

This film is a tale of counterculture tourism. A journey of the heart where the human spirit is led back to their place of origin to find that, yes, yes, middle class conformity is the best possible lifestyle. Thank you... so much, for this portrayal of hippies, culture industry.

Wanderlust is a stupid movie that is sometimes funny although it is mostly exactly the shallow movie anyone who’s watched movies before should expect. A married pair of Manhattan yuppies lose their foothold on the success ladder and are forced to leave the city. The man works in an investment firm that’s shut down by the feds and the woman’s a documentary film director who blows a screening of her latest work in front of HBO executives. After this meeting when the wife seeks solace for her failure from her husband, it's revealed that her filmmaking career was simply a dalliance in a long list of discarded career-paths, revealing that the professional realm is a world of struggle for some and a playground for others. Not just anyone, afterall, can jump into filmmaking on a whim and obtain meetings to screen their projects in front of high-status industry personnel.

So anyways this couple leave Manhattan, the gilded city of success. They had to, because they’re failures now and Manhattan doesn’t accommodate failures. On their trip out of the city they need a hotel, and they find one, but it’s also a hippie commune called Elysium where they feel the good vibrations and decide to become permanent residents after a brief rest in the suburbs with the man's materialistic and success-driven brother. That the commune is also a hotel is crucial in indicating that this turn in their life is as tourists seeking a temporary escape, rather than as explorers of alternatives to dominant values. The man, who was also in the movie Clueless, talks Jennifer Aniston, his wife, into staying with the hippies. Over the course of the film Jennifer Aniston comes to love her new habitat while the Clueless guy wants to leave. Throughout this film there’s all the stuff about naked communing with nature and swaying back and forth to folk music and hallucinogenics and long hair on men that make hippies so hilarious.

There are a few moments in the film that are of interest to me. The first is the already mentioned HBO meeting. Another prime moment of interest occurs towards the end of the film. The husband receives a call for a job interview and is ready to return to the mainstream and besides, he’s not as cool as he thought he was and he likes the commune less and less, so he has a fight with his wife where suddenly he’s arguing that conformity is great if it means enjoying air conditioning again. He argues so passionately in favour of technologically mediated bourgeois urban lifestyles that its easy to forget that earlier in the film he was convincing his wife to give the hippies a chance. The two interesting things about the husband’s statements are, first, at one point he shouts that experiencing air conditioning is the norm in the United States. This statement indicates at once that it is just plain incorrect to live in violation of norms of any kind, and also immediately repositions himself as harshly opposed to the commune. It is interesting to me that his loudest opposing statement to communal life is in reference to air conditioning, which evokes the title of Henry Miller’s critique of American conformity, The Air Conditioned Nightmare.

The second interesting statement in this argument was when the husband accused his wife of ‘drinking the koolaid’. Drinking the Koolade, of course recalling the Jonestown mass suicide where followers of Reverend Jim Jones drank cyanide-laced flavour-ade in 1978, has become a term of critical conformity. Use of this term is how the squares quickly criticize non-conformists for adopting non-conformist dress, language, ideas, etc.

Another scene of interest appears when Jennifer Aniston eats a breakfast meat platter or something like that at a diner in town, far from the isolated rural environment of Elysium. All this meat has to be eaten in secret because the commune is strictly vegan and, uh oh! she finds that the guy who founded the commune is also at the diner eating a big hunk of meat. She’s scared because she’s caught but the commune patriarch reveals that he’s been eating secret meat for years. This scene interests me because it was an opportunity to demonstrate that the strict rules of the commune and its adherents may actually be elastic to some extent... after all, if this hardcore old time hippy can violate the rules, anyone should be able to, to some extent, without facing exile. Instead, this is a secret they share with the implicit knowledge that this violation of the rules means they don’t really believe in the hippie life after all.

The final thing that interests me in the movie is that the commune has a charismatic leader who’s good at everything and has everyone’s admiration and truly believes in the hippie way of living. For some reason he wants to go steady with Jennifer Aniston, and sells out the commune so that he can impress her with his new wealth, even though she had come around to committing to life at Elysium. This was clearly just a lazy movie crisis inserted into the film to move the action along to some conclusion, but it also expresses, I think, a widespread skepticism among mainstream people that anyone can truly avoid the lure of success in mainstream society, because not only is Clueless-man enticed back rather quickly, the hardest-core hippie of the film gives up his lifestyle for reasons that don’t even come close to making sense.

punk - communal living - 2005 - Mouth to Mouth

Mouth to Mouth
Alison Murray
2005
M2M Films
101 minutes

Mouth to Mouth is a film about a group of street kids travelling through Europe in a rusty old van, attending festivals, dumpster diving, and smoking and drinking. The group, called Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge, or SPARK, goes from city to city living as crusty punks, forming social bonds and drifting around until they make their way to a vineyard somewhere in southern Europe. At this point the group began living communally and working the land while they also take on the form of the charismatic cult that was hinted at during their earlier travels.

The group has a leader, Harry, who expresses a bland self-help straight-edge philosophy and repeatedly admonishes his followers to "stay strong". At one point, while the group is on the road, their youngest member cuts his throat on a piece of twisted metal and dies after he's flung into a dumpster to look for food. No one really takes responsibility for the death, including the boy's best friend who carelessly tossed him in there, but its Harry's disinterest that is striking as an early clue of his evil. Once they occupy the vineyard, Harry begins exercising authority more cruelly, punishing disobedient followers by putting them in a well. The film ends predictably when one member dies under such punishment and another, Sherry (the film's main character - it doesn't really suit the purpose of my blog to speak about her) rejects Jeff's authority and leaves the group.

The group is a charismatic cult with a complete absence of spirituality, much like the cult in Martha Marcy May Marlene. They are a self-help group with a bad man for a leader. Much like with that other movie, its easier for me to understand how the bizarre and psychotic millenarianism of Charles Manson, for example, could compel followers to invest in him as an authority figure, than it is for me to understand how a bland punk-guru's dull can inspire his friends to obey his every word.

Director Allison Murray also made the documentary Train on the Brain, the greatest of all hobo/train hopping films, so that's good.

The Bug is on the soundtrack, which is also very good.

Sixties - 2012 - West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977

West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977

Elissa Auther & Adam Lerner (eds.)

Lucy Lippard (foreword)

University of Minnesota Press

2012

388 pages

Considering that Sixties America is supposed to have been a special time of swift and turbulent change, the canon of American art history of that period reflects very little of that milieu.  Where it does, for example, make a critical statement of the times: in Andy Warhol’s disaster series, for example, it says something that had already been stated more artfully by some media guru or another.  Editors Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner have compiled this volume of twenty chapters, each on a separate art movement or artist of the 1960s/70s counterculture, as a companion to an exhibition of the same title, shown from November 2011 - February 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and from September 29, 2012 to January 6, 2013 at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Johnny, by Roger Anderson - 1972

The book is varied in its approach to its subject matter, with chapters on topics such as Drop City (and later, Libre) two dome-based communes that update some of the 19th century utopian society ethos, a-la Brook Farm, with modern technology and the creative ethos of the 1960s at its centre, and Crossroads Community, a farm set up on the land under a highway interchange in San Francisco (recalling a greened and livable version of JG Ballard’s Concrete Island). The book has a number of different sections but the art movements and practices discussed in West of Centre can be broken down into discussions of creative communities that, in a sense, lived their art, including discussions of the above communities, and also Drag Collectives and various art-making workshops and retreats.  

The second overarching type of art discussed in the chapters of West of Center are the more traditional graphic arts movements of the 1960s counterculture. These mostly focused on those artists who illustrated the radical publications of various liberation movements, most notably Emory Douglas, the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party and the premiere illustrator of that organization’s weekly newspaper. Another, lesser known, graphic artist for a radical cultural newspaper was Yolanda Lopez, who contributed drawings and collages to La Basta newspaper, a radical Spanish newspaper for California’s various Chicano communities. Additionally, this book includes chapters on feminist and Gay liberation artists as well as subversive ‘detourned’ advertisements that address political issues of the time.  In brief, psychedelia and the accompanying 60s tradition of rock posters are also investigated with some awesome reproductions of posters by the great psychedelic artist, Rick Griffith, featured in full colour.

It should be noted, even though it may be obvious from the title, that West of Centre only focuses on countercultural art and communities from the Western United States. Nothing from the eastern hippie Mecca of New York City that provided the setting, for example, for the great Hippie musical and film, Hair, is included. Nothing focusing on the imagery produced on the periphery of the many hardcore radical movements like The White Panthers or The Motherfuckers that operated out of eastern or midwestern northern cities like Detroit or Chicago. Then again, the San Francisco Diggers weren’t mentioned either.... Anyways, the book offers plenty of information and full colour images of countercultural creative groups that have held little presence in the numerous texts of 60s nostalgia, and helps to broaden the retrospective image of 1960s art beyond the set boundaries of tie-dye clothing, Abbie Hoffman’s TV antics, and the San Francisco Oracle.

by Emory Douglas

anarchism - article - 2011 - A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940 - 1954

A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940 - 1954
Andrew Cornell
The Journal for the Study of Radicalism
Vol 5, no. 1: 2011
pp. 105-131
Michigan State University Press

Andrew Cornell is a historian of American radical politics who teaches at New York University.  His CV shows a wide array of interests within the field of anarchist and radical history, however it appears that much of his work focuses on radical campus activity.  His article A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940-1954 does not cover campus politics but rather focuses on the period of the 20th century when American anarchism was at a low ebb.  The old left of the IWW had passed its peak, the Communist Party was in decline, and American enthusiasm for World War II had dissipated much of the radical sentiments of the first half of the century.  

During this period Cornell argues that while there was little that resembled a ‘movement’ with regards to anarchism, there were a number of publications and small groups of people whose work contributed to the rise of the radical 1960s.  Cornell’s article is a survey of anarchist activity within the United States during a lull that occurred between two extended bursts of radical action.  Cornell focuses on a number of now largely forgotten publications such as the anarcho-syndicalist newspaper, Why?, begun by the young syndicalist Audrey Goodfriend, and her older roommate, Dorothy Rogers.  According to Cornell, the publication moved away from a strict program of anarcho-syndicalist ideas and news towards a broader program that included analysis of the Spanish Civil War and critiques of World War II.  

Another publication Cornell discusses was a quarterly periodical titled Retort, published by Holley Cantine and Dorothy Paul.  Retort emerged from Cantine’s adherence to the ideals of American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau - Cornell points out that it was published out of a cabin built by Cantine - and it included literary works in addition to the standard political analysis and criticism of such journals.  One of the first poem published in Retort was by radical San Francisco proto-beat poet Kenneth Rexroth.  In a section under the heading of ‘Proto-Beats’ within Cornell’s article, Rexroth is placed at the forefront of a circle of west-coast poets and artists who foregrounded radical politics in their art.  

In addition to Rexroth, some other well known figures were active during this period, although their best work was to come later.  Eventual Chicago 8 defendant and former Union Theolgical Seminary student David Dellinger led protests against segregation in prison while he was incarcerated as a Conscientious Objector to WWII.  Word of the protests spread to other prisons which eventually integrated their dining halls.  Dellinger and his associates took a non-violent approach to their protests which Cornell suggested had some influence on the path of the later civil rights movement.  (cf. see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmour's book, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 for a prehistory of the 1960s civil rights movement.)  Furthermore, Dellinger entered the movement with a background in theological study and demonstrated the potential for spirituality in radical politics.  

Cornell also discusses the early writings of the philosopher Paul Goodman, whose later work, Growing Up Absurd, about the unsatisfying and empty possibilities offered to American youth passing into adulthood during the mid-1950s, was an influential text on the burgeoning 1960s youth culture. Paul Goodman's may stand as a kernel of the essence of Cornell’s article, in that the anarchists of the 1940s developed new forms of political thought that intersected with the arts, spirituality, and action, and helped to produce the radical 1960s: that is the youth counterculture, the new left, the peace movement, and the civil rights movement.  Goodman was multi-talented and contributed ideas to all of the facets of countercultural activity that made the 1960s a new golden age for American radicalism.  Cornell describes a small and loosely connected network of anarchists who lacked anything resembling popular support, but were still very productive and provided the edifice upon which the radical 1960s were constructed.

communal living - book - 1875 - The Communistic Societies of the United States

The Communistic Societies of the United States
Charles Nordhoff
1875
Hillary House Publishers, Ltd.
439 pages

Ahoy, Netizens, I purchased The Communistic Societies of the United States from the Victoria College book sale that happens every fall at the University of Toronto.

The Communistic Societies of the United States, by Charles Nordhoff, was first published in 1875.  During his life, Nordhoff was a well known journalist, who investigated a number of spiritually oriented communal societies that flourished in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Today the communities he observed may be referred to as ‘communalist’ rather than ‘communist’, as the latter term has acquired some very specific political connotations over the past century that deviate from the social phenomena described in this book. The groups and communities discussed by Nordhoff include the Shakers (a still thriving community that was founded in the eighteenth century upon the belief that a woman, Ann Lee, was a prophet of Christ’s second coming) The Amana, the Icarians, and a number of others.  All of the communities discussed emerged in the United States, although many were organized by recent immigrant communities, and some existed in Europe and were carried into the United States by emigrating adherents.

The groups discussed by Nordhoff consistently formed around a set of spiritual ideals, and also often around a particular spiritual leader.  The societies also were formed by a collective will for the groups to create their own means of living.  Typically everyone shared in the necessary work of a society, and individual community members were typically very industrious.  Many of these groups had grown to be quite wealthy by the time Nordhoff investigated them.  In the book’s final chapter, Nordhoff compares the different communities and notes the importance of the modest lifestyles enforced by many of these groups upon their members, however he also laments the ascetic adornments of their villages when many of them are, in fact, materially rich.  Also noted by Nordhoff were any unique practices found to exist in specific communities.  The Oneida community, for example, practiced 'criticism', which were social sessions in which the community would voice criticisms of an individual's character.  The benefit of this practice, supposedly, was that individual members   Nordhoff also claimed that many of the groups have reaped a variety of social and material benefits by imparting equality to both of the sexes.  Finally he was impressed by the democratic structure of communal decision making that many of the societies had instituted.  

The book chapters are filled with detailed information as well as beautiful illustrations, mostly of the commune churches or other important buildings.  Here are some examples:  

Nordhoff profiled a number of these communities in depth, having devoted a chapter to each of the major societies.  In these chapters he profiled each group’s history, their belief system, methods for organizing the community (both spatially and with regards to practical matters, such as the sharing of labour and resources).  Nordhoff also includes the full texts of spiritual songs, prayers, and writings by leaders of the various groups.  Furthermore, he includes transcripts of conversations he has had with community members.  He provides some criticism of the groups in his final chapter, although he is mostly laudatory, and he attempts to construct for the reader as comprehensive a view as possible of his subject matter.

The text was originally published in 1875, however my edition was reprinted in 1961.  One aspect of the 1960s counterculture was a ‘back to the land’ ethos of communal living and working.  I do not know if or how the communes of the 1960s were influenced by the kinds of communities described by Nordhoff, however a number of earlier books about these communities, including Nordhoff’s, were reprinted in the period leading into the countercultural 1960s, and the subject matter was revisited in a number of texts published later in the decade.

Note: The Communistic Societies of the United States can be read for free at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/utopia/csus/index.htm