Counterculture and the Hair movie
1. Introduction
In the present thesis, I am going to discuss the generation gap between the parent and son culture as well as the characteristics of the ’hippie movement’ with the aid of Hair movie in one of the most tumultuous decade in the American history which is unquestionably the Sixties. The counterculture encompasses a period from the 50s through the mid-70s. It is one of the most revolutionary and riotous trend in the American history which came into being in a wide range of social and cultural aspects and it basically appeared with its strong, shocking and demonstrative features in such mainstream genres as musical and Hollywood movie. The main objective of my work is to demonstrate the hallmarks of the counterculture with the assisstance of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical which was screened in 1979. These marks are not a normal and acceptable ingredients of a Broadway hit. The startling tableau of nudity, the various sexual practices, the acceptance of adolescent drug usage and the mockery of patriotism altogether had broken every rule and every taboo in the book of Broadway. In the movie, all the marks and elements of the counterculture turn up. It represents a group of young people who are living together in the street, leading bohemian and dissipated life, wearing ragged, colourful and ostentatious clothes and revolting against the dominant social and political orders and the Vietnam War.
Actually, it is an opposition between the parents and their children that is conscious on the level of a society but is irregular in the hippie culture as it applies on the whole society. This schism is huge in comparing the values, which are deliberately so contradictory and can be linked to a concrete historical fact, which is the Vietnam War in this period of the decade. It is a war, which oppresses a country with the ’freedom’ catchword. Contradictory values are polygamy, free love versus monogamy, ragged, shabby clothes against groomed outlook,
In the present thesis, I am going to discuss the generation gap between the parent and son culture as well as the characteristics of the ’hippie movement’ with the aid of Hair movie in one of the most tumultuous decade in the American history which is unquestionably the Sixties. The counterculture encompasses a period from the 50s through the mid-70s. It is one of the most revolutionary and riotous trend in the American history which came into being in a wide range of social and cultural aspects and it basically appeared with its strong, shocking and demonstrative features in such mainstream genres as musical and Hollywood movie. The main objective of my work is to demonstrate the hallmarks of the counterculture with the assisstance of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical which was screened in 1979. These marks are not a normal and acceptable ingredients of a Broadway hit. The startling tableau of nudity, the various sexual practices, the acceptance of adolescent drug usage and the mockery of patriotism altogether had broken every rule and every taboo in the book of Broadway. In the movie, all the marks and elements of the counterculture turn up. It represents a group of young people who are living together in the street, leading bohemian and dissipated life, wearing ragged, colourful and ostentatious clothes and revolting against the dominant social and political orders and the Vietnam War.
Actually, it is an opposition between the parents and their children that is conscious on the level of a society but is irregular in the hippie culture as it applies on the whole society. This schism is huge in comparing the values, which are deliberately so contradictory and can be linked to a concrete historical fact, which is the Vietnam War in this period of the decade. It is a war, which oppresses a country with the ’freedom’ catchword. Contradictory values are polygamy, free love versus monogamy, ragged, shabby clothes against groomed outlook,