And for further elucidation, John Waters's excellent piece on his friendship, and imprisoned Manson follower.
"The Manson Family" were the hippies all our parents were scared we'd turn into if we didn't stop taking drugs. The "slippies", as Manson later called his followers, the insane ones who didn't understand the humor in Yippie Abbie Hoffman's fiery speeches on his college lecture tours when he told the stoned, revolutionary-for-the-hell-of-it students to "kill their parents". Yes, Charlie's posse were the real anarchists who went beyond the radical SDS group's call to "Bring the War Home". Beyond blowing up their parents' townhouses, draft boards, even the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Sure, my friends went to riots every weekend in different cities in the '60s to get laid or get high, just like kids went to "raves" decades later. But, God, this was a cultural war, not a real one and the survivors of this time now realize we were in a "play" revolution, no matter what we spouted. The genius of acknowledging the anxiety that could lead young people to follow entirely the wrong person or people is up there in subtle ways in this staging of HAIR. You can easily overlook it, but since so many of you are going to the show again and again I recommend you search it out, instead of worrying about whether you'll get a hug in seat X row Y. Look at Crissy shivering and desperate right alongside Dionne during "Aquarius." Look at the angry Tribe dude who, at best, will become an Iggy Pop or Alice Cooper, at worst, a Manson and no not Marilyn.
Of course, everybody's free to see the show they want to see, but I definitely think it's worth seeing the subtext so as to have a more complete experience. Not that there's anything wrong with being this generation's equivalent of the people who dressed up in poodle skirts and DAs to see the Rosie O'Donnell Grease revival several times.
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Updated On: 8/9/09 at 11:26 AM
