Starshines Unite! The official HAIR love thread...- Page 63

[taylorPHENOMENON2]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:04pm

Well for once I disagree with ya Jazzy

[AndAllThatJazz22]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:05pm

And there is absolutely no problem with that
This has honestly been the best conversation we have ever had on this thread.

[yay_gerb]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:19pm

yes it was! we should do it again sometime.

in other news, I just got back from watching julie and julia and kacie shiek was in it! my eyes almost popped out of my head. she didn't have a big part, but still that's good for her!

[AndAllThatJazz22]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:20pm

I might see it just for her. She's so underrated!

[taylorPHENOMENON2]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:22pm

Good for Kacie! Was she just like an extra? Or did she speak?

[Leia947]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:26pm

Wow, sucks for me to have been driving home from Long Island while this conversation was going on. I missed the whole discussion. Sadness. Would have liked to put out some of my thoughts. But don't feel like starting up another round just yet. I'm a little tired and things might come out wrong. I shall gather myself and discuss later.
But, for the record, though I love and go gaga for the audience interaction, that is not why I go see it.

[singalongsong2]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:33pm

^^ I missed the whole conversation, too. However, I'm glad this discussion took place. I don't like how some people glorify the hippie culture. It is great to stand up for what you believe in but you can/could do that without being a hippie.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:51pm

I think that Namo's posts concerning the dark side of the Hippie movement, the Manson Family being perhaps the very worst, was very much a dose reality to those who were falling into glamorizing the movement. The movement itself did cause social change there is really no denying that.
No one has said you have to adopt the Hippie ideal to stand up for what you believe in. I myself tend to wax nostalgic for those days of heady activism. Seems that the apathy that followed the end of the Viet Nam War took root and complacency is the new battle cry (with exception perhaps of the ACT-UP activism that peaked during the AIDS crisis).

[singalongsong2]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 3:53pm

I still have absolutely no interest in seeing "Julie and Julia." It just doesn't seem like my cup of tea. However, I'm glad to hear Kacie is in it.

[yay_gerb]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 4:02pm

she was in 2 scenes. amy adam's character julie cooked a meal and kacie plays one of about 5 or 6 of her friends that come over and eat for julie's birthday. she was also in a scene at the end where they were eating duck(which looked scrumptious)on a rooftop. not really a big part but she might have had a line or 2 in the first scene. she looked good on screen tho. hopefully we'll get some more of her in movies!

and i agree jazzy she is so underrated. i love love love her! Air is one of my fav's on the cast recording.

[sgv123]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 4:14pm

Speaking of Kacie... I was watching the LOGO channel and this 50's style commercial came on, and it was this family sitting at the table for dinner. It was mother, father, brother, and sister. They were talking, but it had those dumb voice over things. The daughter started to talk, and it was Kacie. She looks so young in the commercial (brown hair)... I would not be surprised if she was a teen in the commercial. Has anyone else seen it?

[CSonBroadway]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 5:48pm

How did you like the movie, gerb?

[CSonBroadway]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 5:48pm

How did you like the movie, gerb?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:14pm

To get back to the other discussion now that I'm at a computer and not posting on my phone in a diner, I think the nostalgia danger of a show like HAIR is that people could think there was one "Hippie Ideal" and that just luck real life, it was really a crazy quilt of all sorts of ideas and strategies and plans and big talk and all of it was often at odds with each other.

I think the distance of time makes it super easy to assume everybody in the past joined together for a common goal and there was no disagreement at all. Hell, if the men hadn't been pigs and treated the women in the peace movement like waitresses, who knows if the fire of second wave feminism would have burned so bright!

[claudioislove]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:14pm

mehh of course i missed the big discussion. but i'll add my thought anyway.

When I saw Hair, I was crying by the end of "What a piece of work is man", a song I had never liked before but now loved. And that's when I got it. I realized they were just kids, kids who were told all their life that they should dream big and change the world, only to be sent off to war. And that's why they studied horoscopes and took drugs and tried to "yip out" hate: because all those logical things that had been tried before led to this meaningless war.They're powerless. And that's why I love the show. Because i can identify with that. Yes, I love the music and the interaction and Kober and Gavin and all, but it's because I can understand them (the characters). I'm realizing what a messed up world this is as they are too.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:21pm

Hell, if the men hadn't been pigs and treated the women in the peace movement like waitresses, who knows if the fire of second wave feminism would have burned so bright!

Amen to that!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:24pm

I think they feel powerless. I think they demonstrate repeatedly that they are not but that there are some seemingly insurmountable obstacles that they can't imagine getting over, or through or around.

SNAFU wrote: " Sexual freedom is very much a central issue with HAIR. Non judgmental sex, expressing freedom, love and life itself. It was one of the factors that made it so shocking in 1967. Seems, if it is still that shocking today, we haven't come that far."

It seems to me if you had to boil down this production of HAIR to one central theme it would be: "Who owns your body?" Because that's all we have that's really ours. And when somebody else claims they own your body, or know what's best for it, that's when things really start to break down.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:28pm

HAIR has always been criticized for it's lack of development in it's female characters. They have very little to do. I think that mere fact is representative of the times that it was written. A woman's place was to be Earth Mama; have sex. make babies and bake bread.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:34pm

I totally agree. I think that's one of the things that HAIR accidentally got right about the anti-war movement (as opposed to the things it got right on purpose)!

[yay_gerb]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:50pm

I really like what claudio said about nothing being logical so they turn to drugs and the such. that's definitely what I would have done back then.

I have a question namo. were you alive back then? you seem to know a lot about this subject.

[AndAllThatJazz22]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 9:54pm

In the song 'Walking in Space' there is a lyric that describes WHY they turn to drugs

"In this dive
We rediscover sensation
Walking in space
We find the purpose of peace
The beauty of life
You can no longer hide"

I always saw it as...the tribe felt so lost in all the suffering and pain going on around them so they turned to things like drugs to escape. That doesn't make it right, but it explains things.

Updated On: 8/9/09 at 09:54 PM

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 10:01pm

The early days of the peace movement were definitely not focused on women's liberation. Hippie chicks, of which I was one, were ornamental and more easily available once "free love" became a mantra. There was more than a little manipulation going on that got the guys laid pretty easily, while the ramifications on the reputation of the female participants could be a little two-faced and harsh.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 10:02pm

The first step was to take drugs to expand your perception, to connect the synapses of your brain with a different kind of electricity. The original idea was to increase your consciousness, not to escape pain.

I was alive then, though I was not in my late teens in 1967, I was a lot younger.

I do see that a lot of younger people on here really seem to have internalized the "all drugs are all bad all the time" philosophy of the Just Say No era. A lot of people back then had a lot of great experiences with drugs and a lot had bad experiences. A lot of people stopped doing them after a few years and a lot of people were lost to them. An important take away message from this production of HAIR would be that there's very little that's all one thing or all the opposite. That's why I admire its ability to let the tension be there, without having to make it go away.

ETA we posted almost simultaneously, iflit!

Updated On: 8/9/09 at 10:02 PM

[CSonBroadway]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 10:12pm

When they say "How dare they try to end this beauty..."

Does this mean they are saying how dare they try to end their life as being free??

[wendilin622]

Posted: 8/9/09 at 10:19pm

I think that the drugs gave hippies an "out" to actually "be free. be whoever you want. just as long as you don't hurt anybody". I feel as though drugs then (and maybe even now) allowed people to live outside the stereotypes. To have crazy thoughts. To love freely. To be a bit eccentric.

Not to make drugs sound glamorous, but being high or experiencing that "walking in space" sensation is a judgement free zone. Its very freeing. You can say what you feel. Do what you feel etc. I think Walking in Space is one of my favorite songs because it really captures that emotion of the Tribe.

Drugs have become so taboo now. Again, I am jealous of the freedom and the passion that the Tribe is able to feel during Walking in Space. And hippies in general really.