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TV Moguls Still Don’t “Get” The 1960s
Christine Hall
When NBC presented the mini-series The 60s a few years back, it was preceded by several months of hype. According to the ad masters, this was going to be the definitive story of the sixties, as an important a movie for us boomers as Gone With the Wind had been for my grandparents’ generation or From Here To Eternity had been for those who’d reached maturity under the cloud of the second world war.
While the ad campaign, which began airing during the summer re-run season (the show ran in January), was certainly deserving of an Emmy, the movie itself was nothing but typical movie-of-the-week fare that could have aptly been called A Very Brady Sixties. Even though there were many historical nuances that I was surprised to see that the producers got right, there was just as much that was very wrong. The caricatures of hippies and student radicals looked as if they came right off the set of the old “Dragnet” series and the movie seemed to reflect anti-drug and pro-nuclear family values that were the antithesis of much that the decade represented.
The film revolved around the exploits of members of a single family during the decade. Although I don’t remember their names, I’m sure that they were listed in the script as Reactionary Father, Conflicted Mother, Student Radical Son, Army Vet Son and Hippie Daughter. All of the characters always conformed to their stereotypical roles.
The story was something of a soap opera in which Student Radical Son fell in love with Student Radical Daughter who is infatuated with Student Radical Leader. Meanwhile, Hippie Daughter had a one-nighter with Would-Be Rock Star, got pregnant, and traveled to Haight Ashbury to tell him that she was going to have his baby, which he figured that she only did to bum him out. Reactionary Father, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why his children couldn’t all be like Army Vet Son, who had made dad proud by going to fight in an unjust war. Conflicted Mother, like a good TV mom, always wondered “why can’t we all just get along.”
Although I’m often accused of still living in the sixties, that’s not true. As my income tax statement will attest, I don’t reside in the sixties, I merely own a vacation home there. However, I would still like to protect my investment in that neighborhood of history, lest any “gen X” types get the wrong idea and refuse to take a look at some very important values that could serve us well in these trying times.
Everybody In The Sixties Did Not Attend Woodstock. Not only that, not
everybody who says they were at Woodstock was actually there. I know
this to be true because there were only 400,000 or so at the
three-day event and I have personally met 1.5 million people who
claimed they were there. The way I figure it, for every hundred
people that insist that they were there, maybe one was actually in
attendance.
In the movie, Student Radical Son and Army Vet Son went to Woodstock together, since the Vet had by then realized that the war in Vietnam was wrong. While milling through the crowd of a half million or so, Student Radical happened to meet his long lost sister, Hippie Daughter. As a result of this reunion, the three of them returned home to the suburbs where Reactionary Dad happily decided to put all of his prejudices behind him and they lived happily ever after in suburban bliss.
No wonder that they made a movie about this. As far as I can tell, this is the only instance where attendance at Woodstock pulled a middle-class nuclear family together. Not once in my life have I ever met somebody who claimed to be there who said that the experience drove him or her to leave their “pad” in San Francisco or give up life on the commune to return home to mom and dad. I have met many, however, who left mom and dad to go to Woodstock and never returned home.
Nobody Attended Both Woodstock and the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. This was the folk festival where Bob Dylan performed using electric instruments, backed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and was almost booed off the stage by the purists in the audience who were afraid that electricity and folk music were a dangerous mix. Like Woodstock, most 60s types wish they were there. Nobody was lucky enough to be at both. I know this because anybody who was at both concerts would be a god, and we’re still waiting for the second coming. In the movie, Student Radical Girl attends both concerts which means she must be a goddess in disguise.
Freshly Scrubbed Faces and Pressed Clothes Were Not Part Of The Haight-Ashbury Look. In this movie, everybody in “The Haight” looked like they were dressed for some kind of hippie-Sunday-church service. Everybody was very, very clean and were wearing immaculately pressed garments. I know that was a long time ago, but I don’t remember it that way. My recollection is that most of us looked and smelled a little like Ed Norton after a hard day working in the sewers, since washing machines took quarters which were usually in short supply. We didn’t mind, though, since all of us looked and smelled the same way. It was part of the ambiance and helped to keep the tourists from getting too close.
“The 60’s” presented a view that might make one think that the decade ended with Woodstock. Although this concert was held in August of 1969, near the end of the decade, in many ways it was responsible for causing a whole new generation to “turn-on, tune-in, and drop out” and extended the influence of the sixties well into the next decade. Many have noted that the sixties “really” did not end in January of 1970, but about 1974 with the withdrawal of the last troops from Vietnam and the expulsion of Nixon from the White House.
Although there has not yet been a movie that truly depicts the sixties in a definitive way, next week we will look at some movies that give a more realistic look at that decade than this feeble attempt by NBC.
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