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‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Reminds Us That Hippies Are Gross
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s latest flick, hit the big screen on Friday. The film’s message can be summed up in one short, and crass, line delivered by protagonist Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio): “dirty [expletive] hippies.”
While Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is nominally the story of Dalton, a washed-up actor struggling to remain relevant, it is just as much about hippies and, as the quote from Dalton indicates, how awful they were. It is, essentially, a two-hour, 45-minute middle finger to hippies.
The countercultural movement often gets viewed through rose-colored lenses. Its themes of peace and love do seem appealing, and the notion that swaths of the country dedicated themselves to promoting those ideals does sound nice. In theory. The actual movement was fairly, for lack of a better word, gross. Tarantino brings this oft-unexplored aspect of hippiedom to the forefront of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and doesn’t shy away from depicting the nasty reality of the bohemian life.
The Manson Family serves as the film’s window into hippies, and while they are obviously not representative of the movement in general (the Manson Family were, on the whole, a bit more murdery than the average hippie), certain elements of the Manson lifestyle depicted in the film were common to the hippie experience. Things like communal living and promiscuous sex, which Tarantino presents in a strongly negative light.
As viewers of the film, we are introduced to the Manson Family through a girl named Pussycat, a hitchhiker who catches the eye of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as he drives through LA. He offers her a ride and, in return, she offers to fellate him as he drives her back to her commune at Spahn Ranch. Her seductive behavior may strike some as harmless youthful free-spiritedness; hopefully less so, however, after we find out her free-spiritedness is a bit too youthful when Booth asks her age and she admits she isn’t 18 as she initially tried to tell him.
Pussycat invites Cliff to look around the commune and meet her friends and, as Cliff walks around, we’re shown how repellent their communal life is. The ranch is rundown, the buildings are dingy, and the residents are far from clean. We find that Pussycat’s unrestrained sexuality is shared by her fellow residents of Spahn Ranch. The Manson Family was able to maintain residence on the ranch in large part thanks to the fact that many of the young women in the group were having sex with the 80-year-old owner, something the movie makes mention of but, thankfully, does not depict. The term “free love” brings to mind new-agey thoughts of love without restrictions. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood points out that truly unrestricted sex means things like ephebophilia and group sex with an octogenarian.
The far-too-loose attitudes surrounding sex depicted in the film make it no wonder that the Sexual Revolution was soon followed by the AIDS crisis, a general rise in occurrences of STDs, and out-of-control, out-of-wedlock births that consigned untold numbers to lives of poverty and hardship. Maybe, just maybe, some restrictions are in order?
The anti-hippie attitude of the film spills into the extreme at times. Take the climax, for example, a gratuitously violent scene, the details of which i’ll avoid to prevent spoilers.
But even with those few uncomfortably vicious moments it remains about as accurate a portrayal of hippies as Hollywood has yet produced. Yes, Tarantino’s portrayal of violence is disgusting. But, as the film shows, so too are hippies.
Published in Culture, Entertainment
Just came back from watching the movie. I enjoyed it, but I enjoy all his films. This isn’t one of the great ones, but I laughed a lot in it. In fact, during the violent climax (I mean what else, it’s Tarantino) mentioned above, I must have laughed the entire time. These hippies are definitely treated the way they deserve to be treated.
I can see there are a lot of people in this thread that frown upon his films. That’s fair. It’s a taste. Some of his later movies can be too self-indulgent, almost caricatures of his older movies, but I still like them enough. I don’t take his movies or the man that seriously. I like the dialogue, the over the top violence, and the convergences that occur in his films.
Re: # 31
This Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and, I think, some roadhouse vampire thing, are the only two of his films I’ve seen. What would you say are his best films ?
I don’t hate privileged people. But when privileged people are jerks, they seem like way bigger jerks than poor people.
My favorite is still Reservoir Dogs. I think his best are that and Pulp Fiction. Though, there is a scene in Inglorious Basterds, a tavern scene, which I think is his best shot scene in all his movies.
I’d suggest not adopting the loaded verbiage of the Left, including the term “privileged.” It has become a pejorative in the hands of the propagandists, with an unstated presumption that what money can buy hasn’t been properly earned and spent. The implication is that all gains are ill-gotten, a very subversive idea currently enamoring the Left.
Most individuals and families earn their money legally in our country, and if they spend it (and its purchase, including time, connections, and influence) legally, why stigmatize them, especially through an inference which undermines a key premise of capitalism?
When wealthy or “comfortable” people behave like jerks, are they way bigger jerks than poor people? Is a wealthy rap/hip-hop impresario any less culpable for objectionable content because he’s an ex-con from a poor family than if he’d gone to Beverly Hills High School? Any jerk selling poisoned jerky is still a jerk, regardless of class origins.
Personally I liked most of the “preppies” I’ve met in life. And on film, I’d have to say Whit Stillman is right up there with Chris Guest on my top five all-time list of filmmakers. Preppies existed pre- and post- hippiedom. It’s a separate, longer tradition: booze not hallucinogens; more Republicans; fewer Commies and more bankers in the family tree.
“Preppy” as a fashion fad did in a sense bury “hippie.” The Preppy Handbook came out in 1980. It was funny, well timed to the death of disco, and spot on, so far as I could tell. When the prep look returned as fashion in the 1980’s, I’m glad it did, for the sake of any young person standing at the fork in the road after Groton — left to Goddard, right to Cambridge.
If in 1980 some young adults trashed their old second hand army jackets or Woodstock-worn Birkenstocks, and went back to their prep wardrobe, then God bless them. I just hope their years in rehab or off the straight and narrow didn’t screw up their chances to earn “privileges” like sending their kids to good schools. Welcome back.
I’m sort of interested in seeing this film now. But seeing as how I only go to the cinema once or twice a year I probably won’t bother. I’m sort of fascinated by stories about runaways, cults and terrorism in the 60’s and 70’s. I find it curious that around the world, long before social media connected everyone and made them all crazy (I like to generalise) you had young, often fairly well off teenagers leaving their families to join communes, or cults or terrorist cells. In Ireland we had Rose Dugdale and her associates, in Germany there was the RAF, in England you had the Beatles immortalising the true story of a runaway in She’s Leaving Home and she seems to have been just one of many. What was going on? And why were so many of them young women?