American Experience - Summer of Love (2007)

History lesson- NOT

I have to chuckle at some of these reviews. One reviewer said that "the country was not as diverse then as it is now." I've got news for you -- it WAS as racially diverse then. The difference is that back then, you didn't see black and brown faces on television, in commercials, as you do today. If you look at most tv shows of 1967 they were basically all "white". White America actually believed that there were no Asians, blacks, Mexicans, Caribbean peoples in the USA in 1967!

But it is true that the hippie movement was basically a white, middle-class movement. Most poor kids couldn't afford to "drop out" and take drugs -- they were too busy trying to find jobs, get into college and break the cycles of poverty and illiteracy that they were born into. Only white wealthy kids had the luxury of moving to SFO and become "hippies" -- it wasn't a luxury that poor kids could afford, especially black kids in the inner cities, or children of immigrants.

There's a lot of talk about "hippie ideas" but all of these pseudo -utopian ideas could be traced back to the end of the 19th century. The Nazi's, after all, were environmentalists and vegetarians and they took some of their ideas from German Romanticists who wanted to create a world of "brotherhood", vegetarianism, "higher consciousness" found in the religions of India and China. Think Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophists, the Rosicrucians, the Transcentalists. None of these hippie ideas were original to them -- they existed way back when and were adopted by many totalitarian regimes in Europe in the '30's. It's easy to manipulate young, naive, discontented souls with minds too numb on drugs. The hubris that they could "change the world" is funny now. Charles Manson's thought-control murder cult in 1969 showed what happens when all of this is perverted. For all their talk of "liberalism" the hippies were quite illiberal ("don't trust anyone over 30") as if they were going to be young forever, as if their ideas were somehow new and never tried before. When left unchecked and without any core moral basis, adapting relativism as the rule, the movement was to self-destruct.

But the hippies had rock and roll, an infectious drug in and of itself. They were angry to be fighting in a war they didn't agree with -- and who could blame them? There was a draft and the voting age was 21, so they were really being asked to fight a war without having a political voice until the age of 21 (VERY different from today, by the way, when we have a volunteer army and the voting age is 18). But yes -- what talented people Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia -- very bright people with big hearts, no doubt. But it was their very hippie ideas and lifestyles that ended their lives. That alone serves as a cautionary tale. January 21, 2008

Essential to understanding ourselves

Though just an hour, this film manages to communicate, with depth, an essential part of the American mind. It shows divisions our society continues to experience. It shows the lost dream of the 60s movement. I'm 44; I missed the 60s, but could feel it in the air when younger. This film helped me comprehend the what, why, and how. A clip of Ronald Reagan railing against LSD as governor of California helped me understand how we moved from being the society of civic duty, in which accumulation of massive wealth was viewed with suspicioun, to the "me society" of the 80s that we still experience. Really, in one hour, snippets communicate enormous volumes of information. To me, the film does not one-sidely glorify the summer of love. It shows the summer's positive and negative affects on society. I think it shows how the extremes of that time led to the backlash in which we live today. Maybe you'll see it differently. In any case, it is essential viewing - especially for anyone who did not live in, as an adult, the pre-Reagan era of American thought. January 2, 2008

Accurate, although too concise.

The rise and decline of the popular conceptions of hippiedom are well depicted in the documentary; indeed, it the best that I have seen of similar works produced locally in the Bay Area and nationally, typically with focus on 1968, the year after the so-called Summer of Love. I am an academic hippie myself, age 62 at the time of this review, and was present at the Gathering of Tribes, the formal start of the period, and have lived through all the depicted events before and after. Most other documentaries failed to emphasize the key spiritual component of the cultural revolution. Yes, it was sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but it was also spirituality and consciousness studies that eventually led to environmental/ecology movements, cognitive neuroscience, and psychoimmunology, as well as the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the United States and the development of world music appreciation. As described, all the hippie wannabes spoiled the scene, did not understand the ideologies nor the proper use of entheogens. The popular image of hippies was of them, not the more thoughtful, experimental, and realized post-Beats, the pioneers who led the way. [Peter Coyote's use of B***S*** was bleeped from the PBS broadcast, but we do not need such censorship on the DVD.] Unfortunately, the documentary is too short, merely an hour, making the price of the DVD a tad too much. Still, if you want a proper introduction to the rise of this American Experience, yet influencing the nation as much as the Vietnam War, then this DVD is for you. December 1, 2007

a quick, influential moment in history

Like punks in Britain, hippies in the US were a passing phenomenon. However, they had a major impact on American culture and it's great that the American Experience series has documented it.

Many people have said the hippies of the 1960s became the corporate enthusiasts of the 1980s. I'd add that they are now the generation that wants to make sure they receive full retirement, pension, and Social Security benefits. Nothing "free" comes to mind now. Still, this may be a useful work for younger generations to see.

Young people had concerns about a war, just like they do now. This documentary is filled with older, reserved people fearing younger, liberal people; this division exists in the 2000s as well. If everyone was moving to San Francisco then, in my generation they were moving to Seattle. If they were worried about the Grateful Dead then, they worried about gangster rap for my generation. They spoke of LSD then; now the concern is ecstasy. One exceptional difference is how Woodstock of the 1960s totally had good intentions that Woodstock of the 1990s lacked.

I loved how this documentary revealed that not everyone had altruistic motives. Some college students played hippie, but had no interest in abandoning school. Some denizens wanted the drugs and could not care less about the ideas. This work may be fascinating for public health workers and economists just as much as historians. This documentary stated that hippies themselves didn't want everyone to move to SF for fear that their limited supply of LSD would be depleted. Having hundreds of runaway teenagers and people living in parks is a health-related and policy-based crisis.

As much as challenging racism was brought up, photos and footage of this time and place seemed very homogenous. Granted, the country was not as racially diverse as it is now. And also granted, the Black Power movement was departing from the pro-integration stance of the Civil Rights movement. Still, looking at this documentary, I saw a lot of people speaking about equality with people just like themselves.

Willie Brown is noted as having been a state assemblyman, but they never mention he also served as the city's mayor. Actor Peter Coyote uses a profanity that is, surprisingly, not bleeped out of this public television special.

I could also relate as a person who moved to the Bay Area briefly. This documentary mentions that many people who came to that area also quickly departed from it. I can relate. SF is a strong example of the "grass being greener on the other side." May 25, 2007

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