The '60s remembrance I selected is the movie “Shampoo,” which came out in 1975 but takes the viewer to November 4, 1968, the eve of the Presidential Election, to start the film. The movie follows George, played by Warren Beatty, who interacts with a dizzying number of people representing various stereotypes and always appears to be running to the next thing. Beatty co-wrote the movie with Robert Towne.
George is what I would call “a man, written by a 1960s nostalgic man.” He is what I would imagine a young man enjoying the sexual revolution of the 1960s would appear like: handsome, surrounded by women, while working as a hairdresser in a salon, bouncing from one bed to another with little regard for feelings. He burns his candle at both ends to bedhop everyone from Goldie Hawn’s Jill, who plays his girlfriend, to Jackie, played by Julie Christie. His life is exhausting, and Beatty's film exhausts all the stereotypes of the time to leave any with redeeming value.
During the film, we see George bed four different women in a twenty-four hour period. George is also trying to open his salon but struggles with the bank to get a loan, not understanding the process and the terminology. He grows frustrated with the banker and stomps out when he is rejected. Outside the bank, he throws a tantrum. Back at the salon he works at, we see George is all over the place. He does not know how to manage his time or other people's demands in the salon. He always leaves things unfinished, walking out before customers are completely satisfied.
In an early meeting with Jackie, one of his lovers, he says to her: “I don’t fuck anybody for money; I do it for fun.” This line becomes a huge foreshadowing of our ending and a fitting tribute to the type of man George represents and the type of woman we see Jackie becoming at the end.
George benefits from the type of women written in this film as characters who greatly desire their sexual freedom and want to prove it. (Women, written by men also.) Hawn’s Jill, his younger girlfriend, is childlike and immature, always running to George for advice and information. She hangs on his every word, and when the situation shifts and he intends to be seen with other women, she is “cool” and unbothered by his attention shifting. When Jill discovers George sleeping with another woman and confronts him, she is sad, but there is no meltdown, just acceptance as she moves on to someone else.
This is a negative representation of the time, grossly oversimplified by different groups. Men are cheaters and oversexed, taking full advantage of the women around them. Women are hungry for sex and willing to do anything to get it -- especially with George. The black characters in the movie are portrayed in servant roles only. They are hair washers in the salon, park cars, and work in the home as housemaids. They have minimal dialog and are always portrayed in uniform. Homosexual characters are heavily stereotyped as emotional and whiney. The salon that George works at is run by a gay man who is so dramatic and emotional. Wealthy business owner Lester asks if George is a “fairy” because he is a hairdresser. The language around homosexual is negative by today’s standards “faggot,” “faggoty,” and “fairy.”
Near the end of the movie, we have the story told in two different types of parties. The first is a conservative watch party with rich, older voters eager to celebrate the election of Richard Nixon. Every face is white, the conversation is dull, and the characters are eager to listen to boring elected officials talk about politics and change. The end of the party is broken up by a bomb threat, sending us to another party with a different clientele. At this party, we see mostly young hippies openly doing drugs, bathing nude, enjoying music and strobe lights.
At the movie's end, George professes his love to Jackie, one of his lovers, the girlfriend of a wealthy businessman, and begs her to be with him. But she cannot as she has just agreed to run away with the businessman and marry, leaving behind a broken, hopeless George for a life with money and servants. In the final scene, we see Jackie driving off into the sunset, leaving George behind.
The ending scene becomes a nice parallel for the idea of the 1960s and the ideas about relationships. The sex-fueled time of the 1960s is over, and in its place are the serious 1970s.
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