Video: Joe Cocker, Woodstock 1969, “With a Little Help from My Friends9
Posted by Mike E on August 15, 2009
Hearing this again, remembering the long gone youth culture, the sense of community against the intolerable… i can’ help but think of the value of “a little help from my friends.”
Whatever we build,lets capture and proclaim that basic sense of holding each other up, of having each others back. For our enemies the very idea of a “bleeding heart” is a term of mockery and distain.
The ethos of solidarity has been swept utterly from this society. It is alien (and even faintly ridiculous) to whole generations. And people are literally aching from its lack.
If we help bring it back, if we place that close to the core of our mission, the very bones and hearts of humanity will welcome it.
Miles Ahead said
IMO the “ethos of solidarity”— is/was sometimes or often times unspoken but well-understood.
It is not some sort of “bleeding heart liberal” notion. While the conservatives and rulers have much disDain for our ethos of solidarity except when it serves them, and have in fact tried to co-opt our ethos, it should be part of our arsenal. It is the re-introduction of some “heart and soul” into the very movement we are trying to be a part of and build–a break with the status quo ideologically under capitalism/imperialism, and s.b. a part of our culture. It helps draw some lines of demarcation between our real and potential friends and our real enemies.
Brent Green’s piece on the Huffington Post today is worth reading, in the context of what “A Little Help from My Friends” means today as well as what it meant 40 years ago. I certainly don’t agree with his entire summation, nor am I trying to whip up some nostalgia for the 60s or Woodstock; nor do I think posting Joe Cocker’s rendition of The Beatles’ song is a sop to nostalgia either. Instead, “A L.H.f. M F” embodies an outlook—and that outlook should be a part of our international view as well.
Interestingly enough, Green points to a more current example :
“I saw remnants of Woodstock as young protesters clamored along Denver’s 16th Street Mall during the Democratic National Convention last August, their faces lit up with passion and high purpose.”
Part of what Green had to say:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brent-green/40-years-after-woodstock_b_260304.html
land said
I love that song. So true and so important. Can’t do without it.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
I read through the comments at the Huffington Post linke and I was astonished at the lack of understanding of the political history of the time.
in 1968 they ran wild in chicago. they very badly damaged the chances of a brilliant man (EUGENE MCCARTHY). we ended up with humphrey as a candidate,and eventually nixon as president.. the war was elongated another 5 years for their poorly planned efforts. those of us not fortunate enough to be wealty.
Humphrey had the nomination locked up by the convention, even though he hadn’t run in the primaries. Daley’s cops were beating up McCarthy delegates inside of the convention. It wasn’t the protesters who ruined McCarthy. It was the Democratic Party’s old guard.
For all the attention paid to the late 1960s, it’s striking how shallow a Life/Time magazine people have about it.
Miles Ahead said
Desr Stanley…think we read different articles! not that I am upholding Brent Green’s as the end all be all…but had I read what you did, surely would have been just as angry.
Green’s article never mentioned the Chicago convention, Humphrey, McCarthy, etc.
But that aside…when he said, “forging strident collective mentalities…” is when I thought of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”
Stanley W. Rogouski said
That’s shallow Time/Life view of the history.
I was born well after the 1960s generation (early Generation X) and from my outsider point of view there’s a narrative about the 1960s and Woodstock that gets recited almost as a ritual. The Huffington Post writer Brent Green is a good example of the ritualistic retelling of the non-history.
But when you actually look at a good historical narrative of the time (like Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland) you realize just how much most of the “history” is just a recitation/retelling of the media hype.
There was as much energy on the right in the 1960s as on the left (eg the racist upsurge against the integration of the University of Mississippi), but it’s not usually spoken of as street protest.
Perlstein’s retelling of the Hard Hat riots is telling. Here you are, in the middle of NYC, not in the south, not even in south Boston, but right in downtown Manhattan, right after Kent State, and the blue collar Republican right simply blew the left off the streets. The anti-war protesters got mauled. And the construction workers were able to take over City Hall and raise the flag back up to fall mast.
To repeat, the left wasn’t able to hold the streets in Manhattan, a few days after Kent State. For all the hype about the 1960s, that’s just a sad fact few people think about.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
Green’s article never mentioned the Chicago convention, Humphrey, McCarthy, etc
Sorry. I was talking about the people in the comments, not Green himself.
The narrative in Green’s article, though, is something I’ve heard/read hundreds of times. It’s the standard Time/Life 1960s nostalgia.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
“forging strident collective mentalities…” is when I thought of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”
Yes. Yes. This is true. But it seems to me like a collective recitation of corporate media hype.
Miles Ahead said
Here’s something I don’t get.
“Yes. Yes. This is true. But it seems to me like a collective recitation of corporate media hype.”
If something like “strident collective mentalities” is true, why do we have to be so wary and look at it like it’s corporate media hype? Why do we have to gauge our own culture and standards by what they’re putting out? Can we not embrace some things as our very own, popularize them, etc.? Also, seems to me, if there wasn’t some truth to the strident collective mentality, etc., the corporate media wouldn’t bother with it at all.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
OK. It’s not easy to express this clearly because it’s about fairly recent history but what seems to be going on is a point/counterpoint.
1.) Leftist recites highly romanticized collective recitation of corporate media hype about the 1960s.
2.) Conservative comes back with the Nixonian/Reaganite counternarrative.
They seem to feed on each other to form one collective history.
It seems to me that when you read a good history on the times (like, once again, Perlstein’s Nixonland) you realize just how far to the right the country was in the 1960s. Can anybody imagine a right wing mob that’s not the police ullying anti-war protesters on the streets of NYC today? I can’t. The unions/working class aren’t quite so white, Catholic and conservative anymore.
But what people remember is the gap between the country’s conservatism and the promises for the fulfillment of some sort of collectivist hedonism held out by the corporate counterculture industry. Woodstock/Hippies for me have always been part of the mainstream. My family is full of right wing racist, Greatful Dead fans who smoke pot.
But what’s the political legacy of the 1960s? The civil rights movement seems the only obvious victory to me. And that’s because the ruling class wanted to get rid of segregation anyway. The anti-war movement? America is as militaristic as it was under Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Miles Ahead said
This post was not intended to be a sum up of the 60s (or early 70s). It addresses one aspect—a change and departure in outlook on a grand (and world) scale from the stultifying 50s (specifically in the U.S.) of individualism, material/consumerism, white bread and mayonnaise, entitlement, etc. when imperialist wars, national oppression, jingoism, xenophobia, et al. was the norm. .
Over only a few years, a counter culture erupted, but that counter-culture, which was primarily based among the youth spread throughout society, went a whole lot further than some Hippies/Woodstock.
(A counter-culture has existed throughout the years, but was much more isolated and subterranean.) The Hippie/Woodstock view of this epoch (and/or sexual revolution which in corporate yak yak translates into hedonism) is a corporate/media/ruling class summation and for certain renders great upheaval on many levels much less profound. That is part of the co-option of the 60s.
Overall, who were friends during this period, friends who not only had an ethos of solidarity, but helped, aided and abetted each other?
Wasn’t just a bunch of flowers being handed out. Instead, in massive demonstrations worldwide, people were waving NLF and North Vietnamese flags and burning the U.S. flag. U.S. soldiers were fragging their officers; whole units refusing to do the bidding of the U.S. imperialists and kill the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian people. There was solidarity with the French students and workers who went out on general strike; solidarity with the students in Mexico (who were being slaughtered in the streets), including by the famous African American Olympians, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. There was worldwide solidarity with those waging national wars of liberation. There was an awakening, and ultimately solidarity with the Algerians against the French.
Many U.S. unions were forced by their rank and file to come out against the Vietnam war. Plants like General Dynamics and Boeing were targeted—and the consensus among many if not most of the workers there was anti-war sentiment, even though General Dynamics was producing napalm.
While the media called Watts, Newark, Detroit, etc. “riots” those who ascribed to an ethos of solidarity against the oppression of Black people and other national minorities, were calling the “riots” righteous rebellions.
In the cultural sphere, anti-authoritarian music, art, theatre, film burst wide open. And in the cultural sphere a new appreciation for the culture of the oppressed was rampant. At the same time that Woodstock took place, the Black Panther Party was waving Mao’s “Little Red Book” in the streets of Oakland and Chicago. Many people were in solidarity with the prisoners during the Attica rebellion. Wounded Knee, Alcatraz, and yes, Leonard Peltier became further symbols of the new ethos of solidarity. The mostly Latino and Filippino farmworkers’ plight and demands ended in a nationwide boycott of various growers and supermarkets. Whole U.S./China people-to-people friendship organizations formed. Etc. etc.
And Stanley cites the hard-hats demonstration in New York as an example of some sort of reactionary hegemony, or meaningful polarization.
I am going to repeat an experience I had that fundamentally changed my whole outlook on who are our friends and who are our enemies. In the mid-60s I attended an all-women anti-war conference in Vancouver, which had delegates from around the world. I was part of the U.S. contingent, obviously. The main speaker was a representative from the NLF. The very first thing she said — something to the effect of—“I want to thank all the women present, but I want to emphasize with the women here from the U.S., that the Vietnamese people view all the people of the U.S. as our friends/allies. We always separate the people from their government.”
Stanley W. Rogouski said
Over only a few years, a counter culture erupted, but that counter-culture, which was primarily based among the youth spread throughout society, went a whole lot further than some Hippies/Woodstock.
I think it was an illusion. I think it was the mass marketing of a hedonistic ideal that was always basically apolitical. Woodstock was the perfect marketing effort. It was Playboy with long hair. You couldn’t live the life of an international jet setter but you could go up state for a few days and slosh around in the mud. And if you missed it, all the better. It became an unattainable ideal that became ever more attractive as it faded into the rear view mirror after the oil shocks in 1973.
Admittedly, I may be seeing this from the point of view of the counterculture’s backlash. For me the Jefferson Airplane is “We Built This City” and Joe Cocker is the singer who won a grammy for the soundtrack of the militaristic piece of shit movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”. And that “solidarity” among the counterculture quickly became solidarity among a generation of baby boomers who used the “conservativism” of the next generation as an excuse to pull the economic ladder up behind them as they slashed budgets for state universities and settled into the upper middle-class.
And Stanley cites the hard-hats demonstration in New York as an example of some sort of reactionary hegemony, or meaningful polarization.
I’m citing it as an example of the left’s impotence. If the left couldn’t hold the streets of Manhattan in the immediate aftermath of Kent State, it was never much of a force. At least in Britain in the 1970s the left gave the right a few bloody noses in the streets. But in America?
It all reminds me a bit of Stendal’s novel “The Charterhouse of Parma” where Fabrizio goes through the Battle of Waterloo without seeing much action. He actually wonders if he had been in the battle at all. But, later in life, the fact that he was there leads some people to think he was a Napoleonic Marshall. There were a lot of tenured Napoleonic Marshalls when I was an undergrad.
me: Were you actually in SDS
professor: uh, no, not actually but I was associated with it
The rear view mirror effect is great but in the end, this is the truth about Joe Cocker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_cocker
In 1982, at the behest of producer Stewart Levine, Cocker recorded the duet “Up Where We Belong” with Jennifer Warnes for the soundtrack of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. The song was an international hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo. The duet also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song while Cocker and Warnes performed the song at the awards ceremony.
I hope he made some money off it anyway.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
And note, I have no doubt that *some* people in the 1960s did have an ethos of solidarity and some people (unlike Joe Cocker himself) did stay true to some sort of radical ideal.
But how much of this was projection? If I’m the geek in high-school who has a shallow dumbass crush on the head cheerleader I think is “love”, it’s still a shallow dumbass crush, isn’t it?
There’s just been too much written about in the past few years (ranging from “The Baffler” to “Madmen”) that simply proves that the counterculture was manufactured on Madison Ave. Woodstock was a commercial event showcasing commercial artists. At the time, I’m sure some of them thought they were singing for the revolution.
But how many of them turned down that Hollywood money less than 15 years later to do a soundtrack for a movie glorifying the US military?
Melanie maybe. Joan Baez maybe. Heh.
Miles Ahead said
OK. I don’t feel compelled to try and “make my case” further because I keep hearing it’s an “illusion” anyway–even though I tried to state some real concrete events, struggles and situations that run counter to that.
To quote from the original post:
So if you agree in essence with what Mike said, how do you see turning, what I perceive as an outlook and part of the ideology we’re up against, around? Will humanity really welcome an ethos of solidarity, accept, embrace and promote “a little help from my [our]friends” or is that just some posturing? Does this have anything to do with the people actually transforming themselves? Do you think that this is even possible, or part of a revolutionary process, or are we destined to have the corporate world and its media, the ruling class, determine, sum up, or co-opt some fundamentals, or determine the outcome?
When we speak of radical ruptures in social relations, does that not include how we view the people and fellow revolutionary and progressive-minded people? Capitalism/imperialism, its overwhelming exploitation, by its very nature is alienating and isolating and promotes an individualistic, self-aggrandizing ideology, even though most people feel bankrupt on many levels. To me, the comraderie that existed, that crossed over national and class lines, was a strength, and should be upheld, strengthened further, no matter how the corporate world deems to undermine it.
Mike E said
Stan writes:
it is hard to “get” distant events “right.”
Stan is right, of course, that both a radical right and a radical left got energy out of the 1960s. And the Nixon-to-Reagan coalition gave gave Goldwaterism a religious coloration and stole the racist dixicrat vote from the Democrats — and created the modern social movements of anti-abortionactivism and politicized religious fundamentalism. This is a part of the 60s. (And frankly such polarization is part of every revolutionary upsurge — the events of 1919 in Germany didn’t just produce the German Communist Party and Weimar, but also the Freikorp and the raw materials for the Nazi rise).
But there is a question of initiative…. and Stan’s little lesson of history around the hardhats does get it wrong.
The hardhats were not a “spontaneous” event. Brennan (head of the construction workers union) had been made secretary of labor — and had (at white house orders) organized an attack.
Nixon when he invaded Cambodia energetically DEMANDED of Republical loyalists-in-power that they mobilize armed force to stop the inevitable wave of protest. One outcome was Governor Rhodes of Ohio sending troops onto Kent state campus. Another was Brennan orchestrating Nixon’s fantasy (that american hardhats would attack and disperse the antiwar protesters). Yet another was the contemplation of armed force against the May Day for Bobby Seale forces gathering (10,000 plus) at Yale University (New Haven Connecticut).
So the government was determined to draw blood at that point, to deny the initiative to the antiwar movement. And (overall) these efforts were failures (and often pathetic).
Kent state was a classic example of “raise a rock to drop it on your own feet” — the outrage over the killing of four students brought the entire student population to its feet in an uprecedented strike that lasted the rest of the semester (and was further enflamed by the killings at Jackson state).
The little charade of the hard hats in Manhattan was highly orchestrated, supported by the authorities, and really a blip on the screen. It was a fascist actions of corrupted and highly connected union-affiliated construction workers on behalf of Nixon… and the publicity it got was far in excess of the actual event (and it was falsely portrayed as the boiling over of the pro-American anger of the “silent majority.”) It would be a shame if decades later, we accept the silly official propaganda of this little charade as if it were the reality.
In fact, Nixon completely lost the initative in the U.S. — he invaded Cambodia, and the country went wild. The streets were packed, whole institutions shut down, large sections of intelligensia spoke out. And on the ground, the antiwar movement spread to community colleges, working class highschools and (most important) deep into the U.S. army itself.
So yes, there wre reactionary currents being forged in all of this (just like Adolf Hitler and his minons wereforged in the defeat of the German army in 1918). But let’s not think that the power of the 60s is some myth. From January 1968 to the aftershocks of May 1970 — was the single most powerful revolutionary upsurge in the history of the U.S. — with a loose but real coalition emerging between highly radicalized black people (in the streets) and sections of college students, and around those cores all kinds of people affected, mobilized, radicalized and wrenched from their ordinary political and social matrix.
And it took forms that your typically mechanical and inherited Marxisms could not address. The Marxism of that time could no more understand the drug culture and the counterculture, than Avakian’s Marxism could understand the emergence of Queer liberation during the AIDS crisis.
“with a little help from my friends.”
Miles Ahead said
Am glad Mike added that the hard-hats demo was staged…meant to do so before. And it is very true that there will inevitably be a struggle between radical/revolutionary forces vs. reactionary ones, even if the outcome isn’t a more thoroughgoing rev. And even within the radical forces, there is struggle–how militant, demands, etc.
But Stan says (re the hard hats):
I don’t look at the staged hard-hat demo in Manhattan like that at all. Instead, Brennan/Nixon were forced to stage this bit of theatre precisely because of the Left’s (which included lots of people from less Leftist positions) potency and relevance. And the Left’s developing numbers and impact was certainly not limited to the U.S.
The feeble hard-hat demo was in 1970. Just months before in 1969, there was a demonstration in NYC of over 500,000 people against the war–signs in every language, whole communities turning out. You lined up for the march at 9 a.m. to go to Central Park for a rally. At 4 p.m.. people were still lining up to march.
And here’s something else. What was the cohesiveness among those backward hard hats that were “demonstrating”? Whatever cohesiveness they may have had at the moment–more so directives from Brennan or other union hacks–it paled in comparison to what actually sparked and further aided the anti-war movement, and that was the Black liberation struggle and even the civil rights movement. In 1963, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, which spread to campuses around the U.S. was birthed from the struggle of Black people against national oppression. IMO, during this earlier period, it wasn’t so much a little “help” from your friends, but actually learning just who your friends were. Much more powerful in the scheme of things than some hard-hat counter-demo.
bill martin said
Good discussion. Two things that Stan’s interventions thematize for me, and that could stand further analysis:
1) In Badiou’s philosophy, an event is not only a rare and fragile thing, it is also always possible in retrospect to say that the event didn’t really happen. In a way, Stan’s argument is that this is the case with the 60s, or with some moments in the sixties that seemed to represent a bursting forth of something new. This isn’t a matter of the sixties being a mixed bag, with reactionary elements also in the mix. Stan’s comments remind me a bit of Alisdair McIntyre’s critique of Herbert Marcuse, where the former referred to the “parent-financed student rebellion.” One issue I have with Badiou’s arguments about events is that, on the one hand, he wants to get beyond a hermeneutic approach (theory of understanding and interpretation, where meaning and language are central topics), but, on the other hand, the “happening of an event” (Did the event actually occur? What actually happened?) is tied up with naming the event, forming a fidelity to the event, and developing a “truth procedure.” This would seem to lead to a messy discussion on, for example, what really is the “spirit of Woodstock” toward which I might align myself. I think one good thing in Badiou’s philosophy, which is helpful in the present context, and which is especially developed in the St. Paul book, is that this discussion cannot simply hinge on the empiricism of “I was there, I saw it with my own eyes.”
2) Relatedly, we might think more on the question of the sixties counterculture, but not so much on whether that was a “real thing” (that’s what I’m pointing to in the previous paragraph), rather more on the question of whether a counterculture is even possible today. I do think Stan is reading the assimilation/recuperation of countercultural elements in the aftermath of the sixties back into the sixties itself, even if this is also complicated by the fact that rock music, which was central to so much of this culture, was always rooted in what Theodor Adorno called the “culture industry”–and so what seemed to happen for a time in the middle and late sixties and their aftermath is that some musicians at least burst through this atmosphere where every creative expression was already caught up in commodification (or, at least, there was a window of opportunity, when the system was vulnerable, and some creative things were done; I get into these questions in some detail in my books on creative rock music). But however we understand that period, as essentially creative or as a kind of “staged rebellion” that didn’t really challenge the restraints of commodity logic, there is no doubt that the end of the 70s, and then the period of Reagan and Thatcher, saw the development of what might be called the anti-60s, both with the carrot and the stick, so to speak. In many ways, the carrot side was more effective (the stick side led to punk and hip-hop): to simplify, you just go buy your rebellion kit at the Gap. This is one of the central elements of postmodern capitalism, to undercut the possibility of a counter-culture. “We’re Miracle Whip, and we won’t tone it down!”
But I don’t want to come off as just another crank who thinks everything is crap from the start, or that we’ll never see anything good like the 60s again. However, taking Badiou’s definition of politics as a moment when thought comes to the fore, and again rare and fragile, I do think we need a cultural analysis that does more to ask what the conditions for the possibility for such a moment are–or, perhaps more to the point of what I’m trying to say, what are the conditions we are up against, where there is a concerted effort to make politics and a counter-culture not possible?
Just one extra little point. I don’t see where the fact that Joe Cocker went on to record some music for a reactionary movie cancels the power of his interpretation of “A little help from my friends.” Does the fact that the band Chicago has made really schlocky music since the mid-to-late 70s cancel the fact that they initially made three really good albums, with songs such as “It better end soon,” and manifestos dedicating their lives and music to “the people of the revolution”? I think that approach (of the later work cancelling the earlier work) gives us a bad frame of analysis, not only because it is integral to fidelity and a truth procedure that some people may fall away from it, but also because there may come a point when the event that gave rise to the fidelity and procedure is played out, and it is time to move on. Our difficulty now is figuring out what that means–of necessity it will be an experimental sort of thing, though it seems to me that this activity will have as a seconary-but-necessary aspect a contentious discussion over the events of previous “sequences” (as Badiou calls them).
Radical Eyes said
It seems to me that a version of the argument(s) being put forward by Stan can be found in Thomas Frank’s study of Sixties “counterculture” THE CONQUEST OF COOL. (Frank is also author of WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?, a text which also bears on this debate, as it tracks the rise of the radical right-wing populism in places formerly associated with a more left-wing variety.)
You can find an excerpt of Frank’s argument about the 60s here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/259919.html
Here’s just one clip that speaks to some of what I think Bill is touching on, as to how it is difficult for us to imagine what a political counterculture might look like today…from Frank’s opening chapter:
“The counterculture has long since outlived the enthusiasm of its original participants and become a more or less permanent part of the American scene, a symbolic and musical language for the endless cycles of rebellion and transgression that make up so much of our mass culture. With leisure-time activities of consuming redefined as “rebellion,” two of late capitalism’s great problems could easily be met: obsolescence found a new and more convincing language, and citizens could symbolically resolve the contradiction between their role as consumers and their role as producers. The countercultural style has become a permanent fixture on the American scene, impervious to the angriest assaults of cultural and political conservatives, because it so conveniently and efficiently transforms the myriad petty tyrannies of economic life—all the complaints about conformity, oppression, bureaucracy, meaninglessness, and the disappearance of individualism that became virtually a national obsession during the 1950s—into rationales for consuming. No longer would Americans buy to fit in or impress the Joneses, but to demonstrate that they were wise to the game, to express their revulsion with the artifice and conformity of consumerism. The enthusiastic discovery of the counterculture by the branches of American business studied here marked the consolidation of a new species of hip consumerism, a cultural perpetual motion machine in which disgust with the falseness, shoddiness, and everyday oppressions of consumer society could be enlisted to drive the ever-accelerating wheels of consumption.”
[Note to moderator; Perhaps this text of Frank's might be worth posting as a way of continuing the "Spirit of Woodstock" discussion?]
Stanley W. Rogouski said
Stan is right, of course, that both a radical right and a radical left got energy out of the 1960s.
The image of right wing racists openly carrying guns outside of Obama’s rallies has been bouncing all over the liberal blogs lately.
Nobody as of yet has compared them to the panthers in California or to Cornell but it’s the first impression I got. Also, I don’t think anybody’s discussed the fact that the first draconian gun control law in California was in response to the panthers packing out in the open.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
But there is a question of initiative…. and Stan’s little lesson of history around the hardhats does get it wrong.
The hardhats were not a “spontaneous” event. Brennan (head of the construction workers union) had been made secretary of labor — and had (at white house orders) organized an attack.
It’s pretty likely that I did get it wrong. But the history of the hard hat demos (and the violent redneck protests at the university of Mississippi) seems to have disappeared from the official corporate Time/Life History of the 1960s. So it’s the one part of the 60s that I haven’t seen debated over and over again.
It’s also striking that the Woodstock hype is coming out at the very same time the corporate media is hyping the teabagging and birther movements. They also seem to go together for me. BUT, the image that’s being presented is that THERE WERE NO RIGHT WING PROTESTS IN THE 1960s, that they’re something new. This goes together with the image that “oh the left protested in the 1960s but now the left is silent”.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
I don’t look at the staged hard-hat demo in Manhattan like that at all. Instead, Brennan/Nixon were forced to stage this bit of theatre precisely because of the Left’s (which included lots of people from less Leftist positions) potency and relevance. And the Left’s developing numbers and impact was certainly not limited to the U.S.
I’m going by Perlstein’s narrative in Nixonland. He describes the hard hat demos as a violent outburst that Lindsey couldn’t control (probably because he would have had to cross the police unions). The hard hats actually tood over the ground around city hall with little or no opposition. Perlstein also references a photograph of a contstruction worker with a metal pipe wrapped in a bloody flag. I can’t find it anywhere but supposedly it ran on the front page of the NY Times.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
I don’t see where the fact that Joe Cocker went on to record some music for a reactionary movie cancels the power of his interpretation of “A little help from my friends.”
The Joe Cocker song from an Officer and a Gentleman almost seems like an apology for Woodstock.
An Officer and a Gentleman is one of the most purely reactionary movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not a war movie like Saving Private Ryan or even a right wing one like We Were Soldiers. It’s literally a recruiting commercial for the Navy. But it’s a clever one.
The Richard Gere character in An Officer and a Gentleman in some way represents the counterculture. He grew up in Asia. He has tatoos. He’s an individualist. He’s familiar with Asian culture. But this means he’s headed towards disaster. The Lou Gossett character, the tough black drill instructer, needs to break him of his culturally libertarian impulses in order to “make a man out of him”.
So you’ve got the lyrics in A Little Help from My Friends
Would you believe in a love at first sight?
Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.
What do you see when you turn out the light?
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get high with a little help from my friends,
Oh, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends
And then you’ve got the lyrics from “Up Where We Belong”
Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles fly on a mountan high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world below
Where the clear winds blow
Except “up where we belong” is in the sky flying a Navy jet dropping napalm on Vietnamese farmers.
It’s almost as if Hollywood said to Joe Cocker “suck on it” and he said “how long”.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
In Badiou’s philosophy, an event is not only a rare and fragile thing, it is also always possible in retrospect to say that the event didn’t really happen.
The quote from Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma is “was I really in the battle”.
That’s what the hero says after he spends most of several days at Waterloo. All he sees are soldiers milling about, a few skirmishes here and there, a lot of camp followers and wounded soldiers. But he never sees the battle as a whole.
Later, people in his home town think the fact that he was there at Waterloo makes him a hero. Some people even mistake him for a Napoleonic marshall (because he spent some time, unknown to himself) riding with Ney’s calverly.
I don’t know if people read this book anymore but it’s fascinating.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
Final observation on Cocker’s song for “An Officer and a Gentleman”.
Officer and a Gentleman was made in 1982
Woostock was 1969
Richard Gere was born in 1949
That made him 33 in 1982, way, way too old to be a recruit for a Navy officer’s training program. And he looks 33. He’s got tatoos and he’s got a past in Asia. In 1969, Gere would have been 20, prime military age.
He’s the image of a Vietnam vet, but a leftist Vietnam vet. But now he wants to get back in the military. The counterculture let him down.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084434/
He needs to know who his friends are but his friends aren’t hippies. They’re in the military.
Mike E said
This comment was moved to the end of a post on the main Kasama column.
hegemonik said
I hate to break up your serious discussion, but lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song… and I will try not to sing on a Kia
Mike E said
damn you, Hegemonik. I laughed until I almost passed out.
Matt said
Here’s the opening of Abbie Hoffman’s “Woodstock Nation” testimony at the Chicago conspiracy trial. Certainly, the Yippies exemplified some of the most glaring political errors of the period, but they were also a genuine political expression of the youth/cultural rebellion to a far greater extent than any other political grouping of the time.
Abbie was no simple clown: he was, in the words of Bobby Seale, “a stone revolutionary.” A political comic in the vein of Lenny Bruce, Abbie used political theater and media in ways most of the revolutionary movement has never learned to do. At his best, he was able to articulate a socialist/anarchist vision using everyday language that reflected the deep, frustrated democratic impulses that represent the best of U.S. culture.
For his full tesimony, see: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/Chicago7/Hoffman.html
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?
THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?
THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?
THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to–
THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.
THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society–
THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?
THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury your present age?
THE WITNESS: My age is 33. 1 am a child of the 60s.
MR. WEINGLASS: When were you born?
THE WITNESS: Psychologically, 1960.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please. I move to strike the answer.
MR. WEINGLASS: What is the actual date of your birth?
THE WITNESS: November 30,1936.
MR. WEINGLASS: Between the date of your birth, November 30, 1936, and May 1, 1960, what if anything occurred in your life?
THE WITNESS: Nothing. I believe it is called an American education.