The hippies are repeatedly lambasted throughout this movie by the main characters and called all sorts of names like - "fucking hippie motherfuckers", "goddamn fucking hippies", "dirty fucking hippies", "hippie assholes", "fucking hippie weirdos", etc...
What message is Tarantino trying to send here, Manson's followers were indeed hippies, but most of the hippies from that era were peaceful people, not crazy killers.
They were looked down on as degenerates by some people back then, because they reject normal society and live their own way. Some of the hippies were runaways from all over the US who went to California. Those were the vulnerable types who were attracted by Manson.
You should watch some other films from the late 1960s like Easy Rider and the video for Alice's Restaurant to get a feel for how things were back then.
I'M a kid from the era and I still find 'em disgustin'. :-)
shareGranted, I wasn't around then, but it just seems that's how they were treated by society
sharebecause hippies are a bunch of losers that need to get a job. you need to a SERVICE in order to EAT.
shareIt's how people spoke back then. Hippies were seen as dirty losers who were ruining society, and there was a lot of open ridicule and hatred for them. I never felt anything in Tarantino's movie vilified the hippies. or portrayed them in an unfair way, but he didn't sugarcoat anything. That's how regular folks spoke of hippies.
shareIdk they are dirty with lice walking around barefoot scrounging through trash, high and sleeping around. Talk about decadence and sloth. Pretty disgusting if you ask me.
shareThe comments about hippies said more about Rick than about them. He was the equivalent of a modern boomer complaining about millennials.
shareI think the most direct response is because of the age, timeframe, and perspective of the two main characters (Pitt and DeCaprio), hippies would likely be seen in an overtly negative way.
shareTarantino is a GenXer, and it appears to me that in having been too young to have remembered when this all went down, he had to rely on old newspaper, magazine and TV reports to get a sense of what happened. Unfortunately, that meant learning about it through biased news reports. In the late 1960s, there was increasing hatred and fear of the hippie movie and counterculture, and so naturally when the murders happened, the news media made the Manson family out to be a symbol of how evil, lawless and scary all these hippies were. But the Manson family weren't hippies.
It just seems as if Tarantino believed that whole angle (about how the Manson family members were typical out of control, murdering hippies) and to a certain extent, even thinks that hippies were responsible for the death of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
"Tarantino is a GenXer, and it appears to me that in having been too young to have remembered when this all went down,"
The most common definition of Generation X is people born from 1965 to 1980, and the most common definition of Baby Boomer is people born between 1946 and 1964. Tarantino was born in 1963. He would have been 6 years old in the summer of 1969. I don't know how good his memory is, but I have vivid memories that date back to when I was about 3½ years old (summer of 1978). I remember my sister being born (fall of 1978), I remember getting my vaccinations the summer before starting kindergarten (1980). I remember my first time at school, which wasn't the first day of school, but rather, it was to answer test questions to see whether I would be placed in the morning class or afternoon class. One of the questions was, "What's the difference between a pin and a pen?" I remember my first day of kindergarten too, of course. I also remember my kindergarten teacher's name, what she looked like, where I sat in the class, what the classroom looked like, those inflatable "letter people" that were used as teaching aids, and so on.
I also remember major events, like when Ronald Reagan was elected (I remember the night my parents voted in the 1980 presidential election too), and I remember when he was shot by John Hinckley Jr., as well as watching the news coverage of it at my grandfather's farm on a small black and white TV with bad reception. I was a few months younger when that happened than Tarantino was when Sharon Tate was murdered.
"he had to rely on old newspaper, magazine and TV reports to get a sense of what happened. Unfortunately, that meant learning about it through biased news reports."
That's how everyone got a sense of what happened, aside from the relatively few people who had inside information, such as the police and lawyers who worked on the case, friends and family of the victims, etc.
Regarding Tarantino, my mistake. I had read somewhere that he was born in 1965 for some reason. Nevertheless, my statement still stands about him having been too young to really remember the event as it happened.
I don't know how good his memory is, but I have vivid memories that date back to when I was about 3½ years old (summer of 1978).
"I'm talking about major cultural or political events."
I was too, which is why the first part of my second paragraph said:
"I also remember major events"
"There's no way anyone could have a clear cut scope of those types of events were as a child;"
False. It depends on how the particular child's brain is wired. When I was 6 years old I could read and follow Hardy Boys books (which usually had about 200 pages); sometimes 2 of them in one night. By the time I was 7 I'd read every one of them that the local library had (which I wouldn't have bothered to do if I wasn't getting any entertainment value from them, and I wouldn't have been getting any entertainment value from them if I hadn't been able to understand what I was reading). I could also read and follow stories in the King James Version of the Bible, which is written in early 17th-century English. Following a news story about a simple event wasn't difficult at that age.
"Tarantino's take on hippies sounds exactly like someone revisiting the Tate murders through the eyes of tabloids who were sensationalizing the whole thing to pander to everyone's fears or disgust about the counterculture. It doesn't seem as if he did any research outside of that."
You don't need to do any research about how people felt about hippies in 1969 if you were born in 1963, because you can remember it. You can remember how your parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, etc., talked about hippies, as well as how your peers talked about them. He wasn't writing an encyclopedia article about them; there was no need for a neutral presentation of all viewpoints; he only needed to present viewpoints from his characters, and the older generation seeing hippies as contemptible is a perfectly valid, and historically accurate, viewpoint. That doesn't just apply to hippies either. The older generation being annoyed by, or otherwise critical of, the behavior of the younger generation has been a constant throughout human history.
My parents, my father especially (born in 1941), referred to certain people derisively as "hippies" well into the 1980s. Even though the hippy movement "officially" died with the end of the Vietnam War in the mid 1970s, there were still plenty of people around when I was a kid who looked and acted the part, and they were the subject of ridicule among everyone I knew. I never knew anyone who thought hippies were anything other than laughable and/or contemptible until the early/mid 1990s when I first encountered early Millennial kids (people born in the early 1980s) who were pretending to be hippies ("neo-hippy").