Papa John and the Manson Women: The Dark Legacy of the '60s

If you watched any of the trailers for Ang Lee's recent Taking Woodstock, you'd think that the '60s were a gentle-hearted, kooky time filled with benign cross-dressing and bad haircuts. There has been a thorough pop cultural rewriting of the '60s, which in reality was a time of national chaos, violence, and upheaval—the center was not holding, as Joan Didion said at the time. Two news stories dominating headlines today—about Woodstock-era rock star John Phillips raping his own daughter Mackenzie, and about the death of Manson follower Susan Atkins—remind us that it wasn't all folk songs and love-ins.

Lifestyles like Phillips'—one quarter of the Mamas and the Papas—have been thoroughly defanged, commodified, and romanticized in the intervening 40 years. The legacy of the Manson followers is different, as most people think they're still monsters. But people like writer and director John Waters have stood up for these female acolytes of Charles Manson, even though they brutally murdered Sharon Tate and several others. Of course, not every work of pop needs to be entirely faithful to reality. It's just good to be reminded that sometimes there are really bad acid flashbacks.

Comments

The 1960s were the decade of assassinations

By: janjanjan | Sun, 09/27/2009 - 19:14

I don't know how any of the specific items mentioned here stack up to the worst violence of all--3 assassinations and 1 attempted assassination of transformational figures. That, far more than isolated violent episodes on college campuses or riots, was the defining reality of the 60s.

Fruits of the sexual revolution

By: fsilber | Sun, 09/27/2009 - 08:58

That Fuzzy Bastard:

"One of the many strange lacunae in our memory of that time is that everyone remembers the crazed lefties of the SLA, the Weathermen, and SNCC, but everyone seems to forget the equal and opposite violence that flooded from the right---the hardhat riots, the John Birch Society, Kent State, and the horrible violence around busing. In fact, in retrospect, the 60s look less important for the hippies (a there-and-gone fad) than for the rise of the Goldwater right, the Southern populist reactionaries who continue to be a major force in politics."

The hardhat riots were counter-riots. The John Birch Society and the Goldwater Right were not violent and their political positions were little different than that of most 19th century Americans. The horrible violence around busing only occurred in the 1960s because that's when busing occurred. The Southern populist reactionaries were no more violent or radical than southern politicians had been throughout the first half of the 20th century. When we criticize the 1960s, we are speaking of those bad things which were innovations of the 1960s.

The biggest outrage people ought to associate with the 1960s (but don't) is the sexual revolution -- including the notion that having a child out of wedlock (and, to a lesser extent, divorce) was anything other than a terrible shame and humiliation. The 50% de-parenting of children has caused a significant de-culturalization of children, with many regressing to the more natural paleolithic patterns of behavior such as casual inter-tribal warfare (drive-by shootings).

The 60s

By: That Fuzzy Bastard | Sat, 09/26/2009 - 12:43

In fairness to Waters, his defense of Leslie Van Houten comes down to believing that she was as much a brainwashed victim of Manson as Patty Hearst was of the SLA, that she's remorseful for her crimes, and that locking her up serves no purpose protectively or even punitively. It's not like he just thinks she's groovy and should be free. The linked essays are actually quite moving if you bother to read them.

As for the ugly legacy of the 60s: There's lots of it, and again, it's more complex than what's represented here. One of the many strange lacunae in our memory of that time is that everyone remembers the crazed lefties of the SLA, the Weathermen, and SNCC, but everyone seems to forget the equal and opposite violence that flooded from the right---the hardhat riots, the John Birch Society, Kent State, and the horrible violence around busing. In fact, in retrospect, the 60s look less important for the hippies (a there-and-gone fad) than for the rise of the Goldwater right, the Southern populist reactionaries who continue to be a major force in politics.

So yes, I'd be the last to defend Ang Lee's rose-colored vision of Woodstock without Altamont. But until you understand that the 60s was the moment when *everyone* went crazy, you're still not looking at it clearly.

Wildest decade of the 20th century

By: Kapt Z | Sat, 09/26/2009 - 07:09

I was only 3 when Woodstock was going on so like most of us I remember the sixties from other's memories.
I think what made Woodstock so important is that it seemed for once a mass of people seemed to enjoy eachother's company without violence or the desire to do violence. That was saying quite alot for a decade that saw so many assasinations, riots, Viet Nam and yes the Mansons.
But, boy the music and the cars!!

Book sales and public appearances may help ease the pain

By: T. Gore La Zahn | Sat, 09/26/2009 - 04:48

The rich and famous can tell their terrible stories, their consolation being descriptions of their misfortune helping to sell their books and promote their public appearances. But everyday people who have had similar misfortune can only buy such books and hope to feel better about it by reading them. If Mackenzie's tell all of her strange days indeed of Doing Daddy No-No did not pay, do you think she would have told America about it-or even her best friend?