When You’re Strange, a film by Tom DiCillo. 2010
I love the music of The Doors, the times and the legend. Watching archival footage in Tom DiCillo’s Rockdoc, I was taken back to a moment in our history filled with so much hope and promise, yet riven with an overwhelming sense of confusion and loss. Americans were deeply confused about a host of things in the 60s, and just like today, sought long and hard for someone to break on through to the other side.
Morrison was born to be a shaman/showman and blaze new trails.
The film reminded me of a few important details. It’s one of the first biopics to deal at all with the musicianship of the other Doors — Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. Morrison got all of the attention and notoriety, but they set his voice to music. They also had an almost uncanny ability to keep things together in concert when Mr. Mojo Risen was out of sorts, which was often enough. The Apollonian is generally needed as foundation and protection for the Dionysian. All of one or the other produces abject boredom or disintegration.
Beyond the music, I was struck by a part of the film that showed the beginnings of another split in America, a rebellion of young people against the youth rebellion itself. The film depicts the early stages of the rise of conservatism in America, using the reaction against Morrison’s “going too far” on stage as an illustration. Morrison and his generation sought liberation, freedom and the unchained life. Liberation of mind, body and spirit, their way. The powers that be have never liked that, of course, and they never will. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they have always been very good at co-opting large segments of the population to fight on their behalf against some new manufactured “enemy”. Morrison and the 60s counterculture were made-to-order enemies. They still are for some.
The 60s counterculture died, not due to their own liberation ideology, but from a concatenation of horrific events beyond their control. The murders of MLK and RFK, the endless war in Vietnam, Kent State and Nixon’s crackdowns. Disillusionment and exhaustion killed the movement, and it seemed almost inevitable that we’d lose Janis, Jimi and Jim Morrison in its wake.
In 2010, we have a new round of confusion, and it’s a very sad echo of previous attempts to break our chains. Tragic, baffling and beyond frustrating, as well. Today, the right has managed to convince more than a few that “freedom” and “liberty” are achieved when business owners can do as they please. Owners. Not workers or consumers — as in, the majority of the planet. Just owners. The new “freedom” is seen almost entirely as the ability of capitalists to be free of any constraints, and the people apparently holding them back are the ones calling for better wages and working conditions and a healthier planet. Can you imagine a CEO going on stage, gyrating to the music of “Light my Fire,” then pleading with the audience afterward to cast off the chains that bind them?
“People, you gotta get those tax cuts for us rich folks!! You need to help us deregulate!! And you need to help us demonize unions and environmentalists!!!”
What counts as freedom today is the purview of a tiny minority of people who actually want to own or run a business. And it is a tiny minority. There are only 17,000 businesses in America with 500 or more employees, and probably just 100 or so out of that number really call the shots. Yet, business is privileged above all other things in this country — above the Arts and education, above the health of the planet, above the common good. Tom DiCillo depicted a revolt against a revolt in part of his film. It’s long past time that we do that again, this time against the phonies and the plastic people who have convinced far too many that our freedom depends on the freedom of the rich. Trickle-down freedom, so to speak.
The liberation of the human spirit is not about business ownership and property rights and the personal accumulation of wealth. Down deep, everyone knows this. That we seldom act on that knowledge, together or apart is, well, strange.
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Post-Script: I bumped into this article after I wrote the above. There are some 27, 000 abandoned oil wells in the Gulf alone, and we don’t know how many of them are leaking. Any one of them could turn into another BP-like disaster. Or thousands. This sort of thing happens when the interests of business are put ahead of everything else. Profit is god. Profit rules. Nothing else matters, not the health of the planet, its future, our future. In the last 30 to 40 years, governments across the globe have embraced neoliberal (right wing) economic theories, which promote nearly unrestrained capitalism and the privatization of public goods and services. We see the results. Skyrocketing levels of inequality, horrific environmental disasters, and more power concentrated in the hands of a few. The only part of the globe going against this destructive trend is Latin America. We should all look to our south with hope and humility.
Been thinking about this post for a while now. It’s a really interesting take on Morrison and The Doors and how they fit/didn’t fit into the burgeoning liberation of the era. And where the concept of “liberation” has led us. [Proviso: I have not seen the movie…]
The rebellion of youth against their own rebellion is very true. Ferment upon ferment. The Doors were part of the rebellion against the “mainstream” of rebellion, if you want to call it that, and toward something far darker.
It was obvious that the character Morrison played on stage was seriously fucked up — on drugs, psychological issues, what have you. I didn’t know at the time whether it was all an act or real. If it was real, I was very sorry for him and wished there was some kind of help somewhere — which there wasn’t. If was an act, I wondered why he would want to play that way. His character was one of several avatars of the end of the Peace, Love, and Understanding phase of the youth rebellion, and the opening of the Gates of Hell.
As you say, “a concatenation of horrific events.” Indeed.
After 1968, this was not a happy land of beautiful, shining people with flowers in their hair and an abundance of love to share. (It was actually never that at all, but that’s another issue.)
When I heard of Morrison’s death, I remember being unsurprised, and also being unsurprised at all the magical thinking surrounding his supposed survival and hermitage somewhere in Florida or wherever it was. Yep. That was what a lot of folks wished they could do — either end it all or just disappear. So even at the end, Morrison led the way.
I could certainly understand the feeling. But the action?
It wasn’t until many years later that I began to understand, for example, what heroin does to individuals. I had never to my knowledge been around heroin users, so I was really taken aback by what I was seeing from someone I was working with who was in recovery from heroin. The drug, I’m convinced, had changed his brain and his thinking/perceptions irreversibly. Much of it was benign — unlike the changes that manifest from meth use — but he had such a wild psychological chaos (and creativity, I might add) , and oh, the neediness. It was scary. I had never encountered anyone so deeply, and largely unconsciously, emotionally needy. And so publicly outrageous. Oh yes.
I was reminded of Morrison’s stage character. And I may have begun to understand why I instinctively recoiled from him and to an extent, from the kind of liberation he represented. Because he went too far? I don’t know. I’m still puzzling over that one. For if anything, I have a greater appreciation for Morrison and The Doors today than I did then.
As I ponder it some more, I don’t think he went too far.
Ultimately, it was that he and others were presenting a vision that was too dark, filled with too much dread, souls aching under too much evil and suffering. Too much truth, if you will.
And now, the whole idea of liberation is perverted, much as the Bushevik vision of spreading democracy has perhaps irreversibly tarnished the whole notion of democratic ideals.
Thanks for jostling my memories and braincells…
You are welcome. Good comment. There were a lot of rebellions within rebellions, of course, and reactions within reactions. The film depicts a conservative rebellion against Morrison’s Dionysian excesses, but, as you say, his was, in a sense, a rebellion against flower power, peace and love and communal life. But, at the same time, his music was embraced by those in that “movement.” They tapped into the psychedelic aspects of the songs, the symbolism, the attempts to go deeper into the subconscious, etc.
Again, much confusion all around. Much complexity. I’ll probably return to the topic in a day or two.
I’m still rebelling..
Today, on an exit ramp on my way to the Maryland Beltway, two flower-children wannabe youths, one seated, a shirtless guy with dread locks, and one standing, his lady friend, with a bandana around her blonde hair, waited for someone to pay attention to them and to give them a ride. They didn’t even put up a thumb. Apathy? Not sure…
My initial response was to think about that girl and to hope that she would see sooner than later that she needed to get away from this loser, get a degree and a good job, and make her way in this world. my second thought, while taking the curve around and on to the beltway, was “wow, how you’ve changed!:” You used to be the girl on the side of the road with the long haired-hippie thumbing for a ride. ” That was so long ago, and time has put so much reality into the brainwaves, that knowledge of what harm can come to those who hitch, and those who pick up hitchers… has made me nervous.
Where is our Jim Morrison? Where is the Jim Morrison of the 21st century, who will lead us with music to a better, safer world?
Steven Stills came on the radio as I exited from the Beltway to Route 50 East… “step out of line, the man come and take you away.…” so many things have “gone around” and they are “coming around” again… Hopefully they will be better, smarter, and last longer…
Peace
Perhaps we have a gene that tells us not to trust those over thirty. Even when trusting them can be a very good thing. Even when they’ve gone through experiences we believe are unique to us as young people. Unique, even, for anyone of any age, anywhere.
A blessing and a curse. Learning things the hard way, on our own. They tend to mean far more that way, but in some cases, we don’t get to live to gain the benefits of new wisdom from personal experiences. The saber-tooth tiger eats us right after we suddenly realize that trying to pet the nice tiger isn’t the smartest thing in the world to do.
Anyway, no. Don’t know if there is a Jim Morrison today to guide young people. But they could do worse than to look toward someone who made it out of that era alive and intact. Leonard Cohen. A poet, novelist, and musician of the highest caliber. He’s seen it all and “everybody knows” his Hallelujah.