Hollywood's Promotion of Drug Use

I thought I'd post about Hollywood's promotion of drug use after watching "Easy Rider" and "Boogie Nights." My problem is not that drug use is made into something cool, but that Hollywood promotes the use of hard drugs and does not give a complete picture of the spiritual aspects of psychedelics.

"Easy Rider" was supposed to represent the counterculture, and while indeed the characters have a different view of life and morality, hippies are only featured for a brief part of the movie -- the scene of the commune where the hitchhiker is dropped off. While there is one scene of LSD use, which turns out into a bad trip, much more is dedicated to the use of marijuana, and cocaine is given equal emphasis: the two main characters are cocaine smugglers.

When I think of the counterculture, however, I think of marijuana and LSD, and I see hard drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin as symbolizing the death and corruption of the movement -- right when it was getting commercialized. So much for the "hippie movie!"

"Boogie Nights," which is unrelated to the counterculture, at least on the surface, features plenty of cocaine use, including an overdose. Psychedelics are avoided, which shouldn't be a surprise because the sex industry is not very introspective or intelligent. Two of the leading characters (including "Dirk Diggler") are high school dropouts.

Reading about the counterculture, I thought "Easy Rider" would express the ideals of the movement with great fidelity, which it does in the freewheeling lifestyle of the protagonists. However, its depiction of the effects of LSD is lacking, because while the paranoia of the bad trip is depicted accurately, the distortion of time and space is missing. Perhaps the technology for creating better effects was not around in 1968-1969.

To conclude, I am opposed to the promotion of hard drugs such as cocaine, meth, and heroin, and I believe a movie which better depicts the spiritual aspects of the counterculture and psychedelics can be made -- if it hasn't already been made but which I am not aware of yet.

 

Harlod and Kumar go to white catsle AAMAZING MOVE

 

so promote the "soft" drugs? like alcohol and marijuana, yeah thats not any better either. I have to say first that movies (most movie) do not depict anything close to real life, secound "soft" drugs can be just as dangerous as "hard" drugs, drugs are drugs just because there soft or hard doesnt make a difference. Movies shouldnt be a life model it has nothing to do with drugs at all it has to do with movies. Alot of movies dont promote drugs what about blow? he ends up losing the only thing he realy loves in his life which is his daughter and is in for a very long time jail. Reqium for a dream, one guy goes to jail another has his arm cut off, the girl becomes a whore, and the mother ends up in a nursing home from to much speed. Spun, cook is blown up making meth, ross loses his girlfirend and becomes a full blown attict, spider and cookie end up in jail frisbe gets his penis shot off by a gun.

 

I disagree. There is no comparison between an aspirin, alcohol and a microdot of LSD. Clustering all drugs together leads to all sorts of silly conclusions (think of the current drug war). There is a world of difference, in my view, between psychedelics and hard drugs that lead to addiction and death.

 

i have to dissagree drugs are drugs i know people that are horrible alcoholics i mean horrible, i also know dumb ass potheads that droped out of school and do nothing but smoke and when they run out of money they started selling weed and put themselfs worse into det and they had to pawn alot of there sutff this happend to a couple people i know. I have a firend who does junkie hes been useing for 4 years he quit twice but only for a couple months so his tolerence would go down and hes in collage with a B average and the best bassest i know(hes awesome hes played shows with just him singing and playing bass nothing else and totaly fucking rocked the place), i also know a girl who smokes weed everyday and does coke/crack on the weekends and she has a B average in school too and is a realy nice person, there are a bunch of kids at my school who eat mushroom, smoke weed,and do some acid they are the stupied most ignorant people ever, they are want to be hippies who at the same time act gangster there complete morons.

 

I too know people fitting the first two catagories, and for the hippie group, many neo-hippies seem to become very self-absorbed, thinking they know best and don't have the accepting love that was there in the past.

 

I agree that, with a few exceptions, Hollywood tends to have a one-sided view of drugs. Every drug has a nature, and most movies dealing with drugs tend to neglect the exploratory/mind expanding nature of drugs (especially psychadelic drugs), and only focus on drugs that make the user feel good.

 

Huh? The main reason I watched the movie is because of the positive mention it received in the bestselling book Hippie. You think you can assume what someone reads based on a review of a movie that happens to be critical of it?

Yeah man, whatever.

That's another aspect I wanted to touch on, but didn't in my first post. In the movie three of the guys living unconventional lifestyles are killed. Southerners are presented in a barbaric fashion. In my view the contrast between the counterculture and the rural South is exaggerated; if it were the case Southerners had an uncontrollable hatred of hippies, it's unlikely so many hippie girls would be Southern or that Bonnaroo would take place in Tennessee.

The case for social intolerance and hypocrisy could have been made with more subtlety, but perhaps good counterculture movies were hard to come by so that movie became the symbol and thus for some beyond criticism.

 

RE: BTW, Easy Rider was great movie, showing the complexities of the times,

The hell?

Easy Rider was a terrible movie.

 

Dude, WTF?

 

anarchist: i'm kind of lol'ing here at the bonnaroo comment... hicks don't like hippies, end of story. You're comparing a MODERN event, and MODERN society to a time when everything was vastly different than it is today.

 

Thank you, MidnightMoonlight, for giving me an opportunity to express an oppositional perspective to the movie. I hope you understand that in life we all have different perspectives, and that it is troubling when we all find ourselves saying and believing in the same things.

The ending evokes feelings of injustice and the cold brutality in society, which I thought was masterful. As a realist, I felt it was a bit far-fetched that three countercultural characters are killed, in two separate incidents. Of course, there was, and is, intolerance toward hippies. For example, individuals with Grateful Dead stickers on their cars tend to be stopped by police more than those without them, and there are all sorts of societal prejudices against those living unconventional lives. I do believe the portrayal of Southerners is unfair, and that this movie, as much as any, shows the traditional Hollywood prejudice toward Southerners, who receive little sympathy from our political and social elites.

As for the Kent State massacre of innocents, it is worth pointing out that they were not hippies, but antiwar protesters. There is a difference between the two, because the hippies were largely apolitical. At that time the elites were fearful of the growing antiwar sentiment (as they are today, somewhat), and when elites are fearful they tend to use heavy-handed tactics to shut down opposition.

Besides, while the two main characters, Wyatt and Billy, embody certain features of the counterculture, especially in their use of drugs and their vagabond lifestyle, it seems a stretch to call them hippies. In fact, Billy doesn't quite fit into the hippie commune, and wants to leave right away. The two main characters can better be described as bikers with alternative values, who are influenced by the counterculture of the times.

 

I understand that, 2cesarewild. I just think we should be a little cautious in that we may show the prejudices we revile in others. It's easy to dismiss others as "hicks," just like others may dismiss us for our own unique way of life.

 

lol, I'm not going to be cautious as to who I call a hick, wtf, I'll call everyone here a hick. You're all fucking hicks, you hick mother fuckers. Hickity hicking fucking hicks.

It sounds to me like you live in a glass house. People snort cocaine, people shoot heroin, people do meth in all sorts of ways, people even stick these kinds of drugs up their asses. People are killed when they fuck around with trafficking these types of drugs all the time... I'm not really following why you have a problem with the movie if it depicts this sort of thing. Were you under the impression that nobody really did these kinds of drugs? Or maybe that selling them didn't involve any kind of violence? I'm not trying to pick any kind of fight, I just don't see what the beef is.

 

The opposite, actually. I am not a Southerner, so obviously I could not feel personally wounded at the way they are depicted in the movie.

I take it you are being sarcastic. Surely you are not under the impression that someone posting in these forums believes no one does these drugs.

 

I can't for the life of me see why you have a problem with the depiction of hard drug use in the movie.

 

I am assuming you didn't watch the movie, because the characters were not killed for drug trafficking, as you implied.

I do not have a problem with the depiction of reality; I do have a problem with the lack of depth of Hollywood.

 

A lack of depth in something that only exists to make money? I'm shocked . It seems like you are looking for a documentary rather than a straight up movie man.

 

Cocaine was one of the factors that ruined the hippie movement in the 70's


Since Coke became widespread, law enforcement has been very uptight, punishing marajuana users as "drug" users.

 

Is it beyond your conception of this world for a movie to be made for artistic purposes? Judging by the spirit of the times, and from the message of the movie (which was good; my protest is rather over its execution), it was not only to make money.