Midsommar and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Tom Kando

The Sixties were formative for me, as they were for anyone of college age at that time. I was heavily involved in the Peace and Civil Rights movements, I dug the music and the sex, not so much the drugs, and I examined some of the cult-like groups, as my doctoral major was social psychology.

The Counterculture was both for better and for worse. It was the last time that society had a true “prise de conscience” (Awareness experience). The contrast with today is vivid. The “normalcy” to which we have returned consists essentially of materialism and survival mode. We basically don’t want to be bothered (by stuff like the Muller Report or global issues).

The problem with the Sixties was that chaos is not a sustainable long-term state. It had to stop. On the other hand today’s “normal,” unsatisfying and cacophonous as it is, is likely to go on for a very long time.

Two movies which raise issues and remind us of that time period, are Midsommar and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The former is a horror film directed by Ari Aster. It takes place in Sweden. This movie surprised me. I had no prior idea of what it was about. I had read something vague about a “summer festival,” so I thought it might be about some Swedish version of “Burning Man,” or something like that.

 According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie critics give it an 83% approval rating. One reviewer calls the movie “upsetting” (but worthy) (Minneapolis Star/Tribune), another one says that Aster is the next Kubrick, another one writes that the film is “superlative, disturbing horror,” another critic says that it’s “unsettling and truly terrifying,’ etc. So I am in good company.However, many people hate this film. My wife wanted to walk out. A good friend of mine who taught film studies at the university said that this was arguably the worst movie he ever saw. This movie is “polarizing,” to say the least.

My view is this: Because the film caught me so off guard, I find it clever. And it was about a topic which I studied, namely cults. During the late sixties and early seventies, “Encounter groups” became popular, as did drug rehab programs such as Synanon (founded by Charles Dederich) and training programs such as E.S.T. (founded by Werner Erhard). Another famous “provider” of such services has been the Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California. Sensitivity training started. There were all sorts of New Age gurus and movements, sometimes Zen-inspired. Remember Rajneesh? Much of this came out of the Sixties’ Counterculture. Remember Hermann Hesse’s popularity? And as with so many other social movements, California was in the forefront. Later, at the university, I met a number of “Moonies.” Some of them were my students, and they asked me to be their faculty adviser.

These phenomena ranged from benevolent to sinister. Some were “drug laced” you might say, sexuality was handled in many different ways, some evolved into communes and cults.

In some of the “encounters,” I witnessed the darkest side of the counterculture. Things could get rough. Many of the participants were (ex-) heroin junkies, and/or ex-cons. In 1969, I spent three days and nights with a Palo Alto group calling itself the Human Institute. There was a great deal of verbal and physical violence.

Of course, the public became aware of the horrors perpetrated by the Manson family (1969), Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple (1978), the Symbionese Liberation Army (1974-5) and the Branch Davidians (1993). Such cases have in common the key characteristics of what Erving Goffman calls total institutions: They are communities where a number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Recruits, chosen preferably from among the young and the impressionable, are brainwashed. Then the Stockholm Syndrome sets in. Patty Hearst becomes a fervent SLA bank robber.

The groups of which I speak - communes, cults, etc. - generally claim to be love-based and spiritual. They often start out asserting that they offer a better, “counter cultural” alternative to the conventional, materialistic society. They trap their recruits, who “turn native.” They perform religious and sexual rituals.

Midsommar addresses these processes, in a horrifying fashion. During the first 30-45 minutes, I expected this picture to be sort of a defense/advocacy of some New Age “love-based” commune, whose values we should all embrace. After all this was oh-so-progressive Sweden, right?

But of course, the film does no such thing. Instead, the dream turns into nightmare. Jim Jones; Charles Manson, Branch Davidians, etc. The film has flaws, but it makes a commendable effort to trace the process from what initially seems to be benevolent, to its monstrous opposite, reminiscent of some of the real-live examples which I mentioned.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is about changes taking place in Hollywood in 1969. It is directed by Quentin Tarantino. It is somewhat nostalgic, certainly judging by the musical score, which consists of dozens of dear old sixties songs. The reviewers listed by Rotten Tomatoes give it an 85% approval rating. Curiously, I saw half a dozen people walk out of the theater during the film. 

Tarantino’s movie is a flight of phantasy, a twisting of reality into its opposite. The main characters are Hollywood actors, directors and producers, including the somewhat has-been actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), his stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and neighbors Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Note that the neighbor couple’s names are real, not fictitious - she is actress Sharon Tate, and her husband is the famous Roman Polanski.

This was necessary, because woven into the story is the murderous attack by the Charles Manson family upon the highly pregnant Sharon Tate and her guests, which happened on August 8-9, 1969. 

Building up to that bloody climax is a visit by Cliff Booth/Brad Pitt to the Spahn Ranch. This was the place in a remote part of Los Angeles County where Charles Manson and his family were squatting in 1968-9. Tarantino shows us a run-down hippie commune, consisting mostly of young girls, run-away types, some pregnant by who knows who, etc. Cliff Booth/Brad Pitt doesn’t get to see Manson, but he and the hippies they talk about him. There is some violence between Brad Pitt and the hippies, but he leaves unscathed.

Six months later, members of the Manson commune invade the house where Cliff Booth/Brad Pitt is sleeping (actually, Rick Dalton/Leonardo DiCaprio’s house, next to the Sharon Tate house). Their intention is to commit mass murder. One of them is Tex, a hippie with whom Brad Pitt had words at the ranch. So, was it revenge?

By now, the movie has become fantasy: In reality, on August 8, 1969, the Manson family invaded Sharon Tate’s house and murdered her and half a dozen other people (not her husband Roman Polanski, who happened to be in Europe). In this movie, instead, they invade the house next door, Rick Dalton/Leonardo DiCaprio’s, and try to kill him and Cliff/Brad Pitt. They fail. All three hippie invaders are killed and all the “good guys” survive, including the highly pregnant Sharon Tate next door.

I realize that Tarantino’s movie is not primarily about cults, and that Midsommar takes place today. However, both pictures bring back lugubrious memories of the darker side of the Sixties and of that era’s legacy.

© Tom Kando 2019;All Rights Reserved

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