Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Flower Power

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

What we equate with acid, hippies, and garish polyester prints actually began as a theatrical way of protesting bans on free speech and the Vietnam War. When the hippies got hold of it, it definitely transformed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and we're going to talk about flower power, so let's start doing that right now. Yeah, kind of specifically the two flower powers, because there was one flower power movement in 1967, specifically, and into 68 that had to do with politics and protest. And then there was a second flower power movement, kind of either concurrently or on the heels of that,

that was a little bit more about like, hey man, like wear this cool shirt and listen to this music we're in San Francisco. Yeah, that is a good point. And one more from the other. I think the whole thing originally had its origin in 1965 thanks to Alan Ginsberg, who had become one of the luminaries.

He was like Neil Cassidy, one of those rare beat generation guys who was able to kind of make the transition over to hippie. And so he became a luminary of this whole scene, the very beginning of the hippie movement in the 60s. And so by this time, he was already a very respected counterculture person. And so when a bunch of Berkeley students decided that they were going to protest, basically a clampdown on political speech on campus, they asked Allen Ginsberg if he had any advice for him and boy did he ever. Yeah, he wrote a essay to give out to the protesters

called Demonstration or Spectacle as Example as Communication or How to Make a March Slash Spectacle. And they said, what? And he said, just read it. He's, I love Allen Ginsberg, great poet. And he always had these kind of funny long titles like that. Yeah, or very short, like Howell. Well, yeah, good point.

Thanks, man. So there's a lot to this, but the thing that really has to do with our episode is that he was searching for a way or advising them to look for ways to basically take the psychology of war and people who are for war and that kind of stuff and just kind of change it. Like, take this scary thing and this violent thing and just turn it on its head. If you're trying to protest it, just don't follow its rules of engagement. Like, create your own. Yeah, and you know, one of the things that was they knew for sure was gonna happen at this Berkeley protest was the Hells Angels were

gonna come in to counter protest the protest or I guess just counter protest and he said kind of like kill him with kindness. He's you know he didn't actually say the words flower power but he mentioned flowers as what he called a visual spectacle, like masses of flowers, a visual spectacle, especially concentrated in the front lines. And also little toy soldiers and toy guns and candy and little tiny musical instruments. And basically just sort of be like, yeah, just throw a bunch of like silliness and whimsy at them. And these Hells Angels aren't going to know what to do. They might want to beat you up, but they'll probably maybe even feel bad trying to.

Right. So, this was really good advice and that was definitely the origin of flower power. And so, you can make a really good case and it would be totally correct that the flower power movement or idea came from anti-war protests or even before that free speech protests among young liberals and counterculture types even before there was such a thing as hippies. Like Sonny and Cher were just starting again into this. It was so early, right? And so those students at Berkeley were successful.

The administration at the university was like, fine, say whatever you want, we don't care anymore. Just get off the lawn. And then that got parlayed into, okay, well, this is a, we're creating a movement here. These kids really care about stuff. How about we start targeting the Vietnam War? And that really quickly, easily translated into it.

And there was a very, very famous picture that was essentially the culmination of this whole ideal that Allen Ginsberg suggested, and that those Berkeley students first adopted. And it came in 1967, I believe, with a march on the Pentagon. Yeah, there were more than 100,000 people at this march, a peaceful protest. And a very, very famous picture, like you mentioned, was taken by a guy named Bernie Boston of the Washington Star when he captured a young guy, 18-year-old aspiring actor named George Harris when 2,500 reserve troops with M14 machine guns came out and surrounded the place He very calmly walked up and stuck a daisy in the end of that gun barrel Creating one of the most iconic photos of the 1960s. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's called the flower power photo

It's really great to see and also his sweater is just amazing So I say we we come back and talk about how Flower Power morphed from that into what we think of it today. How about that? Let's do it. Hey, it's me Jay Shetty and I'm the host of the award-winning podcast On Purpose. I created this show to bring you conversations that inspire, motivate and help you navigate life a little easier. Every guest brings something special, whether it's about relationships,

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So now we're in San Francisco. The hippie movement is genuinely underway at this point. That's the epicenter of it all during one of the many summers of love that we've talked about. And flower power sort of got morphed a little bit and it wasn't so much political protest

anymore. It was just like, hey, man, like violence in the way. You got to love your neighbor. You got to just get neighbor. You got to just get on board with these cool clothes. It became more of sort of a cultural, even fashion touchstone that had not much to do with protest, even though it was still about living kind of a groovy, peaceful life. It got co-opted. And that's a really great way to defuse an actual movement is to commercialize it and sell it

and repackage it to the rest of America. That's exactly what happened. Because a lot of those hippies were like, yeah, I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want anybody to have to die in war. But really, I'm kind of here for the chicks and the acid. And that's really what I'm into.

So it was kind of easy for it to transition into, uh, uh, yeah, just a trend, a fashion trend. I mean, it eventually trickled down to the Brady kids for God's sake. That's how far away it got from putting flowers into gun barrels in protests of Vietnam. Um, and that definitely happened. That transition did definitely happen in 1967 in San Francisco.

And this was not lost on anybody who was really into this movement at the time and was really upset to see it turn into a commercialized fashion trend. Yeah, for sure. But that's kind of what happened in the Haight-Ashbury district, a shop open there called the Psychedelic Shop. This is just shortly before LSD was criminalized in the United States or at least in California. But at the time, you could go there and get education on doing acid and how to best do it.

And buy it. Oh, yeah. It was legal. That's just nuts. You just go down the street to the psychedelic shop and buy some barrel acid. Yeah, for sure. So, it's a fashion thing at this point. All the brightly colored sort of tie-dye stuff and literal like flower print dresses and things like that was a group of kids kind of casting off finally like the garments of the 1950s of their parents where women wore girdles and skirts that weren't very comfortable and too tight and too long. And they're like, hey, put on this free flowing linen flower frock and take off that bra and

tell me how that feels. Yeah. And burn it in this 55 gallon drum and we have a fire going in. Right, which did not happen. No, that's awesome that you remembered that because I had forgotten. So like I said, there were people who were not happy about this transition.

They really believed in flower power and were kind of bummed that all of these people had just kind of come out and were missing the point. So they actually held a funeral for the hippie in 1967. It was in October 1967. They had a funeral march or procession I guess through Haight Ashbury and they even burned the psychedelic shop sign.

And I was trying to figure out if the psychedelic shop's owner would have been like, yeah, that's the right thing to do, burn my sign, or would have been like, hey, stop burning my sign. I can't figure out how that would have gone down, but it did go down like that. And also, for anybody who's listened to our Biospherian episode, this is about the time

when the Synergians probably left for New Mexico. Yeah, totally. One guy was pretty happy that it waited until later in 1967 at least, because a guy named Scott McKenzie had a big hit earlier that year with the song San Francisco, which we, for one of our San Francisco shows, I believe it was the one at the Palace of Fine Arts years ago, we played this song as our walkout song, which was a mistake because it's a little too mellow. If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

So he got that in just under the wire. Yeah. Less famously, the next line is, or else those hippies will mess you up real good. Yeah. But that helped kind of spread flower power also to the rest of mainstream America because that song was such a big hit. For sure.

So all that stuff kind of combined really led to the death of flower power and ultimately the image we have of it today. But hat tip to those kids that gave it its original meaning and Alan Gittidsburg too. Yeah, I mean, that picture's iconic and I kind of take it for granted now because I've seen it so many times, but it took a lot of guts for that kid, an 18-year-old kid, to walk up to a guy with a machine gun

and stick a flower in that barrel. That was a bold move. Yeah, yeah, but that's a great way to put it. I also want to give a hat tip to our former colleague and host of Unladylike, the podcast, Kristin Conger, who wrote this originally for How Stuff Works so many years ago. That's right. Kongs is great, and I miss working with her, and I miss being in touch with her. This made me kind of want to email her and I miss being in touch with her. This made me kinda wanna email her and just say, how you doing?

Hey man, with the spirit of flower power compels you. Go ahead and do that, Chuck. All right. Wait, I didn't say it. Short Stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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