“The sixties happened mostly in the imagination,” writes Harvey Fierstein in his (fantastic) recent memoir. Fair dues: as someone who didn’t live it, it seems like an extraordinarily imaginative time, for better and worse. It was the decade that gave us Hair, The Queen, I Love You Alice B. Toklas, Myra Breckinridge, Scuba Duba, and the Monkees’ Head. It was also the decade of the Manson family, the Bouncing Ball Killer, Richard Speck, the assassination of Malcolm X., and the Boston Strangler. So let’s just say some things—such as racial equality, gay liberation, and women’s rights—lived more in the imagination than others. People were trying hard to imagine a better world, and by imagining it, attempting to create it. But on the ground, there was a kind of violence that felt indicative of the era, a kind of backlash to the new freedoms on offer, or perhaps even growing out of those freedoms.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Less Art to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.