106 The Language of Fashion
one of the precursors to nietzsche’s ‘superman’ which he found in the
ultimate nihilist, the one trying to widen and push forward the reactive
value to the point of cutting off any chance of it being recuperated by
some positive force or other. We know that nietzsche pointed to two
different incarnations of this nihilism, Christ and Buddha, and these two
encapsulate the hippies’ dreams: hippyism looks towards India (which
is becoming the mecca for the hippy movement) and many young
hippies (too many for the phenomenon to go unnoticed) clearly want to
have a Christ-like appearance—we are talking about symbols here, and
not beliefs (the author of these lines saw a local crowd, with a markedly
oriental vehemence, surround and threaten a young Christ with long
hair and a pale face, accused of stealing a radio. It was unclear whether
he was guilty, but he had perhaps fallen foul of the local code for what
theft means: it was like a veritable evangelical tableau, a pious colour
painting worthy of adorning a pastor’s hallway). This is the direction
hippies are taking and the signs they are sending out.
This direction, this meaning however (and it is what we discussed
at the start) is recuperated by the context of the reality in which it has
inevitably developed. In the united States, cultural contestation by the
hippy is highly effective (we might say, a direct hit),^2 because it strikes
exactly (in the sensitive places) at the good consciences of the well
off, the guardians of social morals and of cleanliness: so hippyism is
a stage (even if a rather short one) in cultural criticism which can be
justified, because it paints the exact mirror image of the American
way of life. But once out of its original context, hippy protest comes
up against an enemy far more significant than american conformism,
even if this is backed up by security on the university campus: poverty
(where economics coyly uses the expression developing countries,
culture and real life use the more honest poverty). This poverty turns the
hippy’s choice into a copy, a caricature of economic alienation, and this
copy of poverty, though sported only lightly, becomes in fact distinctly
irresponsible. For most traits invented by the hippy in opposition to
his home civilization (a civilization of the rich) are the very ones which
distinguish poverty, no longer as a sign, but much more severely as
a clear indication, or an effect, on people’s lives: undernourishment,
collective living, bare feet, dirtiness, ragged clothing, are all forces
which, in this context, are not there to be used in the symbolic fight
against the world of riches but are the very forces against which we