History Main / NewAgeRetroHippie

* Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/ParisInTheTwentiethCentury'', written in the 1860s, has as its [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture 1960s protagonist]] a LoveFreak and self-proclaimed poet who grows his hair long and detests corporations. He's not a drug addict, but the foundations of the trope can be seen. (This was probably working off the Transcendentalists, rather than the hippies of the 1960s.)

* Gustafa from ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' definitely fits the bill. He's a wandering songwriter who lives in a yurt and loves nature.

** ''South Park'' also has the occasionally recurring character Aging Hippy Liberal Douche, who is... well... an aging hippy liberal douche. He's usually paired off with Pissed Off White Trash Racist Conservative so that the South Park writers can mock both sides of the political spectrum at the same time.

* ''Film/ForrestGump'': A good half of this movie is centered around the hippies.

* ''The Late Show with Creator/DavidLetterman'' goes to San Fransico while Dave's in LA for a week, and Dave finds [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_the_Hippie Manny the Hippie]], an early 20s hippie that Dave takes a liking to. Manny ends up travelling across the country filing reports for the show - until his parole officer catches up with him.

* Many members of the Waterfall family in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' are this taken to TooDumbToLive extents.

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' has them feature in an episode where they have a nonprofit fruit and veg store. And they start panicking once Hank makes them more efficient and they start ... ''earning money''!!

* Miss Grotke from ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}''.

* Shirley from ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures''.
** She's more of a ValleyGirl with a few New Age affectations.

* Micah in ''VisualNovel/CrownDelightsDeli'' is a far-out hippie who becomes one of your regulars at the bodega. He starts out asking you for a kombucha and some Spanish lessons, to your confusion, but with the right choices, you eventually warm up to him.

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'': [[spoiler:Kunino-sagiri]] may not be a New-Age Retro Hippie in terms of beliefs, but he definitely fits in terms of dress and mannerisms. (like his use of the VSign)

* The TropeNamer is the New Age Retro Hippie[[note]]For those who don't recognize the lingo, "New Age Retro" a double-negative joke; "New Age" and "Retro" are taken from music genres[[/note]] from ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'', who show up early in the game as a low-level enemy. Hippies appear in ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' as well. [[LaughablyEvil They attack you with rulers and try to trick you into thinking your mom's calling for you by shouting through a bullhorn]]. They also have their own background music when you fight them in either game.

* ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance'': Thor Kaufman is another subversion. While he is described as a "healer" and lives in a commune, he has a good grasp of conventional medicine (especially for someone with no formal medical training) and is prodigiously strong and an excellent marksman with a knack for killing quickly and quietly.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/ILoveYouAliceBToklas https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ilyabt.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:It's all about peace and love, man.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/ILoveYouAliceBToklas https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ilyabt.jpg]]]

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=b3x1ma4fgvzmtwulzm3r8kk7

[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haight-hippie_5463.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:330:It's all about peace and love, man.]]

The earliest instances of this trope come only a few years after the first hippies, man. For a while, contemporary depictions either confused hippies with {{beatnik}}s (see Shaggy from ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'') or just portrayed them being, [[LikeIsLikeAComma like]], generically weird. It's like TheNewRockAndRoll, dude, except the hippie "messed-up" phase never ended. See [[Anaysis/NewAgeRetroHippie the analysis]] page for more on the historical development of this trope.

The earliest instances of this trope come only a few years after the first hippies, man. For a while, contemporary depictions either confused hippies with {{beatnik}}s (see Shaggy from ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'') or just portrayed them being, [[LikeIsLikeAComma like]], generically weird. It's like TheNewRockAndRoll, dude, except the hippie "messed-up" phase never ended.

[[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/08/09/234908/- This stereotype is a caricature]] of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_hippie_movement series of art and political movements]] (plural) that started with the Beats, partly fueled and fused by LSD. Acid evangelists included Timothy Leary's [[EruditeStoner League for Spiritual Discovery]] and Ken Kesey's [[DrugsAreGood Merry]] [[EverybodyMustGetStoned Pranksters]]. There were also the [[http://diggers.org Diggers,]] the Tropers/{{Anonymous}} of the 1960s, who sought a realistic path to a totally free economy,[[note]]The familiar slogan "Do your own thing" originated with the Diggers: their other less-well-known slogan was "Everything is free." If you gave money to a Digger, he or she was liable to give it away or set it on fire.[[/note]] the [[http://diggers.org/alf Artists Liberation Front,]] and the [[http://www.sfmt.org/index.php San Francisco Mime Troupe]] street theater. [[http://www.gutenberg-e.org/hodgdon/11_Ch_01_ed.html Much more here]] about how these groups interacted and formed a new society. Word got out, attracting youthful runaways and seekers who flocked in the thousands to [[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/809208-the-hashbury-is-the-capital-of-the-hippies.html San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district]] and to [[http://ny.curbed.com/2014/9/4/10052426/the-strange-history-of-the-east-villages-most-famous-street New York's Lower East Side]] during the "Summer of Love". These seeking young people were the ones most people think of as "hippies" today although [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_hippie the term is much older than that.]]

By the time the CBS News crews arrived to film ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJkSK_nU9Ik The Hippie Temptation,]]'' the documentary that gave most Americans their first glimpse of Music/TheGratefulDead, the Haight had been overrun with thousands of bewildered kids, most of the men [[https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/09/20/the-summer-of-crap-peter-coyote-on-vietnam-and-life-in-the-60s/ rightfully apprehensive of the draft and being sent off to die]] in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, and looking for a better world than the artificial StepfordSuburbia.[[note]]"Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, here in status symbol land..."[[/note]]

[[https://summerof.love/vietnam-summer-love The Diggers became actively involved in the peace movement]] when they noticed soldiers in uniform escaping a Vietnam death sentence by obtaining civilian clothing in the Digger free stores, and began providing high quality fake [=IDs=] for them. However, [[https://longreads.com/2017/08/07/the-hippies-who-hated-the-summer-of-love/ The Diggers had repeatedly warned]] that the increased publicity of the Be-In and the "Summer of Love" was going to attract way too many people and crash the existing Haight Street economy, let alone the Diggers. Only a few of the newcomers caught onto what was really happening and pulled themselves into a good understanding. Most had come assuming the subculture was an already-existing FreeLoveFuture {{Utopia}}[[note]]A certain song by Scott [=McKenzie=] -- actually written as a promo for the Monterey Pop Festival -- didn't help things any.[[/note]] instead of [[http://www.aliciabaylaurel.com/whatdidthehippieswant a work in progress.]] [[http://www.diggers.org/freefall/freefall.html The key word being "work."]] [[note]]Greg Castillo's essay [[http://www.roomonethousand.com/6-work "Counterculture Materialized"]] shows that hippies were not lazy but rather changed ideas and methods of work.[[/note]]

Naturally, this growing mainstream attention, especially by hangers-on who came for the SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll, led to a different, more negative hippie stereotype emerging by TheSeventies, especially as incidents like the [[Film/GimmeShelter1970 Altamont disaster]] and the [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson Manson Family murders]] showed Americans [[HorrorHippies a dark side to the hippie movement]]. These hippies, instead of [[FreeLoveFuture free-love idealists]] who [[HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs expanded their minds through psychoactive drugs]], meditation, travel, and art, were portrayed as burnouts under the sway of drug pushers, gangsters, and {{cult}} leaders who wished to exploit them both financially and sexually. Oftentimes, they were seen as susceptible to [[DirtyCommunists extreme leftist political ideologies]] as well. While there was some TruthInTelevision to this, many "New Left" activists of that era actually shared the disdain that the "squares" held for the hippie movement, albeit for very different reasons: they saw the hippies not as dangerous radicals shredding public morals and the fabric of society, but as [[ApatheticCitizens politically and socially apathetic]] and unwilling to actually face the problems in the world as opposed to withdrawing from it into their own communes and societies. Music/GilScottHeron, in his 1970 poem "Music/TheRevolutionWillNotBeTelevised", famously castigated the hippies as [[RuleAbidingRebel drones engaging in a hollow rebellion]] who would likely try to sit on the sidelines when the ''real'' revolution came, similar to the mainstream society they rejected, and reworked the famous slogan used to define the hippie culture into "plug in, turn on, and [[SellOut cop out]]". Either way, the excesses of the hippie movement made them a {{foil}} for conservative politicians and activists like UsefulNotes/RichardNixon and [[MoralGuardians the Moral Majority]] to play off against.

By TheEighties, the hippie movement was mostly dead to conservative mainstream society, though it would persist in the counterculture for some time and enjoy periodic revivals, especially in TheNineties when that decade's [[NostalgiaFilter '60s nostalgia]] brought everything from jam bands to tie-dye shirts to ''Film/AustinPowers''. Most notably, [[https://bampfa.org/program/hippie-modernism-struggle-utopia key elements of hippiedom]] went on to become [[{{Yuppie}} integral parts of modern society]], including [[http://members.aye.net/~hippie/hippie/special_.htm what you're reading this on.]] The ideals of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture heavily impacted the technology industry that arose in nearby Stanford and Silicon Valley, and with it the related hacker and computer cultures of the late 20th century, bringing to them a broadly anti-authoritarian culture, a belief in changing the world through technology, and the ideal that InformationWantsToBeFree. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru who coined the hippie slogan "turn on, tune in, and drop out", even celebrated the personal computer as the new LSD late in his life, and came up with a new, CyberPunk variation on his old saying: "turn on, boot up, jack in". Ironically, many of the original hippies scorned computers as tools of centralized control,[[note]]the Diggers, on the other hand, saw them as a new way to create art; Creator/RichardBrautigan, who worked with the Digger-led Communication Company, wrote [[https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace one of his most beautiful poems]] about computers enabling humanity to create a new {{Arcadia}}[[/note]] but the hackers saw them quite differently.

Plenty of TruthInTelevision, here. Although a certain amount of Flanderization occurs in fiction as noted above, hippie clothing generally isn't exaggerated at all, because it doesn't need to be. As LikeIsLikeAComma and VerbalTic note, the use of "like" and a sentence-ending "man" are not uncommon in real life. [[http://wild-bohemian.com/hipterms.htm Glossary here, if you want to dig more of the vibe, man.]]

* In ''TabletopGame/TwilightStruggle'', this is represented by the "Flower Power" card. This event depicts [[WarIsHell anti-militarist unrest and movements]] that indirectly weakened the ability of the US to resist the spread of communism. In the game, this means that the USSR gains 2 VP each time the US plays a "war" card in any way except the Space Race. While it's not the most severe problem possible, cards such as [[ProxyWar "Brush War"]] can no longer be played without getting a relatively small but still unpleasant penalty. However, Ronald Reagan's "An Evil Empire" speech can cancel/prevent this event and consolidate American society for the final phase of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

* In ''TabletopGame/TwilightStruggle'', this is represented by the "Flower Power" card. This event depicts [[WarIsHell anti-militarist unrest and movements]] that indirectly weakened the ability of the US to resist the spread of communism. In the game, this means that the USSR gains 2 VP each time the US plays a "war" card in any way except the Space Race. While it's not the most severe issue possible, cards such as [[ProxyWar "Brush War"]] can no longer be played without getting a relatively small but still unpleasant penalty. However, Ronald Reagan's "An Evil Empire" speech can cancel/prevent this event and consolidate American society for the final phase of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

* In ''TabletopGame/TwilightStruggle'', this is represented by the "Flower Power" card. This event depicts [[WarIsHell anti-militarist unrest and movements]] that indirectly weakened the ability of the US to resist the spread of communism. In the game, this means that the USSR gains 2 VP each time the US plays a "war" card in any way except the Space Race. While that's not the most severe issue possible, cards such as [[ProxyWar "Brush War"]] can no longer be played without getting a relatively small but still unpleasant penalty. However, Ronald Reagan's "An Evil Empire" speech can cancel/prevent this event and consolidate American society for the final phase of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.