Let The Sun­shine In: The queer lega­cy of Miloš Forman’s Hair

When it opened the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 1979, Hair proved divi­sive among crit­ics; some raised the roof, oth­ers sim­ply shrugged. Over 40 years lat­er, the fuss has fiz­zled out alto­geth­er. As if by a wicked twist of irony, the orig­i­nal musi­cal, which boast­ed shag­gy bobs beg­ging to be ​“bead­ed, braid­ed, flow­ered and con­fet­tied,” has gone grey at the sides, and reced­ed into mem­o­ry as a quaint rel­ic of flower-pow­ered idealism.

In its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion, Hair was con­sid­ered far from passé. Sprout­ing from New York City’s exper­i­men­tal the­atre scene in the 1960s, ​‘Hair: The Amer­i­can Trib­al Love-Rock Musi­cal’ blazed new trails across Broad­way, trans­form­ing the Amer­i­can stage into a herbal-induced love-in. It was messy and crude, yet bold­ly orig­i­nal; it broke rules, smashed records and pushed the lim­its of cen­sor­ship beyond what was imag­in­able. For the first time, denizens of Broad­way could while away the hours enjoy­ing full-frontal nudi­ty and same-sex kiss­es – the Age of Aquar­ius was in full flow.

Yet while most onlook­ers sat, stonkered in the haze of hip­piedom, direc­tor Miloš For­man began cher­ry-pick­ing ele­ments that would lat­er inform his screen adap­ta­tion. His vision reframes the stage show’s loose ​“hap­pen­ing”, scrap­ping hand­fuls of char­ac­ters, songs and, well, just about every­thing. What’s left may seem like a tie-dye jam­boree, spout­ing the virtues of liv­ing low and get­ting high, but dig a lit­tle deep­er, and you’ll find a musi­cal mem­oir ded­i­cat­ed to queer love.

Okla­homa farm­hand Claude (John Sav­age) arrives in New York days before he’s due to report to his army unit for ser­vice in Viet­nam. He’s soon befriend­ed by a group of hip­pies led by the charis­mat­ic, Medusa-tressed Berg­er (Treat Williams), who takes it upon him­self to lib­er­ate Claude from his inhi­bi­tions before he’s cart­ed off in khakis. Their qui­et romance becomes the sweet cen­tre of a film sprin­kled with sur­face delights. Sure, they chase girls, but while it may be Sheila (Bev­er­ly D’Angelo) who catch­es Claude’s eye, it is undoubt­ed­ly Berg­er who takes his heart.

With a frame tai­lored fit to reveal the invis­i­ble traces of desire, For­man care­ful­ly dis­man­tles the love tri­an­gle of the source mate­r­i­al. In the skin­ny-dip­ping scene, Berg­er, evi­dent­ly out of ideas in win­ning Claude’s atten­tion, deflects him towards Sheila. ​“She’s all yours,” he insists while edg­ing clos­er to the pond, strip­ping his clothes to the ground as if to draw a line in the sand. It’s the line between con­for­mi­ty and free­dom, between straight and queer, and it is Claude’s attempts to cross it which make up the film.

There’s an inti­ma­cy felt through these ges­tures, leav­ing Claude’s scenes with Sheila to feel, much like his call to duty, a process of con­scrip­tion. It is Berg­er, after all, who per­forms the ulti­mate act of love by tak­ing Claude’s place aboard an air­craft des­tined for Viet­nam, a sac­ri­fice which draws upon Shake­speare­an verse in the musical’s final num­ber: ​“Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, the doors of breath, seal with a right­eous kiss.” As Romeo’s dying words ring out over tar­mac, Claude – re-enact­ing the clos­ing rit­u­al of many on-screen romances – races towards the depart­ing plane. Except here, there’s no prize at the fin­ish line.

The last time we see Berg­er makes for an image so haunt­ing, you for­get you’re watch­ing a musi­cal-com­e­dy. He’s one of count­less young men, each suit­ed up and as face­less as the next, march­ing into the abyss of the aircraft’s crypt-like inte­ri­or. In the real world of 1979, it wasn’t long until this image began to res­onate with a dif­fer­ent war: that against AIDS and a gov­ern­ment unwill­ing to fight.

It seems befit­ting then, that the stage show’s 20^th anniver­sary was cel­e­brat­ed as an AIDS ben­e­fit con­cert in 1988, fea­tur­ing a mix of per­form­ers from both stage and film. And it wasn’t the last time cast mem­bers lent their voic­es to a ral­ly­ing cry. Dur­ing the Nation­al Equal­i­ty March of 2009, a Broad­way revival of Hair shut its doors, took to the streets and urged audi­ences to fol­low in what became the largest LGBT+ rights event in a decade.

To cel­e­brate the queer lega­cy of Hair is to pay trib­ute to two men: Gerome Rag­ni and James Rado, who along with cre­at­ing the musi­cal, cast­ed them­selves in the lead roles dur­ing its orig­i­nal run. Their rela­tion­ship was pro­fes­sion­al as well as inti­mate. ​“He was a love of my life,” said Rado, speak­ing pub­licly about his omni­sex­u­al­i­ty for the first time in 2008. At its core, Hair dis­tills their expres­sion of queer love and, as stage revivals come and go, pre­serves it in Tech­ni­col­or for future gen­er­a­tions look­ing to let the sun­shine in.