CarnalNation

Free love is in the air—and Hair. Forty years after the summer of ’69, the greatest tribal love-rock musical ever sung just won Best Revival of a Musical at the Tony Awards, while Pola Rapaport and Wolfgang Held’s documentary Hair: Let the Sunshine In recently made the micro-cinema rounds.

The film’s clips from recent rehearsals notwithstanding, I’ve yet to see the musical in any of its incarnations (as I developed an aversion to peacenik shit during my punk rock youth). But after watching Hair: Let the Sun Shine In which mixes archival footage from the era and the production (along with its surrounding hype) with present-day interviews with the original cast and creative team, I feel like at least I’ve gotten the hippie Cliff’s notes version.

“Freedom of sexuality, between all sexes and all forms,” is how one of the show’s original producers Michael Butler puts it when describing the great gift of the anti-Vietnam war generation. There’s an “omni-sexual” aspect, a deconstructing of labels in lieu of “gay” or “straight” sex in Hair. And this highlights another reason why now’s the perfect time to revive the piece. For in 2009, the gender revolution is once again rendering labels irrelevant (and causing the same terror and confusion in those who prefer not to see the world in shades of grey). Even as the musical’s parallels to the Iraq war are inevitably drawn, we’re also wondering, what does “marriage” mean if gays are marrying? What does “gay” mean if homos are marrying? And what do those words mean if gay men like Barry Diller are happily and unapologetically married to women?

For the times they are a changin’. Let’s be honest. LGBT identity is going the way of Jewish identity. As a secular Jew I find that my Jewish-ness is only important to other Jews. Everyone else sees other aspects of who I am first. As we queers assimilate, expand and outgrow our cocoon community, we become people that “happen to be” lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender. Our gay pride parades are no more sacred than secular Passover. And this loss of LGBT identity is nothing to mourn, but cause for a 60s-style celebration. For with the same insecurity and fear, binary thinking, that binds anti-Semites to Zionist zealots, it’s only the right-wing homophobes and left-wing radical queers who hang onto identity labels for dear life.

In an old French interview, former cast member Tim Curry (who would go on to play the ultimate sexuality/gender label fucker Dr. Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror), describes performing the musical’s infamous nude scene in terms of placing trust in the audience’s gaze. In other words, whether it’s the Age of Aquarius or the dawning of Facebook, letting the sun shine in to see clearly with love not judgment will forever remain the most radical statement to be made.