New Age Retro Hippie - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's all about peace and love, man.

Hippies are often depicted in television and video games as pot-loving, tie-dyed shirt-wearing, stuck-in-the-'60s types who believe in sexual freedom, celebrating nature and railing against "the man, man." While this was (and whoah, still is, you know, dude) true to some extent, it has been exaggerated (naturally) in fiction, dude.

The earliest instances of this trope come only a few years after the first hippies, man. (Actual contemporary depictions either confused hippies with beatniks or just portrayed them being, like, generically weird.) It's like The New Rock & Roll, dude, except the hippie "messed-up" phase never ended. Whoah.

A subset of this character type is the Hippie Teacher, man, or like, Hippie Parents, you know? And whoah, dude: compare Granola Girl. See also Naked People Are Funny for the New Age Pants-free Retro Hippie, man.

Former hippies who joined the establishment while retaining their countercultural values become a specific type, the Bourgeois Bohemian.

Whoah, there's Examples, man:

Anime

∀ Gundam has the Red Team, a family of Moonrace-descended Terrans who wear hippie clothing and spend a lot of time getting drunk, dancing, and singing songs about the Moon. The rest of the Moonrace treats them... well, kind of like real life hippies are treated. They're a subversion though: rather than countercultural peace-lovers, they are warriors absolutely loyal to the Lunar Queen, Dianna Soriel.

Comic Books

Ted Richards' underground comic The Forty Year Old Hippie came out ca. 1979 - the title character looks about 70, and regales youngsters with stories about the old days. His catch phrases: "Over 200 trips and they've all been bummers - but I ain't givin' up!" and "I ain't been high since The Pot of '69!"

Fanfic

Clearwater Commune in DC Nation fits this. Founded on Actual Pacifist principles, and implied to have devolved a bit into the Granola Girl trope. Led by Retired Badass "Brother" Joseph Cross, who is atoning for the atrocities he committed during the Vietnam War. The Titan Fauna was born and raised on the Commune, and remains as much of New Age Retro Hippie as one can while still putting on kevlar and spandex.

Film

The Dude from The Big Lebowski.
Flirting With Disaster has Ben Stiller looking for his birth parents - they turn out to be old hippies (Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin) who passionately argue that LSD shouldn't be a felony (as well they would, as they're manufacturing it).
In I Love You Alice B Toklas, Peter Sellers' character joins a hippie commune, and is quickly disenchanted with them.
Filmore in Cars. Since the cast is made up of cars, he's naturally a VW microbus.
William Sturtevant, in San Francisco International Airport. Is falsely accused of starting a fight.
Sgt Oddball in Kelly's Heroes is an unadulterated Summer Of Love-style hippie in a movie set in WWII. The only thing he's missing is the tie-dye.
As opposed to that other Clint Eastwood movie Heartbreak Ridge, where he's informed that hippies no longer exist.

Literature

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne portrayed a proto-version of the trope as early as 1852 (albeit with Transcendentalists rather than hippies proper.)
Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in the 1860s, has as its 1960s protagonist a Love Freak 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. (Again, this was probably working off the Transcendentalists.)

Live-Action TV

Leo on That '70s Show, albeit the role was played by Tommy Chong, so this may be an odd instance of Truth in Television.
- The hippie persona of Tommy Chong is a character he played, not his real personality. Though he was indeed a hippie back in the day it wasn't to the extent you see in his comedy routines.
There was an early episode of All in the Family where a pair of hippie friends of Meathead's come to visit. For once, Gloria and Meathead come around to Archie's point of view about them.
Half the cast of Dharma and Greg, this being the premise of the show. Larry, Dharma's father, was the most egregious example, compared to his unmarried partner in a very Over And Under The Top way.
The last Quartermass somehow managed to combine this and The New Rock & Roll; the cities are decaying, and one symptom of this is a band of violent hippies — sorry, "Planet People" — who believe they've made contact with a peaceful race of aliens (who are actually conning the hippies, and plan to harvest them as a food source). According to The Other Wiki, the writer realized he shouldn't have gone with hippies (as it was 1979) and used punks instead, but that's another trope entirely.
Shut up, hippie.
Naomi's mum Gina from Skins is this; she's turned their house into a commune populated by naked people, Jesus lookalikes, free love (one of the hippies notes of just-woken-up-naked-Naomi that "it's nothing he hasn't seen before", and she's "even got the same haircut her mum does" — he's not looking at her head), random transients and dopey women called Dopey who object to the heteronormative patriarchal symbolism of the humble banana. (No wonder Naomi struggled with Emily's possessiveness, when she had to become a sarcastic independent bitch just to avoid going insane in her own home.) Eventually Gina does grow up a bit though, boots the commune out and settles down with one man (Kieran) - they promptly head off to fulfil Gina's dream of "fucking on every beach in India".
A religious cult of hippies who appear to worship trees to the extent of almost having sex with them appears in an episode of Jonathan Creek.
Buzz Sherwood from The Red Green Show, though a bit more energetic than most hippies.

Music

One of the characters in Ayreon's Into the Electric Castle seems to fit this - he's referred to only as "the Hippie" and for the first half of the album thinks that it's all an incredible drug trip. Not that you can blame him ...

Professional Wrestling

Mick Foley (Cactus Jack, Mankind) once used the "lovable hippie" gimmick when he wrestled under the name "Dude Love". Dude Love is probably the perfect example of this trope (if not necessarily the perfect example of a hippie.) He wears mirrored sunglasses, tye-dye shirts, does the Charleston, says "Woooo! Have Mercy!" and enters to disco music.

Tabletop Games

Done slightly better in Hunter The Vigil, where the hippies don't have to talk incessantly in "whoa, dude." (Oh, and they have guns)

Video Games

The Trope Namer is the New Age Retro Hippie from EarthBound, who show up early in the game as a low-level enemy. Interestingly enough, the Hippie's fight music is a pastiche of '50s rock songs like "Johnny B. Goode". It also counts as a Recurring Riff, having been in every Mother game that features the Hippie.
- Oddly enough, in EarthBound (i.e. the second game), the first time that song plays is during the battle with a gang leader named Frank, who isn't a hippie. The New Age Retro Hippies (who share Frank's battle music) don't appear until Ness gets to the next town after Frank's defeat.
- The music apparently wasn't Jimmy Hart-ed enough: It was cut from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and it's been cited as one of the biggest obstacles to an American re-release of Earthbound, due to copyright concerns.
- Hippies appear in EarthBound Zero as well. They attack you with rulers and try to trick you into thinking your mom's calling for you by shouting through a bullhorn.
Shinta Iwata, the owner of the Cosmic Corner shop in The World Ends with You. In modern day Shibuya, Japan; no less.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had The Truth, a tie-dye wearing, weed-growing, long-haired Conspiracy Theorist and hippie.
CJ: Can you shoot?
The Truth: Shoot? I'm a hippie. The only thing I've shot is acid. I heard of a dude snorted it once. Thought his nose was a kangaroo and the moon was a dog!
Kingdom of Loathing features hippies rather prominently in a late-game quest involving a large-scale war between a hippie enclave and a dorm of frat-orcs.
Persona 4: Kunino-sagiri may not be a New Age Retro Hippie in terms of beliefs, but he definitely fits in terms of dress.
The Elves of Overlord II are an entire race of this and are the closest thing to a Hero Antagonist this series has.
Annie Frazier of Backyard Sports is a total New Age Retro Hippie, even though she's from the '90s.
The Karmaramas of Startopia are an entire species of these. Their job is to sow seeds on the biodeck. Apparently, the drugged-out attitude is genetic at this point, due to past generations overindulging and messing up natural selection. Checking their details, you find they come from places like "Bong, a mellow planet in the Far Out System".
Dr. Roméo in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, who wears dark glasses and a flower print beanie, has long hair, and talks like a stereotypical stoner, complete with Totally Radical slang. When he leaves, he makes reference to needing to water his plants.
Salim the apothecary in Quest for Glory III somehow manages to be this hundreds of years before the sixties even happened.
Luigi, and, by proxy, Princess Daisy.
In Urban Rivals this is the Roots clans hat.

Web Comics

Victor von Hip from El Goonish Shive, a schoolboy who is like this. He also makes pamphlets for every occasion. Check out his pamphlet on his pamphlets.
The Star family from The FAN appear to be this.

Western Animation

Mona Simpson, Homer's estranged mother from The Simpsons. In one episode, Homer himself dabbled in the hippie lifestyle. Homer kept insisting on living The Theme Park Version of being a hippie, while the real hippies in the episode lived fairly normal, unassuming hippie lives.
- Appropriately enough for The Simpsons, Mona's character has been Flanderized in each of her subsequent appearances. Originally, she was supposed to be more of a New Left radical than a hippie (which is why there was a massive police manhunt for her). Then again, in Real Life just about anyone who was "unconventional" in some way during the 1960s probably fell under the "hippie" umbrella.
- There's been a few other generic hippies in Springfield, such as the woman running the New Age shop with the sensory deprivation tanks, and the guy who runs the recycling stand:
Mr. Burns: And our hemp-smoking friend! Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Hippie: Sounds like somebody's livin' in the past! Contemporize, man!
Cartman from South Park hates hippies with a passion, to the extent that he runs a hippie extermination business. While Cartman has issues, the hippie swarm is definitely the villain of this episode.
- These hippies seem to vary between traditional dirty party-hippies and upper-class Boulderite socialist-elitist hippies. To a modern Coloradoan, of course, the difference between the two is quite superficial.
  - The irony, of course, is that the original 1960s hippies (including the socialist ones, though they weren't really hippies in the truest sense of the word) were infamous for spitting in the face of the elites of their era. Depending on your point of view, this has apparently been a case of either Rule Abiding Rebel or He Who Fights Monsters.
The Goode Family, Mike Judge's follow-up to King of the Hill, makes hippie/activist folks the main thrust of its comedy.
The best friend/owner of Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, is the fully G-rated comic relief version of this trope, and has remained this way in every incarnation.
One episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender introduces the closest thing that the Avaverse has to hippies—a group of spacey, stoner-esque traveling singers and storytellers who wear colorful clothes and are constantly singing and preaching about the importance of love and happiness. It doesn't help that their leader is named Chong.
Mandark's parents in Dexter's Laboratory. They even named him Susan in a horribly misguided attempt at breaking the gender boundaries. Naturally, this caused Mandark to resent them even more.
The Nameless store owner in The Mighty B! is a walking hippie archetype, complete with a beard you could get lost in.
King of the Hill 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!!
Mr. Van Driessen from Beavis And Butthead.
Many members of the Waterfall family in Futurama.
The pro-space travel, protesting group in The Zeta Project called the Moonies are basically hippies, down to tie dye, speech patterns and peaceful rallies against the National Security Agency's increased police brutality. They aid the protagonists in one episode and are optimistic about mankind's destiny despite living in a crappy semi-cyberpunk universe.
Zoop, the resident Granola Girl from Iggy Arbuckle.

Truth in Television

The Rainbow People.
Explore the San Francisco Bay Area a bit and you're bound to find a few of these somewhere. Especially common in the city of Berkeley and the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
- One suspects that much of the scenery is really the result of market-savvy former hippies playing up the simplified stereotypes for all they're worth in order to amuse and pander to uninformed outsiders. The "multicolored tie-dyed clothing," for example, wasn't even that ubiquitous in the '60s. If you look at quite a few of the pictures of "flower children" from that era, you'll notice that they're often wearing fairly drab clothing (partly, of course, a sign of their aloofness from middle-class materialism, but also simply to keep warm — San Francisco can get plenty chilly!). Most real hippies wore ordinary jeans and sweaters for every day and saved the colorful costumes for parades, dances and other special occasions. "Tie-dye" did not actually become stylish until 1970 — three years after the Summer of Love. The tie-dyed shtick is probably either Flanderization of a minor fad or marketers confusing the hippie subculture with the "glitter rock" and disco subcultures of the '70s.

And woah, stick it to the man, dude!

Did Not Do the Research

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The Sixties