Flower Power and Political Dissent - How The Trial of Chicago 7 challenged the hippie stereotype

Aaron Sorkin’s historical courtroom drama, The Trial of Chicago 7, popped the bubble of mystification that mainstream popular culture had carefully crafted to surround the rise of counterculture groups in the 1960s - veiling the sociocultural revolution it started behind a thick smoke of marijuana, “mindless” sexual liberation, psychedelic drugs and mobs of young crowds propagating peace.

Firstly, this claim can be substantiated by the fact that the film’s point of contention is completely distinct from most other Hollywood pieces that have even remotely portrayed the hippie movement. Let us look at some examples - Inherent Vice directed by Paul Thomas Anderson with its convoluted plot line based in the 1970s used recurring tropes of uninhibited drug abuse and open sexuality in the portrayal of the hippie culture in its dying days. Another popular documentary, Magic Trip, is a montage of footage shot by director Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood on a cross-country bus journey to the 1964 New York World’s Fair while they were allegedly tripping on psychedelic drugs. Other popular films like the comedy Peace, Love and Misunderstanding and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood used similar motifs to portray characters who were a part of the hippie movement in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

The Trial of Chicago 7 revolves around the infamous 1968 Chicago trial of seven anti-Vietnam protestors (initially 8, but Bobby Seal who was a member of the Black Panthers was acquitted from this case later on the grounds of mistrial). The summer of 1968 saw huge demonstrations by counterculture groups and left-leaning students in the streets at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago against the Vietnam War. What started as a peaceful protest moving towards the convention from Lincoln Park with chants of “the whole world is watching”, took the form of a massive riot when the police attacked the protestors with batons and smoke bombs, beating them up mercilessly.

The incident ended with the arrest of eight protestors including Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) who were members of the counterculture group called the Yippies, Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carol Lynch), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty) and Robert George Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) - co-founder of the Black Panther Party. All eight of them were charged under federal laws of conspiracy for crossing state borders and charges of inciting a riot.

The film highlights the rampant changes in the African American Rights Activism that was occurring at that time. After Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated, young leaders like Malcolm X concentrated in militarizing the activism which gave rise to groups like Black Panther of which Bobby Seale was a member. The trial in question was carried out after a few years of Malcolm’s death. Bobby Seale, who was already facing trial as a suspect of murder at Connecticut (of which he was acquitted later), was also accused of being one of the protestors. According to experts, this was a move to make the defendant bench appear more “dangerous”- a racist attempt at demonizing a person of colour. The court also kept removing jury members on grounds of them having received threats from the Black Panther Party.

In the absence of Seale’s attorney, he was not allowed to even represent himself in the courtroom and after he lashed out verbally, he was bound and gagged by the orders of the judge. He was acquitted after state prosecution stepped in and moved an act of mistrial. The trial has still been etched into the legal history of the US as one of a kind - where the courtroom became a stage of dissent against the conservatives.

While the civil rights movement found its way into the trial through Seale, countercultural revolutionary elements followed. Abbie Hoffman and Rennie Davis openly mocked the orthodoxy of the court with sarcasm and dark humour. They dressed up in police uniforms to mock the police and the national guard’s racism.

In his strong monologue, Hoffman ridicules the state for being threatened by a peaceful protest carried out by the youth of the country, to an extent where they were facing trials for carrying ideas across state borders- “Not machine guns or drugs or little girls. Ideas.” Certain ideas that can be perceived by the establishment with such fear that it tries to portray an entire anti-establishment movement in the light of the taboos only, even today.