Always on Trial for Just Being Born

Revisiting 1960s tumult in art and politics--and seeing what lasts

Brian Doherty | December 10, 2007

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But in their embrace of a communal/communist politics, even as they tapped correctly into a classic American revolutionary tradition to justify their actions, as historical figures they have little to offer other than (justifiable) rage and a revolutionary mission whose ultimate end is no better than the “system” they fought against. The Dylan movie never needs to make a hero out of Dylan; it merely needs to make a human, many humans, from him. Chicago 10 needs heroes for its villains (Judge Hoffman and the orc-like cops), and heroes are always more vulnerable than humans.

As dueling icons of the ‘60s, Dylan and the Hoffman/Rubin gang represented alternate possibilities for how to remember what that decade meant. Hoffman was born, he told the court, in 1960. And in the same metaphorical sense, he and his companions died as the ‘60s died, as the immediate energizing of Vietnam sputtered out, as the death-wish at the heart of their sort of totalist political antinomianism became manifest in bombs and self-destruction, as most Americans realized that while they didn’t want war, they didn’t want the whole country turned into a commune either.

The Chicago 10’s spirit of dissent against tyranny was brave and apt; their championing of a politics that were in key ways more of the same or worse, was neither. Dylan for his part bore the burden of “’60s consciousness” in a way that didn’t require agitating or fighting the world, merely working continuously as a skilled American bard of experience, pleasure, and even occasional wisdom, living out humane values that tend to ensure that bards mean more to more people, and for longer, then off-target dissidents, however brave. Whatever seemed controversial or strange about Dylan in the ‘60s context does not seem so anymore—he’s firmly ensconced in any American pantheon. The Hoffman-Rubin gang’s bravery still seems brave; their own politics seems fortunately antiquated.

Senior Editor Brian Doherty ([e-mail]) is author of This is Burning Man and Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.