‘Shampoo’ or — The Background Throb of Sexual Politics?
“I’d like to suck his cock!”
Well, that’s one way to grab everybody’s attention I guess.
And ‘Shampoo’ (1975) did grab audience’s attentions in the mid-70’s, that time between Nixon and Reagan when married couples, living in their bungalows as they ate fondue and drank Mateus Rose whilst The Carpenters played, could go to the cinema and see films about the sex they only dreamed of. The Sixties had come and gone leaving those that enjoyed them with a sense of loss and those who didn’t with the unshakeable ennui of having missed out. But now they could watch it up on the big screen and, for many, seeing Julie Christie swallow Beatty under the table in ’75 was as big a draw as watching Robert Shaw being guzzled in half.
‘Shampoo’ takes place in Beverly Hills on the eve of the 1968 election that would see Richard Nixon become President, although the member we’re really following is the one between hairdresser to the stars’, George Roundy’s (Warren Beatty), legs. George wants to set up his own salon but lacks the funds to do so, so George ping-pongs back and forth between the bank, his work, his girlfriends and clients, nearly all of whom he sleeps with and are completely interchangeable.
When the husband of one of George’s lovers, and who is also the lover of one of George’s ex-girlfriends, seems up for investing in George’s venture then all George needs to do is stop shagging, slow down and pay a little attention to something other than his cock. But what if he can’t? You see, ‘Jaws’ wasn’t the only film in 1975 about an unstoppable appetite with a glazed look in the eyes and Warren Beatty’s George is as much an unthinking devourer as any shark (“I’m not anti-establishment!” he genuinely appeals but only because he’s stands for nothing). As his girlfriend (Goldie Hawn) tells him — “You never stop moving. You never go anywhere!”
This sentence could also sum up the entire movie as ‘Shampoo’ is a film I’ve never been able to figure out if it totally works for me or not. One the one hand it is restlessly moving on, constantly pushing forward, yet also seems suspended in a state of stasis, like a shampoo bubble hanging in mid-air. It’s technically funny but I rarely find myself laughing so I often feel like Jack Warden does after seeing his mistress getting her hair blown in their steam room by a hunky hairdresser: a bemused expression on my face as I struggle to work out what I just saw and how I might feel about it.
‘Shampoo’ also seems to flip, almost instantly, between laid back L.A. hang-out movie (I sense a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Inherent Vice’ here) and furious farce as though it’s a film capable of operating at two separate speeds simultaneously, which could account for the sensation that the movie isn’t really going anywhere only to then be hit by the realisation that you’re suddenly, like a Republican at an orgy, in the middle of a fast paced sex comedy. It’s funny… I think.
I think it’s the background details I like. These are shallow people who never discuss politics yet notice when Beatty and Julie Christie (I LOVE the reveal of the back of her dress when she gets out the car) walk up the stairs to the Republican Party party: as they ascend we see, behind them, a series of posters celebrating great artists — Matisse, Chagall, Picasso — only for the camera to come to rest with a poster for Richard Nixon grinning behind them.
With the election party underway we catch snatches, snippets, glimpses of TV and radio chatter as the election results come in. None of the characters are listening to any of it but it all plays as a satirical counterpoint to their lives. Its how the external world of politics keeps intruding into their orb of self-absorption that provides a lot of the tension, humour and character.
Yet is anything being said here? Anything of actual weight other than the establishment and counterculture being two partings of the same hair cut? There’s some smart stuff going on here but there’s a fine line between smart and smug and I’m still not sure where ‘Shampoo’ lands for me. It’s embodied in Christie’s famous blow-job declaration: it’s eye-opening and naughty but is it anything more than that, despite all the Nixon and Reagan photos in the background? Again I feel the film flipping, this time between radical and cute.
Another interesting aspect of ‘Shampoo’ is how it deals with the characters who aren’t Warren Beatty. Most of the women in George’s life have agency, agendas and tend to be the ones seducing him, so that’s refreshing (or it could be Beatty covering his ass — “No wonder women like me because see how well I write for them”). Although it’s Jack Warden, as the cuckolded husband, who is the most fun to watch. He’s a middle-aged, white, Republican businessman yet is treated in the most interesting manner, namely surprisingly sympathetic and his looks of bewilderment as his brain attempts to piece together a jigsaw he can’t quite bring himself to finish because he knows he won’t like what the picture looks like are perfect.
‘Shampoo’ cost $4 million to make and pulled in over $60 million at the box office; this film was a big hit. Many folk praised Warren Beatty as brave for having his public persona ridiculed on screen, allowing his sex-obsessed ego to be punctured. Yet Beatty co-wrote and produced the film and his hands are all over this picture as much as the body of any passing woman, so what’s his plan here? Some say it’s Beatty’s confession, yet although the final message seems to warn of the destructive aspect of compulsively sleeping around I’m not sure I trust Beatty (ESPECIALLY Warren Beatty) on this. Curious to know more I watched an interview with him from the time of ‘Shampoo’s release and Beatty was explicitly open about this being almost a celebration of the Don Juan figure, of how sexual liberation is political and politics is sexual and free love a deliverance from conservative hypocrisy.
Is George finding himself alone at the end the price he had to pay for everyone else to enjoy fucking? Has Beatty just martyred himself for us in the name of free love? Agreed to be crucified on the cross of his own cock?
I don’t think ‘Shampoo’ was Warren Beatty’s confession; I suspect it was his manifesto.
