MAD magazine, April 1968
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead
Sooner or later, this blog was going to have to get around to MAD, right? We could have done the 1968 election issue, with all of the candidates’ pictures scrambled (and maybe we’ll get to that one eventually). But this issue — this cover, at least– is priceless: Alfred E. Neuman– by this date universally recognized as the archetypal dope–decked out as a “hippie,” with a decorative border incorporating some distinctive five-part leaves and a classic MAD motto: ”Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead.” (”Drop dead” was a favorite MAD expression.) Here, Al is sporting a scraggly beard and longer red hair than usual, but he has the familiar gap-toothed grin, freckles, jug ears, and vacant expression. Plus beads, flowers in the hair, cowbell and bear-claw necklace– like, wow.
“The Hippie”: Becoming a laugh line and a stereotype
To land on the cover of MAD in the 1960s was to achieve some sort of pinnacle of pop-cultural notoreity; MAD editors wouldn’t have bothered with you if you weren’t somehow culturally “of the moment.” But the famous individual, or trend, or icon, or sacred cow had to have attained enough breadth of recognition to allow for sufficient pungency as a MAD lampoon. And so the arrival of the hippie get-up on MAD in April 1968 tells us quite a lot about the hardening and the codifying of this stereotypical “Sixties” character.
It all happened pretty quickly. Etymologists generally point to an early-1965 usage of “hippie” (in TIME magazine) as the first “conventional” use of the word, as opposed to earlier, more marginal uses– as variants of the beatnik-era “hipster,” for example. So throughout 1965 and 1966– and especially by the January 1967 “Be-In” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and, later that year, the “Summer of Love”– the hippie moved rapidly from being “sub-cultural,” socially detached, and “different” to being an utterly familiar archetype–AND a figure of nearly bottomless hilarity. I would not be surprised if there were “hippie” Halloween costumes in stores by 1968–as there are today. I wonder when the first sitcom hippies appeared– 1968 again would be a pretty good bet. ( I know that some kind of nadir was reached the following year, when Lawrence Welk showed up in wig and full hippie regalia on his show: not hard to find–but hard to watch–on YouTube.)
A “weird sub-culture”
So here’s MAD, throwing its considerable weight behind this process of Stereotype Formation. I remember this issue well (I was 17 when it appeared on the newstands, its price now “30 cents– Cheap” instead of 25), not so much because of the cover but because of the hilarious (well, maybe you had to be there) send-up of one of my favorite TV shows, “Mission: Ridiculous.” But the issue also includes an extensive “cover story”– a mock magazine called “Hippie: The Magazine that Turns You On (if you’re cool enough to light it up and smoke it!)” The introduction says: ”There’s a wild new group of people who have become prominent in America recently. They have their own unique language, their own strange behavior, and their own bizarre philosophy which is commonly misunderstood by many oldsters. The group is known as ‘Moderate Republicans.’” It goes on to explain that there’s another “weird sub-culture” kn0wn as hippies, and MAD is going to explain them in this magazine as a public service.
For sentimental hippies?
The magazine includes fake movie ads (”The Wild Freakout Acid Trip at the Hippie Teeny-Bopper Love-In Orgy on the Strip”); classifieds (”Help! I’m being held prisoner in my Hi-Fi and TV-equipped own room in the suburban home of my materialistic, conformist parents”); a takeoff on the Peanuts “warm puppy” bestseller, this one called ”Uptight is a Dry Sugar Cube”; a gossip column (”Drachma the Digger has made arrangements for starving N.Y. orphans to receive food packages from Vietnam War Orphans”); and a gift guide for “sentimental hippies who want to collect relics of the past: shoes, ties, soap, bras, draft cards, combs.”
You get the picture.
Finally, it’s been so long since I looked at MAD that I forgot that they carried no advertisements–except gag ads, like this takeoff on ads for “100 millimeter” cigarettes from the back cover of this issue:
Very nice brief analysis of Mad Magazine and its cultural significance, as well as of the specific features of this issue from 1968. I’m younger–I wasn’t even born until 1971–but I grew up reading Mad, both the then-current issues of the late-1970s and 1980s and also older articles going back to the 1950s from the paperback reprint editions. I learned (or first learned) about everything I know about American history and culture of the post-WWII era from Mad Magazine. It’s great that MHS considers it worthy of historical attention.
Comment by Chris Meissner — October 29, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
Many have wondered why so many kids of the ’60’s grew up to be such skeptics and lovers of irony. One answer is MAD. As a 9-year-old at summer camp in 1968 we had a shop project where we had to make artifically weather-beaten signs to hang on our bedroom doors from scrap lumber. We cut out jagged ends with jig-saws to look like something you’d find in a wild west ghost town. Then we incised the text with soldering irons. Most of the kids in my tent (we were known as the “Pueblo”) lettered their signs with “Keep Out!” Mine? It read “Drop Dead!” I was a child of MAD.
As a loyal subscriber, the arrival of MAD magazine each month (from MADison Avenue, NYC, 35 cents cheap) was an eagerly anticipated event. Coming home on the school bus, I’d fantasize about whether MAD was waiting for me in the mailbox. When I got home I’d be the first in the family to wade through the junk mail and supermarket circulars. The kids whose parents wouldn’t let them read it would bug me, starting a campaign weeks in advance, “Did you get your new MAD yet?” When we built tree forts, the essential furnishings, after matches, were MAD magazines, usually a deep stack, well worn from thorough examination. We’d hang out for hours, reading and re-reading them with the attentiveness of Talmudic scholars. We even affected the sardonic MAD schtick in our joking and put-down sessions, we fielded our own snappy answers to stupid questions, pronounced “yeech!” and “bleech!” with perfected guttural stops, and crafted satirical skits and comic strips sending up the latest movie or TV show. According to MAD, the world inhabited by adults was redolent with monumental stupidity and this ethos drew us to it like ants to a melted popsicle. MAD was our religion, our guidebook for life, it framed our sense of the universe and it armed us with a powerful armory of cynical defenses perfectly adapted to contend with a increasingly perplexing world.
Comment by Danny — November 12, 2009 @ 7:21 pm
Quoting Danny:
“According to MAD, the world inhabited by adults was redolent with monumental stupidity and this ethos drew us to it like ants to a melted popsicle. MAD was our religion, our guidebook for life, it framed our sense of the universe and it armed us with a powerful armory of cynical defenses perfectly adapted to contend with a increasingly perplexing world.”
That’s a great analysis man
I was born in 1982 and grew up reading my uncle’s tattered old MAD’s from the late 60s & early 70s - I had to ask my Dad about most of the cultural references because alot of the stuff referenced never reached us all the way down under in Australia (I never quite figured out what a ‘Spiro Agnew’ was).
But I definitely got the sentiment, even if I didn’t know many of the politicians, celebrities or shows parodied until I got my own subscription in the early 90’s. It was a great introduction to the ‘hippie’ era for a 9 year old - I remember ‘Hawks and Doves’ being a personal favourite.
Ah, memories…
Comment by lj — December 8, 2009 @ 7:47 am
My experience was much like Danny’s — having turned eight in in that monumental year.
In fact, 1968 is exactly my personal entry point into MAD. From there I went in both directions — voraciously studying its history as well as waiting impatiently for every new issue.
What’s sad to me is that MAD’s success has made its continued presence more or less unnecessary today. It’s still published, but I think MAD struggles to create the proper relationship with the world it changed.
It would be interesting to discuss what we graduated into, culturally — National Lampoon, Firesign Theater, etc. Eventually, when I got a little more “serious”, it was always the Alfred E Newmans of any field (Marcel Duchamp in art, for example) that got me excited.
Comment by JimO — February 13, 2010 @ 1:37 pm
I was a big fan of Mad magazine, too, but I wanted to comment on the first use of the word “hippie.” I was surprised to hear that it’s usually traced to Time magazine. In and around San Francisco, that credit usually goes (rightly or wrongly) to Herb Caen, a local columnist.
I just spent a few minutes searching on Time’s online archive, and the earliest date I see for that word in the magazine is March 1967. That piece coincides with Ramparts magazine’s long feature article, “The Social History of the Hippies.” As often happened, Time counter-programmed Ramparts’ big story. (The first line from the Time story is, “The Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco is not so much a neighborhood as a state of mindlessness.”)
It’s possible I overlooked something, so I’d welcome more info.
Comment by Peter Richardson — March 20, 2010 @ 1:13 am