Actually has nothing to do with the Hare Krishna religion, except possibly in making mockery of religiousness generally. In this sequence from the film Hair, Claude experiences an LSD-induced dream sequence. Claude’s Midwestern fantasy of a traditional white wedding is chaotically interrupted by his shocking new hippie friends. The message is clearly; let go of your old-fashioned values and expectations. The pomposity of the church wedding is obsolete, as is your ideal of the blushing bride. Your life is about to become crazier than you could ever expect. And chanting the Hare Krishna chant is just as ridiculous as the old church rituals. Though Hare Krishna was just coming into popularity in the West during the Sixties, but it was already ripe for parody. The writers of Hair changed the chant to suit themselves, and I for one still find their line “I am high on you-know-what” hilarious. In fact the only thing that prevents this sequence from being completely perfect is the nagging fact that LSD doesn’t actually cause rolling blackout-style hallucinations like that. I don’t know hard you’d have to fry your brain to descend into a dream state that deep, but in my experiments I’ve never come even close. On the other hand, you can’t really blame the filmmakers for using an LSD trip as an excuse to produce a good old fashioned out-and-out dream sequence. Because the real effects of acid are slightly less videogenic and less conducive to choreographed social metaphors.
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