Love for the leaf

There are few moments that can incite an audience to spontaneously cheer without a flashing applause sign.

One of these moments is the mere mention of marijuana. A talk show host’s utterance of “pot” initiates a Pavlovian response of enthusiasm. An interviewee’s admission of “smoking a bowl” is a social cue demanding an automated response of vocal support.
Why is this?

If Jon Stewart discussed snorting cocaine at a Christmas party, the audience might laugh, but would they erupt in hearty ovation?

Somehow, cannabis has become a cultural rallying cry. Not coke or meth, and not another audacious pastime, such as drag racing or sidewalk graffiti.

Pot has become our country’s second American Dream. It is a beloved symbol signifying an idealized cultural ethos. The first American Dream promised “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This second, manifested in marijuana, promises an escape from
societal constraints and a passage to a kosher anarchy. It is an emblem of middle-class rebellion, social dissatisfaction and individualism.

I think this is because of the substance’s historical context. Although this nutty bud has been used for thousands of years, its social prominence skyrocketed in the late 1960s, a tumultuous and transformative time period. Cannabis soon became associated with countercultural aesthetics such as rebellion, nonconformity, mind expansion and personal emancipation.

It pitted the middle class, who might not have normally engaged in such taboo activity, against the establishment.

Our enthusiasm for marijuana is our enthusiasm for that vestige of cultural revolution. Currently, our country is severely divided.

It is right against left, crazy against sane. The government is either doing too much or too little. The fight for gay civil rights is being likened to the fight for African-American civil rights. Perhaps hipsters are the new hippies.

I’m not saying our present social climate directly mirrors the one of the ’60s, but similar to the advocates of the counterculture, many of us are still surrounded by antiquated modes of thought and stagnant ideology. 

We live in a country where outdated viewpoints of homosexuality and gender roles not only exist, but are ubiquitous. The repressive religious choke hold on America has not weakened.

We haven’t really evolved at all.

And so we desperately cling to this symbol of upheaval — a reminder of our once-heralded potential to conquer stilted and repressive tradition.

We have fetishized marijuana, infusing it with our own meanings meant to arouse a waning sentiment of anti-hegemonic rebellion.

Smoking marijuana is a more or less acceptable mode of sticking it to the proverbial man. A bratty teen might be hitting a bong in the basement while his parents are rolling a spliff on the porch.

It doesn’t just get you high; it provides a twinge of titillating lawlessness. It is a form of political and social dissent.

So when an audience responds to Zach Galifianakis smoking a joint on national television  with wild applause and approving whistles, it is because we regard the act as a nostalgic representation of our desire to rebel, and our capacity for cultural subversion.


E-mail: joskraus@indiana.edu