Shampoo: composition, uses, and effects

¶ … Shampoo

Film Review "Shampoo"

The 1975 film "Shampoo," directed by Harold Ashby embodies the free-wheeling sexual atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s in America. It features a heterosexual hairdresser with a high libido who often seems more interested in sleeping with his clients than cutting and styling hair. Even when cutting hair, the way he trims his clients' locks and gyrates around the chair seems more like a calculated design to lure women into bed than to give them the latest style. Ironically, by pursuing a profession mostly favored by homosexual males and women, the character played by Warren Beatty has almost unlimited access to attractive females, all of whom are seeking validation for their physical attractiveness.

The film strikes the modern viewer as a work that is very much 'of its time,' in the sense that the characters are very freewheeling in their sexual mores, and have little concern about fidelity, marriage, or sexually transmitted diseases, as they might were the film set in a different era. The film's location is California, in the wealthy suburb of Beverly Hills. It features characters that are either wealthy and beautiful, or aspiring to be so, by using their sexuality as a weapon. The central conflict for the Warren Beatty character (named George in the film, although Beatty's character seems almost inseparable from his off-screen persona) is that he is poor, but wants to open up his own hair salon. And his ambitions are in conflict with his need to pursue whatever woman attracts him at the moment.

For example, when George is offered a chance to have is dream backed financially by a wealthy man named Lester, he still sleeps with the Lester's wife and daughter. He cannot control himself, or think beyond his needs of the moment. Politics and ethics mean nothing to him; all that has any meaning is desire. Thus, the film would be best classified under the genre of satire, given that it continually contrasts the political environment of the day (it opens up with an image of Nixon's election) and the utter self-absorption of the characters. However, rather than a politically astute characterization of what would come to be called the 'me' generation, the misogyny of the portraits of women in the film strikes the viewer as outdated.

It is especially difficult to believe that George's live-in girlfriend Jill has no idea that her boyfriend is cheating on her, or that he used to date her best friend Jackie and still occasionally 'beds' Jackie. The film seems to derive at least some of its humor from its portrayal of the gullibility of women, although it does not necessarily portray George in an admirable light. George, however, is ultimately taken advantage of by the one woman he does care something about -- Jackie.

George always insists that he does want a committed relationship, and when he can put his sexual desires aside, he can show concern and caring for the women he 'services' in the salon, as a stylist as well as sexually. But by the time he finally makes up his mind as to what and who he wants, it is too late. Jackie is 'kept,' in another irony, by Lester, and so George ultimately loses out to Lester, after taking advantage of the wealthy man so many times over the course of the film. Money wins out over sexual appeal, as the film subtly critiques capitalism in its outcome.