Movies and Television

A major effect of marijuana is to intensify the visual perceptions of its users, who report that they see objects more clearly and colors more vividly. Not surprisingly, going to films is a favorite stoned pastime for many users. Some films, like 2001, Star Wars, Woodstock and other rock movies, Yellow Submarine, and a handful of others, appeal directly and deliberately to the stoned viewer. But as with music, almost any movie that is stimulating under normal conditions will be perceived as more exciting and more vivid when the viewer is high. A film like The Harder They Come, with its vivid colors, pounding rhythms, and frequent mention of marijuana is popular with users in many large cities. It is difficult to generalize, but stoned moviegoers seem to prefer lighter fare, like comedies, adventures, and cartoons. As one smoker puts it, "Movies with complex plots are a waste. You have to keep too much together, use too much memory. Visual trips are much more effective."
    Fantasia, that old Disney favorite, has been revived annually in many communities over the past few years, and it depends upon stoned audiences for much of its current—and recurrent—popularity. Its appeal is strongly felt by the smoker with strong memories of the 1960s, since Fantasia not only mixes music and color but also portrays an essentially beneficent, cooperative universe, in which various creatures and plants work together in an ordered and harmonious setting of love and contentment. True, there are malevolent characters and frightening situations, but in the film, these are faced and beaten back, and serve to increase the spirit of cooperation among the inhabitants of the Fantasia universe.
    Yellow Submarine is a more recent and no less successful attempt to illustrate music visually, and it is even more brilliant than its spiritual predecessor. This was the quintessential marijuana movie for the youth culture that made the drug so popular in America and in other countries as well. Sandy, the writer in upstate New York, recalls what it was like to see the film the first time, stoned:

For me, it illustrates the sheer power of marijuana, its mind-expanding qualities. On the screen there is an outrageous profusion of color, and while watching it, my visual senses became heightened to the point where my heart was pounding and I actually became overwhelmed with excitement. It was not unlike sexual stimulation, an eyeball orgasm, as it were. Then, to my amazement, my senses would periodically shut down to the point where my poor, overloaded circuits couldn't take it anymore. I sort of blanked out, pretty much unaware of anything at all. Then I would recover, and resume watching the movie. I also remember the communal singing of "All Together Now" at the end. It felt like the characters in the movie and the entire audience were all sharing a joint.

    Although they may prefer going to see films, most smokers find television more accessible, requiring far less of an expenditure of energy, no small consideration when high. "You can always find something that goes with being stoned," says a New York editor who enjoys randomly flipping the channels of his television. A teacher in Philadelphia reports that he likes to make the colors come in "louder" by tuning in the brighter shades of green and red "so that they're flowing at you." He especially enjoys watching political conventions, and during the course of each party's meetings, he will get high "to appreciate the political subtleties of the system," and also drunk, "because I want to be on the same level as the people I'm watching."
    A number of smokers enjoy watching old television shows such as "The Honeymooners" and "Ernie Kovacs." Other popular choices include live sports events and certain situation comedies. Some people, when high, become involved in programs they would otherwise never dream of watching.
    Several smokers mentioned watching the news stoned. For an Illinois man, televised accounts of tragedies led to his giving money and other forms of aid to the victims; this occurred, he says, only when he was high during the news. Karl, a professional photographer, enjoys watching the news stoned because he likes to separate each newscaster from his or her blank facial expression:

Their expressions seem like acting: one night, I finally realized it was acting, but acting in reverse. The acting involved in reading the news requires you to resist all the emotions which might normally accompany the script. It's a funny notion of acting, I know, but that's really what it is, acting by not acting. You can almost hear the director saying, "Okay, once more, but with less feeling!"

    A banker from Birmingham had an entirely different reaction:

Watching the news while you're stoned can be incredibly depressing. You stop and realize that all those terrible things portrayed on the screen, wars and tragedies and all the rest—they're all true, and not just television entertainment. Being stoned can put you more directly in touch with what's going on, and sometimes, as with the news, that can be almost too powerful to handle.

    Karl's wife Martha, a lawyer, enjoys watching "Perry Mason" when she is high. Normally, she thinks the show is "pretty dumb," but after smoking, she finds that it becomes a mysterious and complex drama. For many smokers, however, the trouble with television is that it just isn't worthy of the stoned experience. "I seem to be more critical when I'm stoned," notes a Colorado housewife. "And when I watch television, I'm aware of the bad acting, the bad scripts, and the bad direction."
    There are a few happy exceptions. One is commercials. "I resent the commercials when I'm straight," says a New Jersey viewer. "They're an interruption and a bore." But when he is high, he realizes why for some people commercials represent the best thing about television. "Commercials are made with far more care than most regular programming, and with far more talent as well." More than regular programs, commercials have apparently been influenced by the drug culture, being more daring in structure and execution as well as in use of colors and images.
    Several television shows have flourished in recent years, to the delight of stoned audiences. Perhaps the most popular are the British half-hour comedy show "Monty Python's Flying Circus," and "Saturday Night Live." "We are counting on at least 80 percent of our viewers to be wrecked—really in Cuckooland," "Saturday Night Live" writer Michael O'Donoghue told an interviewer. "So the show is clearly written with that in mind." He adds, although it hardly needs articulation, "It's not like we question a joke because we wrote it when we were stoned." The show is a dramatic illustration of the newfound legitimacy and power of the marijuana culture. That a show appealing especially to stoned viewers could become an enormous hit on network television would have seemed, only a few years earlier, a hippie's crazy dream.
    Those viewers for whom television is normally addicting find it even more so when they are stoned. A Washington journalist who occasionally watches television when he is stoned disapproves of his friends who like to get high and then watch whatever happens to be on. "I think that's a disgrace to marijuana," he announces, preferring to smoke only before programs of special interest. "If you get high to watch reruns of 'I Love Lucy,'" he says disdainfully, "then you've wasted your evening. And you get only so many evenings."