Rick Dalton’s dislike of hippies in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) isn’t just a personal prejudice. It represents a deep cultural and psychological tension between two eras in American history.
For Rick, an aging TV actor from the 1950s and early 1960s, hippies represent everything that’s replacing him. He sees them as lazy and disrespectful but deep down his hatred is driven by fear of irrelevance.
There’s also a layer of irony in Tarantino’s storytelling. The film idealizes old Hollywood while also showing how violent and insecure that nostalgia can be. Rick’s outburst against the hippies is both a comic exaggeration and a symbolic rebellion against cultural change.
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