Was the commune meant to be viewed as cringeworthy and pathetic?

Everything about it, from the troupe of "actors" trying to cadge food with their insipid comedic performance to the glum, bleak looks on everyone's faces to Robert Walker Jr.'s self-conscious tai-chi posturing and their miserable farm, with addled hippies haphazardly casting seeds into the bone-dry dust in between tokes of weed was lame and reeked of failure.

Even those two hippie chicks seemed to want to split the scene with Wyatt and Billy. The only person who seemed to believe in the commune was Wyatt, who insisted that they would make it.

Was the commune included in the film to illustrate the failure of the ideals of the hippie lifestyle?