Posts
“I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. They’re gonna talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.” These words are spoken by George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) in the classic 60s film Easy Rider, and they serve in a way as a summary of the entire film.
Read more...
Easy Rider stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as Wyatt and Billy, two motorcycle rebels who travel east across the U.S. on their way to Mardi Gras. Hopper is the film’s director, and he and Fonda both helped write the script.
This 1969 movie is not unlike The Odyssey – on the surface it is a journey narrative, but it operates at the same time on a much deeper level in seeking to find what the journey itself can mean. Easy Rider delves into what it means to live in America – both in terms of the freedoms that life allows as well as the limitations it imposes.
As George says, “This used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s wrong with it.” The characters in this movie recognize that the reality of America doesn’t necessarily live up to the ideal it projects. To them the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is neither.
Easy Rider places the age-old conflict between social libertarians and conformists front and center on the screen. These rugged individualists are frequently harassed by small-minded folks who turn to violence when confronted with a worldview that differs from their own.
In fact, the only place they are truly accepted is at a commune on the ranch of a laid-back Christian farmer, who, according to Wyatt, “does his own thing in his own time.” Could Jefferson have stated the agrarian ideal any better?
Ultimately Wyatt questions not the ends they sought, but the means they chose to achieve those ends in the search for their version of the American Dream. While at the commune, a passage from the I Ching is read – “Not every demand for change in the existing order should be heeded.” Wyatt echoes this concept when after leaving New Orleans he laments that they “blew it.” For those who haven’t seen the movie, we aren’t going to give away the ending. Suffice it to say that you can’t fight the Man.
Easy Rider is a modern film classic and repeated viewings will reward the movie enthusiast with a fuller appreciation of the directing, music and message it conveys. For others, at least a single viewing of this groundbreaking picture is necessary to better understand the development of modern American cinema, particularly the “New Hollywood” renaissance that took place in the decade to come.
In the end, Easy Rider serves as a type of memento mori for the cause of searching for your soul in an America that can only appreciate homogeneity.
