Easy Rider without the Rose Colored Glasses

I've seen the movie Easy Rider about 5 times and when I hear other people talk about it I often wonder if we saw the same movie. I notice how people say that "Born to be Wild" was the theme song from the movie When actually it was "The Pusher" Same Artist different song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMqVrUSz62o"]YouTube - Easy Rider - Steppenwolf - The Pusher

Interestingly a song about Coke dealers. From there it goes on to show Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper selling coke to Phil Spector (never a good idea since Phil is notorious for pulling guns when he is coked out of his head). This to me almost shows a strange foreshadowing of the 70's and 80's coked out greed is good mindset.

Throughout their journey there are continuous flashes to the motorcycle wreck that closes the film. They are arrested essentially for having long hair when the meet Jack Nicholson playing an ACLU lawyer who tells them "The last longhairs that were in this jail got their head shaved with a rusty razor."

After another warm reception in another small town while riding through they stop to camp and we learn about freedom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHd6m_cirrU"]YouTube - Easy Rider on Freedom

After this Jack Nicholson get's beaten to death in his sleep. Then it is off to New Orleans where our hero's take Acid and go to a cemetary where Peter Fonda freaks out and starts talking about his mothers suicide.

Then they ride home. Along their trip they camp out again where Peter Fonda utters his famous line "We Blew it." They essentially made a whole buttload of money selling coke. To me Cocaine is a symbol of greed. He is admitting to selling out.

And in the end they end up dead next to the road.

I keep hearing about Easy Rider like it is a celebration of freedom and hippie values when to me it is more about the end of an idealistic mind set and the end of an era. It is about selling out to the powers that be and to the values of bigger, better, faster, more.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

I hear you, Rev. I always thought is was about the end of hippie values, selling them out, not about celebrating them. It's a cautionary tale about how easy it is to sell out while you convince yourself you are just trying to be free. The bottom line of the movie is, "We blew it."

 

Fuckin hell... that just blew my mind.

Probably cuz I've never seen the movie.. :2thumbsup:

Now I gotta watch it..

 

I've seen it many times with different people.

I always thought it was a beautiful move-but very sad. Lots of parts of it were depressing to me.

 

in 1990, i rode from wisconsin to texas and back on a scooter (biker type scooter). medium length hair, jeans...no hippy symbols, but flames on the tank.

people where i lived who knew i was going told me how i would be killed, robbed, beaten...any crazy thing you can think up. i slept on a picnic table in arkansas. no one bothered me. met a couple bandidos on the road who had been to sturgis. nice enough guys. stopped to look at a map, some guy in kansas stopped to see if i needed help; invited me for brews, and to stay the night in their guest room. some woman in oklahoma told me her brother had a big twin, went out to the gas pump, examined the scooter and told me things about harley history that i dint know. burned the dam clutch out in north texas...two guys in a camaro tried to hand me a cold brew on the freeway at midnight when i yelled to them 'i can't stop, coz it's hell to git this thang goin' again!'.

when i think about easy rider, i don't know what in hell to think, but it had an ongoing effect on some peoples' minds. it was a fine mixture of stuff...and mostly seemed to be the launch pad for smilin' jack's career. this strange paranoia puzzles me...reefer madness, maybe? not to say that shit don't happen...

 

So true, someone learned to make money of what was once free. Then came the guns and the.......

 

Lighten up, Rev.

Easy Rider is about, quote: Two guys who went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere.

It's a great sixties adventure movie. Why read more into it than need be?

And BTW, at the end of the movie we don't know for certain if they're dead.

 

I never said I didn't like Easy Rider. I just said that I feel like it has been misrepresented.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

I found the characters in this film very unlikeable. Greedy, selfish, inconsiderate. If this was what hippies were like in the 60s, I wouldn't want to be associated with them.

 

I think its a very overated movie

 

I saw this movie once when I was around 13 and absolutely hated it. I've always half-wanted to check it out again, but I was so mind-numbingly bored, that every time I think of flipping it on, I get these flashbacks of the DMV.

 

I think the characters can be seen as just very human The movie can be interpreted as both a celebration of hippie values and about the ending of an era in my opinion. It certainly contains a lot of struggling hippies but why overromanticize things like that commune or smoking that joint etc. ? Are they supposed to be viewed through rose colored glasses in order to be celebrated..

 

Well, it is pretty much the norm when talking about the 50s and 60s, to act like they were the best times ever.

 

For sure that is the norm now, but since this movie was made in that time it's not really nostalgic. They could have made it more 'rose colored' for sure. As for people who watch this movie out of an overromanticized viewpoint and still interpretate it solely as a celebration of hippie values... I guess they have selective memory.

 

Confirmation bias. You only look for things that agree with your view, and you ignore things that don't.

 

Pretty difficult at the end of the movie though.

 

If you are referring to the final scene, that can be interpreted (and I have heard this on here) as 'the man' or society is gonna get you and knock you down. So it still doesn't hurt the rosy interpretation of the hippie movement, really. Just of the outsiders.

 

A Biker, does not a Hippie make.

 

Duh, but in this movie the bikers did visit and partake in typical hippie actions.

 

This is from an article on Sonny Barger:

In November 1965 Barger sent a letter to president Lyndon Johnson at the White House in support to the war in Vietnam "I volunteer a group of loyal Americans for behind-the-line duty in Vietnam. We are available for training and duty immediately."

He was talking about the Hells Angels.

Stay Brown,
Rev J