Travel Films Week: ‘Easy Rider’: Searching for a Free America That Doesn’t Exist

In 1967, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America told an audience that “we have to stop making movies about motorcycles, sex and drugs.”

Peter Fonda, who was in that audience, got an idea: “Suddenly, the lesson of the day came floating in… ‘No more movies about motorcycles, drugs and sex.’ And I went, ‘Boom! That’s it!’”

Easy Rider, which, on the surface, revolves completely around motorcycles, drugs and sex, was released in 1969. Peter Fonda wrote the screenplay, along with Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern, and Hopper directed the film. 

Easy Rider encapsulates a series of moments in American history–the counterculture hippie movement, the New Left, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the sexual revolution–that, at their core, sought to challenge and dismantle the status quo of the “Establishment,” the capitalistic white-supremacist male-dominated patriarchy. 

While the film features gorgeous scenery, cool bikes, an amazing soundtrack and shows a multifaceted American landscape, it also reminds us that to eschew understood social norms can be deadly. 

The movie poster includes the caption, “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere…”

It is this reality–that the nebulous idea of “America” (freedom, possibility, liberty and adventure)–that permeates the film. This idealized America doesn’t exist, even among the beautiful natural landmarks and infrastructure. 

In the end, it’s not running drugs that gets the riders killed. It’s their propensity for moving against the current, for having long hair.

The themes of socially defined and limiting masculinity throughout Easy Rider go hand in hand with the theme of an elusive America. In fact, the idea that this idyllic America can be found is as entrenched in our mythology as the idea that gender performance is set and rigid. Both are myths that are central to our being as a society, and both are myths that are incredibly destructive.

Fonda’s character, Wyatt (called “Captain America”) wears a large American flag stitched across his leather jacket, with a flag on his helmet and bike. His hair is long, but he looks the part of an American hero. His foil, Dennis Hopper’s Billy, wears fringe on his leathers, wears a weathered cowboy hat and has flames painted on his bike. His hair is longer and disheveled, and he’s consistently irreverent and mouthy, while Wyatt is contemplative and reserved.

Their journey takes them across the Southwest and South. Their destination is New Orleans, and they want to make it in time for Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras itself represents tradition somewhat turned on its head. The roots of the holiday are firmly religious, but the celebrations typically include hiding one’s face, dressing without gender norms, and over the years, increasing substance use. Their goal was to make it there–a celebration representative of both being free and out of control before lent begins, which is all about control.

On the way, they stop at a ranch for a tire fix and dinner. Wyatt is clearly taken by the “simple” life of the rancher and his wife and children. The rancher notes, after learning that Wyatt and Billy are from Los Angeles, that he set out to go there long ago, but “you know how it is,” he says, indicating that he got married and had children instead. His “settled” life isn’t maligned, but is shown as a respectable choice. Wyatt tells the rancher he should be “proud” that he can live off the land. They eat together and are connected by this communal act.

Wyatt and Billy pick up a hitchhiker, and he takes them to his commune. This is a largely feminine space–the women are leaders and nurturers, and have sexual agency. While they are attempting to create an idyllic society, it’s clear that they have substandard soil and questionable farming expertise. Wyatt is optimistic about their future (while Billy thinks they don’t have a chance). The two swim with two women, and they are nude and playful. Male nudity is more present in this baptismal scene than female, and it’s clear that they are having fun. The women are not objects in this film–they are supporting characters, but they are individuals. Throughout, the female characters’ names are more prominent than the men’s, which indicates their individuality.

The women in Easy Rider are nurturers, caretakers, mothers and lovers. Two of the soundtrack’s most prominent songs–“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “Born to Be Wild”–address women. While we often think that a story like this is made possible by the male privilege of being able to be safely alone on the road, it’s clear that that notion is supposed to be challenged.

When Wyatt and Billy arrive in a small town, they are arrested and thrown in jail for riding along in a parade. While their stops so far have been welcoming and seem to embrace diversity, this all changes as they enter the “civilization” of a small town. George (Jack Nicholson) is in jail with them, as he was drunk the night before. George is a southern lawyer who has worked for the ACLU, and immediately jokes with Wyatt and Billy about how they look like outsiders. He notes that the townspeople here took “rusty razor blades to long hair.” He also says he imagines they can get out of jail easily if they haven’t killed anybody–“at least nobody white.”

George has an influential father in town (the sheriff promises to not tell his father he was so drunk), and it’s clear that he has a strong desire to be an activist and effect change, but he’s stuck in between his father’s footsteps and alcoholism, feeling like he can’t move forward because people are so backward. He is another model of American masculinity, not quite fully counterculture, but enough to feel excluded. In jail, he says to Wyatt and Billy, “We’re all in the same cage here.” For these three, that cage is a white patriarchy that has strict social norms that they do not adhere to.

George goes along with Wyatt and Billy (wearing a football helmet–his mother thought he should save it to give to his son someday, even though she hadn’t wanted him to play football, showing mixed messages of what it means to be a man) toward Mardi Gras. He says that he’s tried to go there “six or seven times,” but never makes it across the state line. He shows them a card for a brothel in New Orleans and jokes about the women there. He’s enough of a good-old-boy to see women as objects. To Wyatt and Billy, George represents the Establishment in a congenial way. He’s not threatening to them, but he has short hair and privilege; he fits the mold–to an extent–of what a man should be. His inability to fully function without binge drinking shows how damaging those expectations can be.

When the three stop at a diner, a booth full of teenage girls respond excitedly to the three men, but a booth of men react with homophobic, sexist and racist slurs against them. They mock their long hair and call them “Yankee queers.” These men operate under the guise of protecting white southern womanhood, which played a large part in racist violence–including lynchings–throughout modern history. When the girls follow the men out to their bikes and want a ride, the trio knows that to take them would be a sure death sentence.

Wyatt, Billy and now George by association are otherized because they don’t look or behave like “real” men should. The three are attacked that night at their campsite, and George is killed. This violence would surely be justified by the entrenched idea that the townspeople were protecting their women, or even protecting the order of their town by eliminating those who don’t fit.

Before he’s killed, George talks to the other two about freedom. George says that Wyatt and Billy scare them because they represent freedom. When Billy argues that freedom is what it’s all about (“it” being their lives, and America), George responds:

“But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.”

They don’t run from fear, though, they get “dangerous.” Resistance to civil rights, to women’s rights, to questioning gender norms–this resistance is typically violent, and is bred by fear of disrupting the social order (that is, the white-supremacist patriarchal order).

Wyatt and Billy make it to New Orleans, and go to the House of Blue Lights (the brothel that George had been excited about). There is heavy religious imagery in this scene–the Latin “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord have mercy”) as a soundtrack and images of Madonna and child, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ are everywhere.

While Billy is awkward yet eager with Karen, a prostitute, Wyatt seems uncomfortable and disinterested in the woman he’s “chosen” (her name is Mary–of course).

The four wander into the streets, where Mardi Gras is in full force. Out in the crowded streets, Wyatt kisses Mary and lifts her up, finally feeling comfortable and free.

The four split LSD in the cemetery.

The four take LSD, and the iconic scene at the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 gets under way. The sounds of construction are a backdrop to children reciting Catholic prayers as the four characters strip, have sex, weep and trip their way around the cemetery. This is America. Wyatt cries and begs atop a statue of the Virgin Mary (Hopper had directed him to act like he was speaking to his mother, who committed suicide when he was a child). A film critic calls this scene a “eulogy” to the 60s, the end of the hope and optimism that drove liberation and counterculture movements. The trip is chaotic and disappointing.