Easy Rider

          The 1960's and early 1970's in America was a time of critical societal and filmic changes. While Americans struggled to come to terms with the Vietnam War, Hollywood struggled with how to depict the changing social landscape in film (Shiel). While most filmmakers were unable to capture the essence of the times on film (or felt they were ideologically unequipped to do so) (Shiel), director Dennis Hopper managed to successfully portray the changing social landscape in his successful film Easy Rider (Monaco). Easy Rider depicts the story of two friends, Wyatt and Billy, who decide to abandon all material attachments and hit the open road on a couple of motorcycles in order to discover who they truly are, a la Jack Kerouac and On the Road. The two friends represent the restless counter-culture comprised mainly of teenagers and college-students who felt alienated from society. In the true spirit of bohemian culture during the 60's and 70's, they experiment with hallucinogenic drugs in a search for enlightenment. In one of the last scenes of the movie, the two make it to New Orleans where they do acid with two female escorts in a cemetery. Hopper gives his audience a first hand experience of the trip (and I'm not talking about the one involving motorcycles)

The hallucinogenic effect derived from this scene is achieved through the use of dialectical montage. This montage technique follows the formula A+B does not equal AB. The goal of this technique is to create a totally new meaning from the actions in scene A plus the actions in scene B. Typically, the two scenes feature different subjects that relate because of the meaning that is derived from their juxtaposition. Dialectical montage is not just a sequence of events, it is collision of two things that come together to create a new meaning. In this case, the collision of various, seemingly random images in the entirely of this montage suggest a heightened sensory experience. Obviously, it expresses that the characters are quite high and they are experiencing a warped perception of the world. 

In the beginning of this montage scene from Easy Rider, Hopper cuts from the characters, to a panning shot of the building, back to the characters, and then back to the shot of the building in which a sun flare pierces the audience's view. In the background, an eerie echoing of voices can be heard. It is truly, for lack of a better word, trippy. The camera angles are dizzying. We feel as if we are experiencing the acid trip with Wyatt, Billy, and their two female friends. 

As Hopper continues to cut between seemingly unrelated images, the same eerie echoing can be heard along with the sound of a girl's voice (depicted above) narrating the resurrection of Christ. Tripping on hard drugs in a cemetery seems awfully disrespectful, but the incorporation of religion and the concept of Christ suggest that the American youth was deeply confused about whether or not there was a true God they could trust in. Maybe, they were waiting for a new savior. 

The camera approaches different scenes from various angles and cuts between shots at varying speeds. As the high of the characters intensify, so does the echoing of the voices and the speed of the montage. Sometimes, the camera will pan up to the tree tips and spin around to cause a disorienting affect. Then, it will cut to the sun, a man walking through the cemetery, or a girl undressing between two marble tombs. The distortion is both dizzying and terrifying. 

In the final shots of the hallucinogenic montage, we see Wyatt and Billy in the arms of a female statue. They look out at the audience in a way that seems to ask "what do we do next? Where do we go from here?" Although they are disrespecting a sacred place by firstly doing drugs and possibly engaging in some form of sexual activity and secondly climbing on what is probably someone's tomb, they seem to be challenging the system that has established rules against these trespasses. Why should they respect a system that never respected them? Why should they honor the values of a machine that doesn't honor to bother to understand theirs? The questions that these shots and the montage as a whole provoke are ones that the American counter-culture seemed to be asking itself and struggling to answer.

          The 1960’s in America welcomed the emergence of the Beat Generation. The beats opposed the war, violence, and America’s dependence on material items. They represented a counter-culture which was heavily involved in hallucinogenic drugs as a means of escape and enlightenment. Easy Rider spoke to this counter-culture. Made on a budget of only $300,000, it was very representative of the American spirit in the 60’s and was hailed by some critics as the new American cinema (Monaco). Easy Rider’s success did not come from its lavish production and massive cast- it was a low budget film with a very distinct creative vision, yet it was perfectly created to target the teenage/college-aged audience Hollywood had been seeking to target for years (Monaco). It proved to the industry that it could not rely on glitzy techniques to excite young adults, it had to be innovative and aesthetically metamorphic if it wanted to continue its success.

Works Cited:

Monaco, Paul. "The Sixties."

Shiel, Mark. "American Cinema, 1965-70."