The film
Easy Rider made quite an impression on the Baby
Boomer crowd back in the late Sixties (1969). It resonated for a number of
reasons, I suppose.
- It represented, for that “spoiled beyond redemption” group,
freedom, freedom from what it never was quite clear, just freedom.
- It had perhaps one of the best music scores in cinema
history.
- It had a couple of titillating scenes. The boys liked
that.
- It had excellent acting save for some ultra-corny lines uttered
stiffly by Peter Fonda.
- The cast enhanced verisimilitude, they say, by actually getting
stoned for some scenes.
- It introduced a relatively unknown actor, someday to be a
mega-star, named Jack Nicholson.
- It was anti-social enough to appeal to the young and disillusioned.
It became a phenomenon. I think I went to see it three
nights in a row, each time with a different bunch from our ship moored up the
Cooper River beyond Charleston.
That was many years ago. A lot of water has flowed from the
Cooper River into Charleston Harbor since then. I’ve encountered a trophy wife
and more than a few changes, including a career as a piddling fish in a small
pond. Now I spend a few minutes each morning thinking. I don’t like to do that—think
that is—so I do it early and quickly to get it over with.
What I’m thinking is that my perspective changes over the
years, hard as I try not to let it. Here are some thoughts.
After all the communities, neighborhoods, small towns, and
families I’ve seen destroyed by drugs, I’m a little put off by the concept of
freedom purchased by wicked or nefarious means.
Of course, even back in 1969, I considered it ludicrous to
think about a bunch of hippies planting seeds in the desert and expecting
something to grow. Why do films never picture “back to the Earth” groups
settling in the Arkansas Delta where one could buy (cheaply) some of the richest
soil on the planet and really live off the land?
Back to the film. Even then, if I were to go “looking for
America,” I don’t think I would start in east Texas or south Louisiana. And …
now this is going to aggravate my neo-hippie friends, but … I might even try to
blend in a bit.
And, the last national election in our county proved that,
even 50 years later, bigotry and blind prejudice lie waiting in most areas of our
country, not just the deep South. It’s a national curse, brought on, as William
Faulkner suggested, by the practice and allowance of slavery.
So there. I still like the film, to a large degree for the
music. Speaking of which, isn’t it amazing how music can ease the rough edges
of what later proves a troubling film? Oh yes, it can for me. In 1967, I watched
the film The Graduate at some lonely Navy base somewhere. At the end, I
said, probably aloud, “Far out, man.”
A few weeks ago, I watched it again after a long hiatus.
This time, at the end, I turns to my wife and says, “I think she just ran off with
the sorriest summich in the state of California. That ain’t gonna end well.” Even Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t save
me. Nor could Creedence Clearwater or Percy Sledge redeem that narcissistic group of "navel-gazers" in The Big Chill.
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Why are people
staring at us? |
