easy rider: a pursuit of American identity Essay -- essays research pa

Easy Rider An Epic journey into the unknownFor the American dreamEasy Rider is the new-fangled 1960s "road hit" tale of a search for emancipation (or the illusion of freedom) and an identity in America, in the midst of paranoia, bigotry and violence. The story, of learnmakers Fonda/Hopper creation, centers around the self-styled, counter-cultured, neo-frontiersmen of the painfully fashionable late 60s. As for the meaning of Easy rider, Peter Fonda (Wyatt) said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, it is a southern term for a whores old man, not a pimp, but a dude who lives with a chick. Because hes got the easy ride. Well, thats whats happened to America, man. Libertys start out a whore, and were whole taking an easy ride . However, their journey is far from an easy ride it is a unsettling, frightening and revealing experience round up in self-destruction.Introduction to Easy Rider (1969)Easy Rider is a counter-cultural, experimental, independent film for the al ternative youth/cult market, with sex, drugs, casual violence, reflecting the fragmentise of the idealistic 60s. The film does not have a clear plot, and its artistic merit is also doubtful, as a film critic Peter Biskind said, It had humble background or historical development of characters, a lack of typical heroes, uneven pacing, jump cuts and flash-forward transitions between scenes, an improvisational style and mood of acting and dialogue, background brandish n roll music to complement the narrative, and the equation of motorbikes with freedom on the road rather than with delinquent behaviors.However, it presents an image of the popular and historical culture of the time and a story of a contemporary but destructive journey by two self-righteous, drug-fueled, anti-hero bikers eastward through the American Southwest. Their trip to Mardi Gras in bleak Orleans takes them through limitless, untouched landscapes including Monument Valley, various towns, a hippie commune, and a g raveyard. However, they inevitably encountered local residents who are narrow-minded and hateful of their long-haired freedom and use of drugs. Extremely successful and low-budget, this film has won the 1969 Cannes Film Festivals award for the Best Film by a new director. The film also received two Academy Award nominations Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Jack Nicholson in ... ...ay, but instead of rest and enlightenment, they experienced confusion and disillusion. At the end of the movie, the two protagonists experience hallucinatory emotions, where we can see intense colors, kaleidoscopic swirls, and distorted shapes and forms. They search for enlightenment, while inveighing agsint elegances hypocrisy and brutality. Their rootless, drifting pursuit of the American dream and the promise of sex, drugs, and rock n roll has been questionably successful, dissatisfying, transitory and elusive. Wyatt believes there may have been another(prenominal) less destruc tive, less diversionary, more spiritually fulfilling way to search for their freedom rather than selling hard drugs, taking to the road and being sidetracked, and wasting their lives. For all its counter cultural reflections, the movie does not portray the youthful movement uncritically, rather it provides an ambiguous ending, implying that excesses, even counter cultural ones, can be unwholesome and destructive. David Hopper also defines this film as anti-counter cultural. The romance and dream of the American highway is turned menacing and deadlyXThey looked for America but couldnt assure it anywhere.