Amanda Kennedy- Easy Rider Review
At the end of the film, Billy and Wyatt are talking about their trip to New Orleans and Billy remarks that now they’ve done it all and can retire to Florida. To this, Wyatt says that “they blew it.�
I think that Wyatt says what he does because he is thinking about the trip over and how it was supposed to be a great moment for them, and it turns out to be just a giant black-out of their acid tripped adventures. He probably would have been happier settling down in the desert with the other really free loving hippies, who were just trying to make it on their own living off the land. He had mention to both the rancher and the hippie farmers that he really admired them for that, so it might have been a good thing for him as well, at least emotionally. Costello remarks on this in his article “from counterculture to anticulture� saying, “Captain America sees a nonmercantile religious peace and unity, where the body is free and beautiful, not sold or violated, and where he can predict, "They're going to make it."� (Costello 189).
Practically, farming in the desert probably won’t work out so well since there is very limited water. The farming in the desert parallels with the counter culture in general. They were very idealistic but not very organized. They knew what they wanted to do, but didn’t have the resources to accomplish anything.
As for Billy, he talks about retiring to Florida despite the fact that that’s more of a corporate type of dream. Throughout the whole movie Billy seems to admire those with power, money, and influence. He is also quick to violence and doesn’t find peace amongst other members of the counterculture. He represents a warning to the rest of the counterculture that Costello talks about where the counterculture “… can't really be counter if it accepts the values of the dominant culture into which it enslaves itself.� (Costello 190).