Riding Easy, Dominic Nemmers
Miller’s hippie ideals really do show up rather blatantly in Easy Rider. His ideals of dropping out and yearning to get away from mainstream are easily seen in the Rider’s themselves. The love, nonviolence, and environmental awareness are shown in the group of ‘hippies’ that are living out in the country by themselves, trying to subsist on their own. Most of the ideals are cast in a negative light, with the group that is trying the most to stick to these hippie ideals, suffering greatly. Easy Rider is very indicative of the ideals of love and peace and freedom, throughout the entire movie, it seems like the main characters are trying to embody all of those ideals, with the girls at the brothel or the people at the commune. I agree somewhat that Captain American and Billy don’t really fit the common mold of the old-style rancher or the new-style commune, but I believe that they share many of the same ideals. I attribute the violence portrayed in the movie to be stemming from the conflict where the two groups of ideals collide. The ignorance of one or both sides leads to physical altercations. While the dialog of Woodstock does seem much more inarticulate than Easy rider, this can be attributed to the fact that the people on screen in Easy Rider, though slightly incapacitated with drugs, were still professional actors, and even though much of the dialog was improvisational. The movie doesn’t feel like it has any racial undertones. There doesn’t seem to be any racial undertones at all. When Wyatt repeats “we blew it� he feels that this counterculture that they have been trying to live just isn’t succeeding for them, he feels it the ultimate disappointment.