Reflection on Easy Rider
In Eyerman" and Lofgren's, "Romancing the Road" they state that,
" In the end, however, it is normality that emerges victorious: the hero realizes that his yuppie life was empty and meaningless, and even manages to transform the femme-fatale into a pretty- and harmless- middle class women."
I believe that this statement does a good job summing up what Fonda meant when he said, "we blew it." while spending the night on the open road. The comment is very open- ended and can be interpreted in many ways. What I think they meant by it was that their hippie- easy going lives were given in when they sold coke and gained money the easy way. Although they profited financially they found no fulfillment. They can't even get a hotel room because of their image. Their choices are to conform and become more "normal" like the "rest" of America or camp out and piss away their money on booze, drugs, and women. Money does not make you free and is a way of conforming to control and the market.
One of the opening songs, "Born to be Wild" contains the lyrics, "like a true nature's child, we were born born to be wild." This song is basically played in its entirely showing the "Easy Riders" on their motorcycles on the open road and natures scenery. This music and composition of shots sets the mood and theme for the counterculture aspect of the show; Rebels taking the open road, not conforming to societies standards, looking rugged, having long hair, riding motorcycles and doing drugs.
Even though the movie seems to support the image and culture of the non-conformists it is about the non-conformists failure and dissatisfaction and unfulfillment of their own lives. What has seemed to happen in real America since this film is that more and more people are conforming to a standard and that doesn't seem to be such a great thing either. After discussing this film with my parents my mom said that Peter Fonda once said in an interview that their reason for making that movie was so they had a reason to do a lot of drugs....