Driver vs. drifter
“Whether Woman is depicted as temptress or ideal Madonna, the outcome in the narrative is the same—woman occupies a place as object, not as subject, in the narrative” (Hottel 679).
In both Easy Rider and Vagabond, we follow the travels and exploits of social outcasts—Wyatt and Billy are long-haired, drug-dealing bikers in a culture that frowns upon such things, while Mona is a female drifter, a status that carries its own set of stigmas—we see the protagonists’ interactions with those along the road, and their ability to make friends (the hitchhiking hippie and George in Easy Rider, David, Assoun, and the train station bums in Vagabond) as they travel. However, the differences between the films are more notable than the similarities, and they have a great deal to do with the gender of the traveling protagonists.
Wyatt and Billy, exhibiting the new, long-haired biker masculinity of the late 1960s, are drivers, taking control of their motorcycles and steering toward a specific destination—Mardi Gras. They tell several characters their goal is to make Mardi Gras, and it is only after they leave New Orleans having achieved their goal that their journey is brought to an abrupt end. Mona, on the other hand, is a passenger, drifting without a tangible destination, staying in one place only when it is convenient, and hitchhiking—accepting rides from other, more active characters—in a real sense drifting through the film without taking much initiative on her own. As the men in Easy Rider attract and facilitate the travel of others, Mona repulses people—even prostitutes—as she wanders (although they often help her anyway), and needs others to help her move around the country.
The way the two films were shot underscores the differences between the active male outcasts and the passive female one. Easy Rider uses what I think of as fairly standard road movie camerawork for the most part, following the protagonists down the highway with tracking shots and weaving together these depictions of Wyatt and Billy with point-of-view shots that shows us what they see as they drive. Agnès Varda, on the other hand, uses the tracking shot differently, where “either the camera and frame ‘abandon’ Mona and go on to focus on an object, or she exits the frame,” as though Mona is incidental—marginal, like the typical feminine character, not central, like male characters—to what Varda wants to show the audience (Hayward 288). The visual depiction of Mona connects with the way we see her through others’ recollections and through their eyes rather than her own throughout the film. Where Wyatt and Billy are our reference points for how we should see the other characters in Easy Rider, we very rarely get Mona’s point of view in Vagabond. Ultimately, despite Mona’s assertion that she chose to live on the road, rather than remain a secretary, her role as an active traveler ended there, as she takes on a passive role in drifting rather than driving and falling victim to outside forces acting upon her, right up until her death.