Easy Rider
"Most obviously, one could point to Easy Rider's concentration on hippie life and its twin social themes of freedom and repression."--Barbara Klinger
In Easy Rider, the quest for self-discovery is challenged by the overtly enforced social roles of white American males. The character Wyatt is symbolic of this conflict, or more aptly, this confusion between the internal and the external. There are three prominent American flag motifs that accompany Wyatt throughout the film: on his helmet, on the back of his leather jacket, and on the chassis of his motorcycle. These are highly suggestive of a unified theme of America that specifically riffs on the ideas of the mind, the body, and the journey. If Wyatt "went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere,” then this is because he metaphorically failed to examine himself. Likewise, if hippie culture represents a straying from traditional American values, then the congratulatory righteousness displayed by Wyatt's American flags represents a failure to understand that the American ethos is not something to physically search for, but is located within oneself. In several scenes, Wyatt's lack of comprehension in this matter is subtly hinted at by his helmet's position not on his head, but on the back of his motorcycle. The open road is a free place to roam, but despite Wyatt's, Billy's, and George's white masculinities, they are, for example, driven out of a local diner because of their perceived counter-American hippie status. Their ideals are repressed, and they continue their partially misguided outward journey. One of the film's most distinguishing features is the occasional use of rapid crosscutting between two scenes, serving as a bewildering form of transition. Is the previous scene being freed by the next, or is the next scene being held back by the previous? It seems to be both, and is therefore the paramount manifestation of Easy Rider's focus: the nature of the journey is to overcome contradiction itself. America is "found" within the mind, the body, and the journey. Without any of the three--the spirit, the flesh, and the road trip--Wyatt, and thus the film, must end.