Looking for....America?
"The primary complaint against America in the film is that it is not American enough"(Laderman 81).
In the film Easy Rider, Wyatt, Billy, and George seem to be searching for an old version of America. I would venture to say that what they are searching for is a pre-industrialization America, that still retains the freedoms and values of the frontier. This is exemplified by Wyatt's line "It's not every man who can live off the land." "Living off the land," or the agrarian lifestyle has become less common. The American sense of individualism and ambition seems to have been lost amid the industiralization of the country. Though the men find refuge in the counterculture of the West and perhaps a vestige of the "old America," they continue on, embodying this sense of individualism and ambition they are searching for, as dictated by Wyatt's statements of "I never wanted to be anybody else," and "I just gotta go."
As the men move into the South, they confront the "new America." Anyone who is different is assailed with insults and driven out of town (it can be assumed that this is why the African American population lives so far out of town). In the end, the men did not find this individualism and ambition that characterized America at one point in it's existence.
The film is framed by the white male; the three or four main characters are white men. The story revolves around these men and any other racial group or gender is seen as secondary to the plot. The women in the film are mostly seen as sex objects - women in the "free love" commune or prostitutes. Billy grows concerned the Wyatt is becoming too involved with a woman from the commune, with distracts Wyatt from their goal to attend Marti Gras. The relative absence of minority groups, other than the poverty scene, almost speaks for itself. Both women and minorities were seen as secondary or invaluable in Easy Rider.