Did ‘Easy Rider’ Get the South All Wrong?

I recently saw the movie for the first time, too.

‘Fess up-didn’t you find it a little (or a lot) ... dull?

YOU ARE SO RIGHT ON I COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE.  HOLLYWOOD SUFFERS FROM STEROTYPING AND PREJUDICES THAT THEY ARE BLIND TO THIER OWN SHORTCOMINGS. I KNOW YOU ARE DISCUSSIN A MOVIE FROM THE SIXTIES, BUT TODAY WE ONLY GET THAT LIBERAL POINT OF VIEW. AT LEAST BACK IN OLD HOLLYWOOD THERE WAS DIVERSITY. EASY RIDER WAS A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE SOUTH. PERFECT FOR IT’S TIME. THE FILMAKERS THAT WERE EAGER TO PUT A LIGHT UPON SUBJECTS THAT WERE NEVER DISCUSSED TODAY HAVE TURNED INTO THE VERY PEOPLE THEY WERE FIGHTING AGAINST. TODAYS LIBERALS HAVE TURNED INTO THE INTOLERANT BIGOTS THEY ONCED FAUGHT AGAINST IN THE 60’S.  WHERE ARE THE FILMS THAT SHOW RADICAL MUSLIMS KILLING FILMAKERS LIKE VAN GOH? NO WHERE!!
THEY ARE AFRAID AND politically correct.

BTW, speaking of revisiting iconic movies, have you watched Manhattan recently? Whassup with Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway? No one in the movie is the least bit bothered.

And speaking of North-South attitudes. I grew up in NYC and recently reread all my adolescent diaries from the 1970s. I was stunned and shocked by my own frequent and casual use of a slur against Latinos—a word that I remember as commonplace in my middle-class Jewish home although I didn’t remember using it myself. I would never dream of using the word today.

Racism knows no borders.

Hi:

I have an original Easy Rider poster from the 1960s of Peter on the Harley. A friend of mine from Tulane, Liz, whose uncle was roommates with Jim Morrison in California, offered to buy it from me for $500.

Any idea whst it’s worth now in 2008, framed and raring to go?

John M. Edwards

Hey Sophie,

I dunno if I thought it was dull, exactly - I guess I felt like it was covering really, really familiar (cliched? trite?) ground at times, though. I had to keep reminding myself that Easy Rider probably helped to invent some of those images and conversations that feel cliched to me today. That’s the funny thing about looking back years later at movies that have had such an impact on pop culture.

As for Manhattan, yeah, that pairing always struck me as, uh, a little off. But then again, Woody Allen (and I say this as a fan) has made an entire career out of writing scripts for himself that involve women who should in theory be way out of his league - and then, bizarrely, he winds up getting the girl in real life, too.

Nice post Eva.

I’m always amazed how such worldly travelers – Nepal, this year, Bhutan, next – can’t see past 40-year-old stereotypes about the South.

I’m still learning my new home, Birmingham, Ala., but I’ve been amazed by the energy, the beauty, and yes the friendliness.

As Rob Crossan recently wrote in the Independent: “The genuine smile is harder to find in the US than anywhere else on earth. On the East and West coasts, people smile because they’re feeling smug. But in Alabama, people smile because they want you to be happy.”

Nice post Eva.

I’m always amazed how such worldly travelers – Nepal, this year, Bhutan, next – can’t see past 40-year-old stereotypes about the South.

As Rob Crossan recently wrote in the Independent: “The genuine smile is harder to find in the US than anywhere else on earth. On the East and West coasts, people smile because they’re feeling smug. But in Alabama, people smile because they want you to be happy.”

Hey Larry - Thanks for the comment, and glad to hear you’re settling in to Alabama! I only made it to a small corner of the state (Muscle Shoals and the evocatively named Freedom Hills) but really enjoyed it.

It’s true that Easy Rider created that important imagery. There was just sooooo much footage of guy on motorcycle, presumably thinking rebellious thoughts.

Genius and power for men are what youth and beauty are for women.

“sooooo much footage of guy on motorcycle, presumably thinking rebellious thoughts”

Ha!

True. I’ll give you that. But Peter Fonda was so cute when he was brooding…

Beautiful country indeed. I wish i could do some travels like yours, Eva… But riding MY Harley, of course, hehehe. BTW, could you share with us those moments, showing some of these photos ? Hope to see some soon.
My best regards to you all!
R .:

I am from the south and have never regarding Easy Rider as being biased against the south at all.  The spiritual center of the film is Jack Nicholoson’s character, a southerner who might be a drunkard but has a heart of gold.  He is the trucker who fixed your low-air pressure.  He is the waitress who interpretted the long menu for you.

The young girls in the diner are very southern in speach but did you notice they liked the bikers and their machines and they served as an important counterpoint to the bigots in the diner. 

And then their is New Orleans, the most southern of southern cities.  Heck, the Billy and Wyatt find chicks there, for a price it is true, but they are clearly good people in unfortunate circumstances. 

I really think you need to re-watch the film without the chip on your shoulder.

So, let me get this straight, exactly forty years after the filming of Easy Rider, you are arguing that the South got a bad rap? Exactly twenty years after the filming of Easy Rider, I left North Carolina with the impression that my name was “Damn Yankee” with the sub-name of “N***** Lover” when no one was listening. A few years later, David Duke gained nearly 700,000 votes in a Georgia election. Here we are, twenty years later than those experiences, and it was a different “south” then.

Whoever said this was a “good post” is a revisionist idiot. Comparing the culture of the South-Eastern United States in the 1960’s to the reality of today, then turning around to state that “they couldn’t have been that bad!” is just complete and utter idiocy. My guess is the guy who checked your pressure was white, and so are you. Intolerance in the south went far beyond race, and my guess is in many circles it is still intolerant to this day.

I grew up in the South and now live in NYC.  Last year my co-worker was describing how great his recent trip to Brazil was “we rented a car and drove way off the beaten path, got lost up in the mountains on dirt roads -it was fabulous!”.  Then someone asked if he and his boyfriend had flown or driven when they went to the dance festival in N. Carolina last year he said “I would never drive below the Mason Dixon line in a car with Northern plates - it’s too dangerous.”

The belief that all white people in the South are uneducated racists is very common in the North. The idea of people in Erie, PA thinking that they are somehow “better” than the residents of Atlanta blows my mind! I blame movies like Easy Rider, Deliverance, Sweet Home Alabama, etc. as well as the always popular need to feel better than someone else.

I didn’t enjoy it as much as you, perhaps.  There were not enough explosions.  :-)