Ending the Exceptional: Defiance of Conventions in Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider"

The myth of American exceptionalism has existed since early on in our nation’s history. As early as the mid 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville proclaimed that the United States held remarkable place in the world, as a nation of immigrants living in the first democracy of the ‘modern’ era (Tocqueville 1). But what the French political scientist did not consider was how this ‘exceptionalism’ was, indeed, a myth - one that had to be sustained through a perpetual progression.

This overarching assumption is more difficult to find in later Westerns; films like John Ford’s The Searchers, while not overtly condemning the actions of its mysterious protagonist, are certainly not exactly ecstatic about the Western White Man; both in his attempts to control a land and an indigenous people who never seemed to want him there in the first place.. In fact, that old teleological ethic - which kept America strong through a civil war, two world wars and two centuries of expansion - was beginning to erode. In 1969, after years of protests against institutional racism, the Vietnam War and what many of the nation’s youth saw as dated social mores, that erosion turned to perforation.

If The Searchers was a sign of wear showing in the cloak of exceptionalism, then Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider was the first big tear. This film presents something fairly alien in cinema, especially within the Western genre: two characters attempting to escape from a country they never asked for, in any way that they can. It defies as many conventions of American cinema as it does conventions of American social life. By modifying the conventional Hollywood ‘road’ movie narrative, incorporating modern folk/rock music as non-diegetic sound and utilizing shocking imagery – both socially and in terms of editing style - Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider stands as a testament to the changes going on in our nation in the late 1960s.

It is imperative to this analysis that the conventions of cinema which Easy Rider defies be clearly established. To begin with, we will first look at the aspects of the ‘road’ movie either present or disobeyed in the film. Chuck Klosterman, in an essay dissecting the genre, defines the traditional road movie narrative as such:

• A character experiences abstract loss and attempts an exodus from normal life.
• The character reinvents his or her self-identity while traveling.
• Along the way, the character encounters iconic individuals who (usually) illustrate authenticity and desolation.
• Upon the recognition of seemingly self-evident realizations, the character desires to return to the point of origin. (Klosterman 1)

It is plain to see, then, that Easy Rider does not follow the traditional ‘road’ movie formula. While all of these ideas might apply to ‘Captain America’ (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), everything which would link the conventions of ‘road’ cinema to their actions is only implied. It seems as though the Captain and Billy are attempting an exodus from normal life; however, it is wholly possible that they have long since dropped out of ‘normal’ living and are merely trying to complete the final phase of their journey (implied by Billy when he speaks, at the film’s end, of “retiring to Florida”).

It seems as though the Captain has a realization of sorts after taking LSD in a New Orleans graveyard and, thusly, has a subtle change of identity ; but this is never stated explicitly, only implied in the Captain’s despondent demeanor after the Mardi Gras festival when he tells Billy that “we blew it”. And while the two “iconic individuals” met along the way – the hitchhiking hippie and the ACLU lawyer - do not appear to necessarily be ‘authentic’ or ‘desolate’, it seems as though they have a semiotic importance related to those ideas. So when the conventions of the ‘road’ movie are only detectable in whiffs and peripheral glances, it becomes very difficult to argue that Easy Rider is following typical narrative protocol.

Another instance of violating narrative conventions are a little more subtle, but even more meaningful in establishing not what this film isn’t as a ‘road’ movie but what it is. The narrative structure of Easy Rider is set up so that, as the movie progresses and the two drifters ride further from the Pacific, their interactions with everyone from George the ACLU lawyer to local townsfolk begin “casting judgment on American society’s failure to live up to its ideals” (Cummings 1). Easy Rider is a movie about being a stranger in your own country; to a sense to that the land you live doesn’t really belong to you anymore. When the Captain and Billy travel from West to East (as opposed to the usual ‘road’ movie East to West), it is because they have nothing left to gain from the old America. The Manifest Destiny has run its course, the atomic bombs could fall at any minute and none of the antiquated patriotism seems to mean anything anymore. They characters show a sense of this when the travelers are in the desert, and the hippie hitchhiker says that “the people this place belongs to are buried under here”. Perhaps the Captain and Billy feel that in traveling back to the East they are, somehow, giving back the land that may not ever have been theirs in the first place. he narrative structure of Easy Rider is set up so that, as the movie progresses and the two drifters go further back towards the Atlantic, “casting judgment on American society’s failure to live up to its ideals”

There are many scenes in Easy Rider which transgress acceptable American filmic imagery.^[1] There has always been a rule in mainstream cinema that drugs, when used on screen, should either be detrimental to a character’s life or signifying of a character’s deviant status. Neither of these things is true of the Captain and Billy (and, later on in the movie, the ACLU lawyer, George). Their use of drugs is portrayed sympathetically throughout the movie, marijuana in particular being shown as nothing more than a means of evening relaxation^[2]. Even though the drug use of the cyclists is meant to separate them from ‘mainstream’ society – and, thusly, ‘mainstream’ protagonists – all it really serves to do is highlight their sense of disillusionment with the American Dream. As Billy and the Captain meander through New Orleans during an acid trip, we see not images of decadence or deviance, but those of fear and loathing.

This all occurs after the death of their ACLU friend, George; a man with such deep concerns for the state of his country, who could actually see past the bright colors, through the pot haze and understand that this new generation was restless for a reason. A man like George, with his eloquent speech and unique outlook on America, could have been the salvation of his country; instead, he is killed by the members of what he referred to many times as the “antiquated hierarchy” that exists in the U.S. By the time the two cyclists reach New Orleans, their use of drugs is no longer a form of relaxation but a sad sacrament, symbolized by the images of the Virgin Mary and the Flag edited in when they are having a ‘bad trip’ on LSD.