Easy Rider Political Context

Easy Rider does not take on the large public issues in the way that consciously political films do. It's bled of intimate realism, mythic beauty and archetypal conflict is not designed for airing topicalities, but they are there all the same. If Easy Rider is about anything it is about the immediate historical context that has generated the state of affairs which it epitomises, the 'coming apart' of the nation. It was a crucial moment in United States' history but the film represents the disintegration in ways that exclude overtly political references.

Political

Easy Rider is silent on the Vietnam war but it is a loud silence. American troops had been in Vietnam since 1965 attempting to prop up a client South Vietnam government with little support among its own people. Vietnam was a risky subject for Hollywood, it was the political storm of the decade, with dramatic repercussions on the home front, it cried out for cinematic treatment. However, it was felt that any head-on treatment of the war would be more likely to repel or divide than attract the big, approving audience Hollywood sought. 

Dennis Hopper recalls being sneered at during on location filming by men who had sons in Vietnam yet when the protagonists of easy Rider, Billy and Wyatt, talk, they talk about anything other than the war. There is no indication that they watch television, read newspapers or take any interest in current affairs they are as indifferent to the war as the film itself, they are apolitical and asocial. 

Easy Rider blanks out Vietnam by design but it is possible for a film's absences to be as instrumental in shaping its meaning as any other contextual force. by 1969 when Easy Rider was released, Vietnam had become a major fault line in American public opinion. Despite the barrage of official new that depicted the war as a struggle for freedom and democracy against a ruthless and fanatical enemy, support was ebbing. Too many reports from the battlefield contradicted the State Department line. The myth of American invincibility was shattered in 1968 by the Tet Offensive against South Vietnamese cities. Although the territory taken by the Viet Cong was won back, the damage had been done. Footage of events that were never supposed to happen was shown in American living rooms, undermining the beliefs of the American people.

In the summer of 1968 the Democratic National Convention was the scene of a brutal and panicky police riot. The Chicago force was let loose on McCarthy supporters, anti-war protestors and the 'yippies' (youth international party). Hubert Humphrey, the pro-war candidate, was elected in a poisoned atmosphere.

This. in brief, is the shaping political context of easy rider, invisible and unheard on the screen but epitomised by the culture clash it represents, the meeting of two worlds, both American but speaking different languages, it is a standoff. The film has no more power to resolve the differences than Nixon's rhetoric and pushes them to a violent, uncompromising outcome. Yet Easy Rider tells nothing of the war itself; of the national debate around it; of the struggles continuing in the streets and on college campuses; of the outgroups who had linked the anti-war movement to their own fight for freedom; of concerted resistance to the draft; of coverage in the media. Instead these are there as shadows and echoes in the film's ideological concerns.

Colley, Iain. 2000. York Film Notes: Easy Rider. London. York Press