Hollywood Utopia

Christopher Lasch, in his classic treatise, astutely contends that the narcissist
‘depends on others to validate his self-esteem’ and continues that for them ‘the
world is a mirror’, whereas for the rugged individualist or western hero his
environment is ‘an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design’ (Lasch 1978:
10). ‘Nature’ is often portrayed as a utopian space for narcissistic self-fulfilment or,
alternatively, a site of paranoia or even destruction with regard to everything that
curtails male desire.
Yet a core pleasure of road movies, as with westerns before, remains the
unexpected nature of travel with a lack of certainty as to future events. This form
of travel reinforces the notion of freedom and the ability to traverse cultural and
political boundaries which has remained a constant narrative thread in almost all
forms of action cinema. Most significantly, by the 1960s, with the enormous growth
in the automobile industry, American citizenship in particular embraced car
ownership as the overriding requirement for overcoming the restraints of
geographical provincialism, thereby delimiting other forms of economic or social
marginalisation. This is embodied most clearly within the youth cultural
phenomenon of Easy Rider and the main character’s search for a ‘new spiritual
place for themselves’, which became most appropriate for the ‘counter-culture and
the modern world’ (Cohan et al. 1997: 51).
Upon release this relatively cheap, non-mainstream, even experimental film
became an essential part of 1960s iconography, embodying the hopes and fears of
the time, earning over $60 million worldwide (Hill 1996: 8). 14 Nevertheless the
film was full of contradictions, especially with the adolescent idealism of Hopper
and Fonda coupled with the self-righteous paranoia of many of the other
protagonists. The first copy promotional slogan enticed its audience: ‘A man went
looking for America, but couldn’t find it anywhere’. 15
Easy Rider is at once a travel poster proclaiming the continued presence of the old
West and its historical and mythic associations, and a nightmarish portrait of small
towns, cities and the end of the frontier (and the world). ‘It is a celebration of the
freedom of the road and the beauty of the landscape and a dissertation on the end
of the road and the repulsive banalities and industrial blight that disfigure the
scenery’. The film certainly invokes ‘both affirmative and critical visions of 1960s
America, making it more of a measure of its times than either its original or later
audiences could imagine’ (Hill 1996: 199).
Easy Rider has become the quintessential road movie, which remains a most
flexible genre, capable of accommodating a wide range of complex themes. On the
one hand, road movies are characterised by the romantic depiction of the speed and
machinery of cars and bikes, the seemingly limitless opportunities of modern travel
and the celebration of individual identification and improvement. But on the other,
3 Westerns, Landscapes and Road Movies 105