Easy Rider is Forty

It's the fortieth anniversary of the movie "Easy Rider", which came out the same year I started motorcycling. I first saw the movie in 1970, and in that movie I saw an ugly side to America that I had not known about before. The movie is about two young men from California who make some money smuggling marijuana (or something). They are then able to forget about the humdrum of everyday life. They buy a couple of motorcycles and head off for New Orleans and Mardi Gras to have fun, meet chicks, and discover America.

Along the way they observe different attitudes people have - some Latino farm workers, a hippie commune, other regular people. But then as they enter the Old South they start to encounter increasingly hostile people, and their travels turn from being fun to being dangerous. On the off chance you might not have seen this movie, I will leave the rest for you to see for yourself.

Many southern conservatives hate this movie, and I don't mean just the average person who probably would hate all motorcycle movies. Even the southern bikers hate it. It is a "liberal" movie showing liberals as the good guys and southern whites as the bad guys. (Though not all)

When I first saw it I thought basically the bad guys were "a few bad apples", as I had quite a rosy view of America. I thought of America as a tolerant place with freedom and the pursuit of happiness. I also admired their abundant supply of high powered cars, motorcycles and smooth straight roads. And although I don't surf on water personally, I always imagined that people who do surf can't be all bad. Yes, there was the Vietnam war, but there was also rock and roll music and Hippies and Woodstock. The only Americans I had met at the time were in Africa with the Peace Corps - and one of them was from Atlanta. He argued that the south had progressed a lot, although there were a lot of people who were still prejudiced against the Southern USA. I was inclined to believe him.

But the Bush years brought the old southern character into the daylight once again, and it was not a pretty sight. During the Bush years, it was possible to see what America would be like with the old south in charge, and the liberals hiding under their rocks. Although I am referring mainly to Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, the attitudes of these states have spread in varying amounts thoughout the USA, especially through certain mountain states as Montana, Wyoming, Alaska and Colorado.

So what were these stereotypes that people had regarding the South? Well, the Southerners were seen as religious extremists, bigoted against not only blacks and Indians, but also against anyone with long hair or an education. They were also violent and not well travelled. The term "redneck" was often used as a perjorative. They listened to hillbilly (another perjorative) music such as bluegrass and country. They watched NASCAR racing and went to segregated schools. And they had an accent different from the rest of the USA. For example, the word "hill" which would be one syllable in the rest of the US would be two in the south "Hee-yul". Or the single syllable word "war" would be "Woa - wuh". And I'm not finished with the stereotypes yet. The cops would be fat, heavily armed, and prone to giving tickets to drivers from the Northern USA and Canada (which they actually had no idea what or where it was, but it sure as Hey-yul wasn't a southern state.) OK I'm finished for now with the stereotypes.

In light of the stereotypes, the Bush years are, to me, more understandable. Policies such as torture, ignorance of science, pre-emptive war, hating the French and Canada, illegal phone tapping, Guantanamo Bay style rule of law, teaching Adam and Eve in schools as science, and trusting important decisions to revelations from God. All these things became more understandable, although it didn't make them right.

Yes, I was disillusioned by the Bush years, to see what became of the USA under southern conservative rule. Hopefully we are back to the America I liked as it was when Easy Rider first came out. But things are never the same as they were, I'm not going to rush out and get my passport just yet.