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How has Easy Rider Been Constructed to Create Meaning


 Easy Rider is a 1969 American Independent road drama written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern. The premise of the film is that Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel across the Southwest of America carrying the proceeds from a cocaine deal. The film is very appropriate for the time is was filmed due to the inclusion of topics which were prominent at the time such as drugs. In the 1960s the hippie movement was very prominent, this was a movement which rejected mainstream American life and culture, you can see how the history of the time era has been reflected within the film to create an amazing and meaningful end result. In the scene you see four people sat in a cemetery smoking, drinking and taking acid (Priutt). These are all maladaptive coping mechanisms which suggest they was trying to cope with something bad, during this time, the hippie movement had became popular as there were many people against the USAs contribution to the Vietnamese war, many stood in protest by rejecting all mainstream culture. Acid is a hallucinogenic drug which very commonly is associated to hippies as it allows your mind to create colourful, extreme visuals. As the characters start to take the drug the shot cuts to an upward tilt of a building, the use of a shot reverse shot was used here; the shot of the building taken from very low looking up at the building and slowly panning may have been used to suggest the characters are getting higher and higher. The non-diegetic sound of what seems to be people praying slowly gets louder throughout the scene, the phrase "he descended to hell" was used, this could have been used to suggest that the people in the graveyard were bad people for actively hurting their bodies and for influencing other people; the ladies with them did not even know what acid was indicated by the fact that the lady asked "what's that?" twice and got the response "never mind, shut up and take it", this aggressive form of response further suggests the two men in the scene are quite inappropriate and are badly influencing the girls who may not know better (Brou). The cemetery is fairly run down, there are plants growing out of the buildings and the walls are all quite faded and grey rather than an innocent, holy white. The fact that even the religious grounds are run-down in a way suggests that God has given up and evil has prevailed, this links to the time era as at the time the Vietnamese war was taking place and millions of people were dying without a true cause, the US was running low on funds and the lower income parts of the country were suffering therefore, it seemed as though there was no God watching over them (Shabazz). As the camera pans up the wall of what seems to be a church the light shinning from the sun over-exposes the shot to a point where the image turns completely white; this shot holds many religious connotations, the use of a white light that slowly consumes you links to the idea of death. It is very common that people describe death as being a light that pulls you towards it, the imagery of a cemetery furthers this message of death which may suggest that the people in the graveyard are scared of death, throughout we hear diegetic sound of one character screaming the word "stop" as if he has seen a ghost. In the 1960s hippies were called cowards as it was believed they was scared of losing their life fighting for their country (Priutt). This shot could represent their fear of death, throughout the video there is a non-diegetic sound of stomping, this has a martial link to the soldiers marching into war which could be a representation of a deep fear the character may have had and was hiding through the use of drugs.

References

Shabazz, W., 2014. Religion in Easy Rider (Online)
Available at: http://whitneyshabazz.blogspot.com/2014/02/religion-in-easy-rider.html 
Brou, D., 1987 A Skeleton Key to Easy Rider (Online)
Available at : http://digital.auraria.edu/content/AA/00/00/59/83/00001/AA00005983_00001.pdf 
Priutt, S., 2019 How the Vietnam War Empowered the Hippie Movement (Online)
Available at: https://www.history.com/news/vietnam-war-hippies-counter-culture 

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