Life on Easy Mode.mp3

00:00:03 Usually when I take a look at a film, I focus on what messages the audiences are meant to absorb at the time of the release and hindsight being 20/20, as they say, it's often easy to see these messages for what they are and and expose them to people today. And while we're still going to do a little bit of that.
00:00:22 For this film, I'd like to take a look at a movie that was culturally important to baby boomers and see how it might be perceived not by audiences in 1969, when when the film was released but by an audience to.
00:00:38 Day an audience that's aware of the context of the film and the target audience a.
00:00:45 Film that seemed to speak.
00:00:48 To the generation that presided over the decline and the crumbling empire that we live in today.
00:00:54 And what does that?
00:00:55 Film tell audiences that are growing up in the aftermath and trying to wrestle control from this generation that produced and identified so deep.
00:01:05 Lee, with this movie, the film that I'm talking about is Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's Easy Rider. I watched Easy Rider for the first time, 50 years after it was released after reading an interview with Peter Fonda, who is taking a look back at the film that he claimed represented.
00:01:25 The New Hollywood The Hollywood of the baby boomers.
00:01:30 That it was this film and films like it that signaled the death of the stuffy studio Hollywood and ushered in in.
00:01:38 In my opinion, the flood of degeneracy.
00:01:42 Free from the shackles of the haze.
00:01:44 Code and objective morality for that matter.
00:01:48 Easy Rider was nominated for two Oscars.
00:01:51 A Golden Globe and was a winner at the Cannes Film Festival.
00:01:55 It was also one of the first films to ditch the traditional soundtrack format that films have been using since the invention of film and to use contemporary baby boomer rock'n'roll with songs from bands like Steppenwolf, The Birds and Jimi Hendrix. In fact, as someone watching this film.
00:02:16 In 2019, it really did feel like I was watching this endless boomer music video, and at times I really think.
00:02:25 That was a.
00:02:26 Big part of the draw.
00:02:28 For this film that was released before MTV or music videos were even a thing.
00:02:34 Easy Rider starts out with two bikers, played by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, buying cocaine from Mexicans.
00:02:42 Now this.
00:02:44 Certainly wasn't the.
00:02:45 Film's intention, but as an American watching this in 2019 with a full understanding of exactly who has failed to maintain a border between Mexico and my country.
00:03:00 And has been listening to baby boomers drone on about.
00:03:03 How Mexicans are coming illegally, it's no problem at all, because they're doing the jobs that Americans won't do.
00:03:12 I have a different.
00:03:13 View than the original audience. In 1969, I view this scene.
00:03:19 With what I would have to describe as disdain.
00:03:23 That's only going to grow as this movie continues.
00:03:26 To me, this scene is just one of countless unintended though they might be metaphors.
00:03:34 The young boomers caring more.
00:03:35 About their personal gain, looking to make a.
00:03:38 Quick buck by any.
00:03:39 Means necessary in the film.
00:03:42 They're buying cocaine from Mexicans to poison the sons and daughters of the founding Fathers to make a buck.
00:03:48 Just like older.
00:03:49 Boomers would destroy communities with illegal immigrants so they could make a buck.
00:03:54 At the expense of Americans.
00:03:57 And in the film, the way they make a buck is by selling out to Jewish record executive Phil Spector.
00:04:04 Yes, that Phil Spector.
00:04:06 The the same Phil Specter who murdered a blonde European model in.
00:04:11 His home and then disguised himself as a woman and managed to evade conviction for years.
00:04:17 I wonder what kind of.
00:04:18 Unintended metaphor that spells out in 2019.
00:04:24 Strap in, ladies and gentlemen, we're just getting started.
00:04:28 So after getting.
00:04:29 Rich by importing crime from Mexico and selling it to a Jewish murderer of.
00:04:33 White women 2.
00:04:34 Baby boomers decide to go to Mardi Gras party their lives away with the money.
00:04:40 They they don't stop.
00:04:42 Trust me.
00:04:43 Next we get a close up of what the main character.
00:04:46 Is riding on.
00:04:48 It's a motorcycle garishly decorated with the American flag.
00:04:52 He stuffs this icon of America with his ill gotten cash.
00:04:58 Throws away his.
00:04:58 Watch, because now that he's sold the country out, he doesn't need to worry about the future and he rides the American flag until it breaks down.
00:05:09 But luckily for him, the two are helped out by a man who has escaped the.
00:05:13 City and has a.
00:05:15 Homestead, a wife and several children in New Mexico.
00:05:18 This is the one time in the film when I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the film makers might be more self aware than I first imagine.
00:05:30 In this part of the.
00:05:32 Film and this is maybe.
00:05:34 The only time in the film.
00:05:36 The two worlds, the two audiences, the.
00:05:38 Audience in 1969.
00:05:41 And me in 2019, the two worlds seemed to collide. Peter Fonda's character, the one who rode the American flag stuffed with cash until.
00:05:52 It broke down.
00:05:54 Looks at the homesteaders life and seems to admire the man for what he's built, he tells the man that he should be proud.
00:06:02 And you really get a.
00:06:03 Events that there's a part of him that wishes that this was the path.
00:06:07 He had taken.
00:06:09 Which, to be honest, only makes me angrier and hate the characters more.
00:06:12 I I can.
00:06:13 No longer view them.
00:06:15 As ignorant, drugged up hippies.
00:06:18 Aimlessly wandering through life with no direction.
00:06:21 Because of the compliments he gives the homesteader, the only thing.
00:06:25 You can conclude.
00:06:26 Is that he knows this was a choice.
00:06:31 A good choice, but after taking from that man what he needed to ride his money stuffed American flag and eating the man's food, they continue on their way to Mardi Gras, to the sounds of Boomerang.
00:06:46 Next, the duo picks up a hippie hitchhiker and they take him to where he's going.
00:06:50 It's a.
00:06:51 Hippie compound that is in stark stark contrast a contrast I find equally hilarious and irritating.
00:07:00 To the homesteaders ranch, instead of a man who's productive and the patriarch of his family, a family that is governed by his order and an order that has produced surplus that allows him to help these two random strangers passing through.
00:07:17 The hippies live in a complete, lackadaisical chaos.
00:07:23 Children are running around aimlessly, everyone's doing drugs and having sex, the hitchhiker explains.
00:07:29 They didn't even get the crops planted in time, and now they're running out of food.
00:07:34 Half of the members of the Compounder are performing obnoxious, impromptu performance art plays for an audience.
00:07:42 Too stoned to notice how.
00:07:44 Terrible it is.
00:07:45 While the other half tries to plant crops by wandering around in the dirt, tossing seeds recklessly onto the ground as they're high as kites, it's.
00:07:56 Like a boomer Lord.
00:07:57 Of the flies and entire community.
00:07:59 Beauty of rootless Woodstock.
00:08:02 Attendees making love not war or food in the wilderness.
00:08:08 Almost every resident of this clown show reaches the level of hippie that that kind of incites violence and reasonable people, and after.
00:08:19 Mingling with this commune very respectfully, of course.
00:08:22 What they're doing is very revolutionary.
00:08:25 It's very awe inspiring.
00:08:29 But alas, after a few days of constantly smoking marijuana and having sterile sex, the two continue on their way to Mardi Gras.
00:08:39 Next we see the 1st.
00:08:41 Of many instances where the film will repeatedly demonize white southerners and frame them as the the real enemy of the people, the enemy of the generation.
00:08:55 They're the opposite of everything that the boomer stands for.
00:08:58 They are racists, sexists, homophobes, prone to random acts of violence and oppression.
00:09:04 The two bikers are arrested when they happen upon a small town parade.
00:09:08 And decide to inject themselves into it rather than respecting the order of the community.
00:09:14 And then instead of understanding what they did wrong, they complain about the the weirdo Hicks in the town and as they do in what seems to be a requirement in Hollywood movies today and then.
00:09:30 They mock the town's Christianity while in jail they meet Jack Nicholson's character, who apparently is the son of, of someone important in town and also an alcoholic lawyer that was locked up from the debauchery of of the night before they locked him up so he could sleep.
00:09:48 Off his hangover.
00:09:50 He uses his.
00:09:51 Influence with the police to get the two.
00:09:53 Out of prison.
00:09:54 And they invite him to go along with them to Mardi.
00:09:57 Gras he tells.
00:09:59 Them that there's a whole house that he has always wanted to go to and agrees to come along on the way to Mardi Gras, they stop off somewhere in the scary white Deep South in a town, basically strand of deliverance.
00:10:15 And they go.
00:10:16 To a restaurant that refuses to serve them, the locals at the next table openly discuss what they're going to do with the the long haired gay people that have rolled in the town while the desperate young Southern girls drool and fawn all over them because they're so cool they can't help.
00:10:36 But make overt sexual advances towards them, they decide to leave town because they feel like it's dangerous, but they don't go far enough, apparently.
00:10:45 And the randomly violent, evil, racist, sexist bigot, homophobe southern.
00:10:49 Runners go to their camp in.
00:10:51 The middle of the night and for.
00:10:53 No reason at.
00:10:54 All severely beat them one of them to death, so for no reason they beat up the two bikers and and murdered Jack Nicholson's character.
00:11:05 And what happens next is even more bizarre and.
00:11:11 I honestly don't even.
00:11:12 Really know what to think about it other than once again it shows kind of how self-centered and and free of personal responsibility.
00:11:19 The characters are.
00:11:21 A man they invited to ride with them to to.
00:11:25 Mardi Gras, who was completely innocent.
00:11:27 Helped them out.
00:11:28 Got him out of prison.
00:11:30 Was just murdered.
00:11:32 For being with them, and there's zero time devoted to what they should do to like.
00:11:39 Notify law enforcement or or or maybe get revenge or something.
00:11:44 In fact, there's nothing in the film to suggest that they they didn't just leave them there at the side of the road and and just keep going to Mardi Gras like nothing happened.
00:11:54 The the only real tribute they offered to him is after going through his wallet, they find the name of the whole house in New Orleans and decide, oh, let's go to the whole house that.
00:12:04 He wanted to go to.
00:12:05 And to to honor.
00:12:07 That's what he would have wanted.
00:12:11 I mean, and this movie is.
00:12:13 Full of of jarring edits, scenes that don't seem to like really go together very well, and and I think a lot of that was due to this being Hopper's first movie. He just didn't know what he was doing. But even if you account for that.
00:12:27 It it really strikes me as sociopathic how casually they handle the loss of the the the beating to death, loss of their friend, and just continue on to on their pleasure seeking journey.
00:12:41 So the next scene they get to the **********, they rent out two prostitutes and go on a drug fueled adventure.
00:12:50 Through Mardi Gras.
00:12:51 They eventually wind up doing acid in a graveyard and and the scene that follows, and and it's really it's just reminiscent of every single drug scene in every student.
00:13:02 Film ever made just a series of of random cuts passed off as artistic and in a lot of ways, it's also kind of just an.
00:13:10 Excuse to show the prostitutes without their clothes on.
00:13:14 So the random pseudo artistic shots depicting the acid trip goes.
00:13:21 On and on and.
00:13:22 Like like far longer than necessary and kind of gives you the impression after a while that.
00:13:29 It's edited this way specifically for the hippies in the audience who they know are going to get high.
00:13:36 In preparation for the film.
00:13:38 So it's like a little treat for the people that are in on acid in the audience.
00:13:42 Because other than that, it's just obnoxious.
00:13:44 Like it goes on way too long and there's no meaning behind it.
00:13:48 No. Deep like whoa.
00:13:52 Message to it at all.
00:13:53 It's it's just random, stupid art film crap.
00:13:57 Well, and and naked ladies.
00:13:59 And then it transitions quickly and jarringly into the next scene.
00:14:02 You don't even know what happened to the prostitutes.
00:14:04 They're just magically gone.
00:14:06 And the two are camping out.
00:14:08 At the side of the road leaving Mardi.
00:14:10 Gras behind, apparently, and the most famous.
00:14:13 Line of the film is spoken.
00:14:17 And and for a moment, I'm tempted.
00:14:20 Just for a second.
00:14:22 To view this as a sign once again.
00:14:26 Of self-awareness, Dennis Hopper's character is celebrating the fact that they have all this money from their drug deal, and they just went to Mardi Gras and partied with hookers.
00:14:38 And everything went just how they planned, you know, no mention of the guy that got beat to death along the way.
00:14:45 And then Peter Fonda's character, who isn't as celebratory as his friend, looks at him and just says no.
00:14:55 We blew it.
00:14:59 We blew it.
00:15:02 Hopper and Fonda have never said.
00:15:05 What they meant by that line?
00:15:07 And when they have talked.
00:15:08 About it, they make it seem as though it's meant to mean whatever the audience.
00:15:13 Wants to apply it to.
00:15:16 And this audience in 2019.
00:15:19 Knows exactly what to apply it to.
00:15:22 You did blow it.
00:15:25 You had it all and you sold us out so you can have your little adventure with your pockets full of cash.
00:15:32 And you blew it.
00:15:34 You kicked Humpty Dumpty, right the **** *** the wall and watched him tumble and crash to a million pieces because you were too high to do anything else.
00:15:43 You and your generation ******* blew it.
00:15:46 And justice, like Dennis Hopper himself.
00:15:49 You won't live long enough to reap what you've sown.
00:15:52 This movie is quite literally, in every way imaginable and unimaginable.
00:15:59 Peak ******* boomer.
00:16:02 And to top it all off, as if the.
00:16:04 Film makers know.
00:16:06 How this has to end?
00:16:09 And wants to blame shift once again throw all the responsibility that they spent their entire lives avoiding.
00:16:15 Shift it all.
00:16:16 Take it all and place that responsibility on the people.
00:16:21 Spent the entire movie demeaning.
00:16:24 You see, for no reason, literally no reason at.
00:16:27 All while riding their motorcycles peacefully through the South.
00:16:35 Not hurting nobody.
00:16:38 An old southern farmer decides to just.
00:16:42 Blow them both away with this shotgun.
00:16:45 Really, like for no reason.
00:16:46 Just they drive by, he gets.
00:16:49 A shotgun out and just murders them for no reason.
00:16:54 Other than he's a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
00:16:58 So he blows them away and sends their iconic American bike and their money up in flames.
00:17:05 The film makers knew exactly how this had to end, and they picked the laziest scapegoat possible to avoid any responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
00:17:13 And ladies and gentlemen.
00:17:16 That is why boomers love Easy Rider.
00:17:23 For black pill, I'm Devin stack.
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