116
MARK JAY MIRSKY
let us do our thing. The truth is, America's full of contradictions. It's
often even curious about f.reaks, since it's pretty freaky on its own.
And so I object to the drunken ACLU lawyer as the only helping
hand in the Confederacy. Ride into Southern gas stations on those gleam–
ing Harleys and you'd probably have the local mechanics lollygagging
and soaping you left and right.
What makes the sloppiness and cliche of
Easy
Rider
so sad
is
that
the world they promise to explore is fascinating. The motorcycle
is
really a kind of mechanized horse and it's a brutal, glorious feeling to
ride one.
It
is
no wonder that the outlaw fringe of society in the West
gravitates toward bikes, and there is a strange connection between the
bikers and hippies, witness Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg's reception
of the Hell's Angels. So the best parts of
Easy
Rider
are just coasting
through the great broad space of America on those bikes. And
this is
the cheat of the movie, the peremptory treatment of the motorcycles;
nowhere do I feel Dennis Hopper's or Peter Fonda's love for his machine.
Seriously flawed as they are, why do
Easy
Rider
and
Alice's Res–
taurant
fascinate such a large and relatively intelligent public. Perhaps
because they have an undertone that is totally new to the American film
consciousness, one sensed in
Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One,
but now
nakedly apparent, a radical point of view, a background which
shouts
out that the Establishment in America is against youth and will brutal–
ly
if
stupidly guard its dignity and prerogative. We go into these movies
with the consciousness of Chicago and Mayor Daley, Attorney General
Mitchell's manipulations against Panthers, Morgenthau, Bank reform,
Agnew's Yahooism, the guilt of the Vietnam War and since man
is
a
political animal we are moved powerfully, often almost religiously, even
when as in Z, the horror of events degenerates into horse opera. How–
ever banal the drama, when it touches the deep dread in this democracy
of repression, it is hard not to start and choke with rage.
1£
the foregoing movies show a new consciousness in politics they
do equally well in sex. Despite the Nestle bittersweet ending of
Alice's
Restaurant,
the wages of sin sure are fun, and the naked bathing scene
in
Easy
Rider
looks good enough to jump in and splash around myself.
It's boring to watch someone get high on marijuana or L.S.D. (which
is
one of the problems in
Easy
Rider),
but seduction is a pleasure to
behold.
Yet, I cannot leave these movies in terms of just sex, drugs, new
politics, because I myself believe that they touch, half consciously, on
the search by the generation in its twenties now, for some Eden here. So
that the Hippie commune in
Easy
Rider
and
Alice's
Thanksgiving party
are, however awkwardly staged, moments when I feel the tug of hope,
