Cultural Comentary

Easy Rider was a movie that was made to capture a moment in time. The movie fully captivated all the aspects that were happening with America at the time. The late sixties had an amazing movement that started in the west and was sweeping across America. There are few films that that are capable of capturing what is happening in the world. A few movies that come to mind are Dazed and Confused, The Graduate, and The Dead Poet’s Society.

Dazed and Confused was a movie about high school in 1976. The movie was trying to capture the counterculture and the main culture and one youth’s decision about both. One of the side stories was about the youth’s immergence into the high school scene. One character in particular is representative of the drug counterculture. He like to smoke weed and rock out. He was one of the “cool” kids. This film did a good job of bringing up the issues such as hazing, drinking, and drug use. The movie demonstrated how peer pressure was the main drive in the drug and drinking culture of the day. The culture of the day for youth was rebellion cool, and this movie does a great job demonstrating it.

The Graduate is a movie that was made only a few months after Easy Rider and was released before it because of complication with the film making process. The movie showed another side of a problem of the culture that was happening in the U.S. around the late sixties. The Graduate was a tale of a man that had recently graduated from college and was unsure of which direction his life was going. His problems are further perplexed by the sexual tension that looms over his neighbor’s wife. He ends up sleeping with Mrs. Robinson and then falling in love with her daughter. So many of the college youth were lost; they went to college thinking it was the only logical step they had. “What was the next step?” The movie also demonstrates the sexual tension of the house wife during the late sixties. It is an indication of the watch parties that would be taking place in America.

The Dead Poets Society is a land mark film in my book because it brought into question whether schools should inspire boys to think on their own. In the most prestigious academic academies they believe that the process of education was not about teaching students to think on their own, but to believe what they tell them. The teacher played by Robin Williams sees this issue and tries to rebel against the culture of the education system and was looked at as a trouble starter. The rebellion that he starts in his students is one that demonstrates a type of cool talked about in Easy Rider.