Was Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” a Catholic film?

Was Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" a Catholic film?

http://trueslant.com/markstricherz/2010/06/08/was-dennis-hoppers-easy-rider-a-catholic-film/

Jun. 8 2010
by Mark Stricherz

Like everyone else, I thought of "Easy Rider" as a counter-cultural
film. Young people flocked to the movie when it was released in 1969.
Rock songs are peppered throughout. Dennis Hopper's character defines
freedom as the ability to do whatever you want. The characters
indulge in a lot of strange drugs. And like other counter-cultural
movies of the era, the two protagonists ­ spoiler alert ­ are killed
at the end. Is the movie nothing but a celebration of hippies, drugs,
and unconstrained liberty?

Via Rod Dreher, I read G.F.X. Gillis' argument that "Easy Rider" is
not countercultural or left-liberal at alll; it's conservative. As
Gillis argues,

It is not "nihilistic" and "chaotic." Not only does this movie
celebrate family values, it celebrates traditional family values. But
even more than that, Easy Rider argues for the enduring strength and
power of faith in God as it explicitly rejects hedonism, atheism, and
nihilism. This theme is evident throughout the film from the moment
the travelers leave Los Angeles to the final climatic scene.

Not surprisingly, culturally-minded conservative bloggers have jumped
into the debate. Rod amplifies Gillis' point. Daniel McCarthy says
that Hopper, the film's director, was a true radical. Bill Kauffman
calls the film reactionary. Jesse Walker meditates on its conservative themes.

But I'm not sure any of them are right.

The one scene in the film that sticks with me is when Hopper and
Fonda's characters visit the homesteading family and are invited to a
meal. When several of the young children make finishing the meal
difficult, the husband turns to Hopper or Fonda, shrugs his
shoulders, smiles nervously, and says, "We're Catholic." I could
never figure out the significance of the scene. Could the scene
represent the counter-culture's recognition of Catholicism's cultural power?

On reflection, my thought was silly. The thrust of the counter
culture movement shared zero sympathy for Catholic family life, while
here was "Easy Rider" all but telling Paul Ehrlich to go to hell. But
after reading Gillis' intriguing essay, you can be forgiven for
thinking that "Easy Rider" is not a conservative or liberal film.
It's a Catholic film, albeit in a cautionary-tale sort of way. As
Gillis explains,

The first episode in Wyatt and Billy's journey to Mardi Gras occurs
at a desert ranch where the travelers are briefly stranded by a flat
tire. The rancher provides the necessary tools, then invites the men
to supper with his large family. After prayer around a large outdoor
table­before which the ignorant and impious Billy had to be reminded
to remove his hat­Wyatt insistently and sincerely compliments the
rancher on his "spread" and the life he has built there, repeated for emphasis.

Then picking up a hitchhiker, the wanderers stop for gas at Sacred
Mountain, with the word "Sacred" from the gas station's sign splashed
in big red letters across the screen as they pull in. Camping on the
mountain, the cryptic hitchhiker admonishes Billy for disrespecting
the site; once again Billy's irreverence and impiety are exposed to
criticism. Reaching the hitchhiker's destination, the travelers find
a commune hard at work planting crops. The laughter of children
animates the episode until Wyatt and Billy join a second Circle of
Prayer, movingly and famously depicted by a 360-degree pan of the
inhabitants as they pray for the wherewithal to be as generous to
others as others had been to them. The commune is a family as
traditional as the rancher's family: underneath the beads and
tie-dyed fabric is the agrarian extended family functioning in a
classic pastoral.

But, although invited to stay, the travelers move on. They meet
George the drunken liberal lawyer (Jack Nicholson) before continuing
on towards New Orleans, stopping to camp, where George is killed by
locals. Using a free pass inherited from George, they decide to visit
a brothel­to the tune of "Kyrie Eleison," ("Lord have mercy"), drawn
from the Electric Prunes psychedelic but authentic and respectful
version of the Latin Catholic Mass in F Minor­where they encounter
two prostitutes under cathedral ceilings and within walls covered by
religious icons. Visiting a church graveyard, they drop acid and
commence an unpleasant trip of weeping, shuddering and anxiety­amid
frame after frame of sacred imagery and a comforting voice-over of a
young girl saying a Rosary as a funeral unfolds before them.

On Mardi Gras night they camp, and Wyatt speaks those famous words,
"We blew it" in response to Billy's shallow, juvenile excitement at
the fact that "We're rich, man!" "We're free," Billy goes on,
claiming to be "set for life" and ready to retire to Florida, but
Wyatt quietly repeats his judgment: "We blew it." The next day, Ash
Wednesday­the Christian Holy Day of atonement and repentance, the day
when Catholics memento mori, that is, "contemplate death"­the story
ends suddenly and shockingly on a country road in Southwest Louisiana.

If this narrative had been Medieval, could there be any doubt at all
of the theme or the moral teaching intended? Sinners wander the
countryside on a secular quest, encountering God's message but
failing to acknowledge Him. They seek worldly pleasure at the expense
of spiritual fulfillment, finding treasure and discussing it under a
tree, only to finally to die a horrid death by the wayside.

As a matter of fact, such a tale was written in the Middle Ages, by
Geoffrey Chaucer within the Canterbury Tales (the first "road
movie"?), in "The Pardoner's Tale." Chaucer, unquestionably a
moralist, was also a great satirist, as we see in the vicious lampoon
of the venal and grossly hypocritical Pardoner, who preaches all his
sermons on the theme of "The love of money is the root of all evil"
(1 Timothy 6:10) while selling indulgences and false relics to his
ignorant congregations.

I'm not convinced that "Easy Rider" is a Catholic film. None of its
creators ­ Hopper, Fonda, Terry Southern ­ were Catholic. And some
films of the great "downote" era, such as "Five Easy Pieces" and "The
Heartbreak Kid", contained subtle but powerful critiques of
unconstrained individualism. Still, the question is worth pondering, no?

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