1960s Counterculture and the Legacy of American Myth: A Study of Three Films

Canadian Review of American Studies Volume 23, Number 2, Winter 1993, pp. 57-78 57 1960s Counterculture and the Legacy of American Myth: A Study of Three Films Bren Ortega Murphy and Jeffery Scott Harder We are all shaped by the times in which we live.I came of age in a time of turbulent social change. Some of it good, such as civil rights, much of it was questionable. But remember, not everyone joined the counterculture. Not everyone demonstrated , dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft ....The majority of my generation lived by the credo our parents taught us. (Marilyn Quayle, Republican National Convention, 1992) During the 1960s, it was common for critics of the political counterculture to characterize the strands of that movement as products of an ominous external threat. In some cases the threat was specificallylinked to communism. In others, it remained vague in terms of ideology except that it was definitely anti-American in nature. 1 This characterization reemerged in U.S. mass media's accounts of various sixties' anniversaries (i.e., the twentieth anniversary of the Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention), in the coverage of antiwar protest during the Gulf War, as well as in Republican attacks on Bill Clinton in the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. During the sixties and seventies, this perspective was presented not onlyin public speeches but also in mainstream film. To be sure, most films which dealt with aspects of the counterculture ignored politics altogether, preferring to concentrate on such signifiers as beads, drugs, and mini skirts. The few that acknowledged sociopolitical issues suggested either that those 58 Canadian Review of American Studies issues arose in a vacuum (e.g. Strawberry Statement, Getting Straight) or by way of some weird psychic trauma (e.g. Wild in the Streets, Zabriski.' Point). But, examination of antiwar and other New Left movement documents of the time constructs a different picture. The Port Huron statement, for example, is a detailed argument for participatory democracy.2 Zaroulis and Sullivan's detailed history of the antiwar movement is replete with references to texts which invoke activism grounded in traditional values.3 Memoirs and other sources of reflective statements from protesters refer to their almost textbook idealism, their passionate belief that the United states should be what it was supposed to be all along.4 Three films, Alice's Restaurant, Easy Rider, and Zachariah, also present key elements of the counterculture as quintessentially American. As with the previously cited writings and speeches, each film articulates a critique of U.S. society in the 1960s. But, each quite clearly identifies its young protesters as carriers of fundamental American values as well.The socalled revolution is not so much a matter of revolt as reform; a return to something promised by their heritage. This study examines these three films as they relate to two core American myths: populism and the salvation of the road. It presents the films as counterculture indictments that the United States of the 1960shad lost touch with its own promises. And finally, it argues that these films, especiallywhen considered together, grapple with the tensions within and between the myths as well as the ambiguity of any real solution. The purpose of such an analysis is twofold. First, it serves as one more piece of evidence that a significant aspect of what is loosely referred to as the sixties' counterculture was strongly influenced by American tradition. Seen from this perspective, many of the films' positions should be considered as part of an ongoing public discourse regarding American values and character rather than as an aberration in that discourse. Second, it illustrates the complexityof the struggle that seems inherent in these myths. In doing so, this analysisserves as a caution not only against unidimensional characterizations of the counterculture, but also against superficial innovations of either myth. Such trivialization undermines thoughtful and constructive dialectic about societal tensions which may very well be Bren Ortega Murphyand Jeffery Scott Harder I 59 unresolvable but nevertheless must be acknowledged since they are woven into the very fabric of American consciousness.5 Film as Sites of Mythic Exploration Rushing and Frentz argue that a society's values...