The Road as Experiential Space

In this opening scene of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda, as the motorcycle vagabond "Captain America," casts away his watch before turning his motorcycle onto the road. The near focus on the gold watch demarcates it as a symbol: conventional notions of time and space are being abandoned for the fluid motion and timelessness of the road. Easy Rider offers an image of the road as an escape from rational thought into a liminal, experiential space. Cruising on a motorcycle is a way to feel and receive visual data wi thout having to process it. The film privileges the idea that raw, unfiltered life is superior to the life that is abstracted and filtered through the mind. The road is an arena upon which to live out this ideal of immediate, sensory experience.

This opening scene also conveys the exuberance of motion on a visual scale in the way only film can. The camera catches the two motorcyclists from all angles. We see them rounding corners, heading into the horizon, and close up with smiles on their faces. The road never looked so good or so fun.