ReportWire

Tag: 1960s in America

  • The Bikeriders Ending: Not Necessarily a “Happy” One

    The Bikeriders Ending: Not Necessarily a “Happy” One

    [ad_1]

    Because The Bikeriders is filled with so much death and tragedy, it’s to be expected that writer-director Jeff Nichols might want to throw the audience “a bone.” Even if it’s a bone coated in a subtly bitter taste for audiences who know how to gauge the real meaning behind Benny (Austin Butler) and Kathy’s (Jodie Comer) so-called happy ending. One that, throughout the course of the film, doesn’t seem like it will actually happen (and, in a way, it doesn’t). This thanks to the storytelling method Nichols uses by way of Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) interviewing Kathy from a “present-day” perspective in 1973, after the numerous power struggles and shifts that took place within the Vandals Motorcycle Club since 1965 (on a side note: the photography book itself documents a period between 1963 and 1967).

    In the beginning, the motorcycle club was “governed” by Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy), who also founded it. The inspiration for doing so stemming from catching The Wild One starring Marlon Brando on TV. And yes, Hardy is very clearly mimicking the “Brando vibe” in this role, while Austin Butler as Benny, his protégé, of sorts, embodies the James Dean spirit instead. Which, one supposes, would make Kathy the Natalie Wood in the equation, with Benny and Kathy mirroring a certain Jim and Judy dynamic in Rebel Without A Cause. Except the fact that Judy was ultimately much more game to live a life of rebellion and uncertainty than Kathy, making a pact with Jim to never go home again (like the Shangri-Las said, “I can never go home anymore”). As for Johnny, he serves as the John “Plato” Crawford (Sal Mineo) of the situation in terms of feeling Benny pull away from him once he becomes romantically involved. Indeed, the running motif of The Bikeriders is the “competition” between Johnny and Kathy to maintain a hold over Benny and influence which direction he’ll be pulled toward in terms of a life path.

    While Johnny wants him to agree to take over the Vandals and lead the next generation of increasingly volatile men, Kathy wants him to “quit the gang” altogether and stop risking his life every single day. A risk that exists, more than anything, because of his stubborn nature. This stubbornness, of course, extends to an unwillingness to remove his “colors” whenever he walks into an out-of-town bar that doesn’t take kindly to “gang pride.” Which is precisely how The Bikeriders commences, with Johnny refusing to take off his jacket when a pair of regulars at the bar he’s drinking in ominously demand that he does just that. Johnny replies, “You’d have to kill me to get this jacket off.” They very nearly do, beating the shit out of him and almost taking his foot clean off with a shovel. And yes, if Johnny’s foot had been amputated, he might as well have died anyway, for his life means nothing to him without the ability to just ride. Which is exactly why he begs Kathy, while she visits him in the hospital, not to let them remove it. Fortunately for his sense of “manhood,” they don’t and Benny is instructed to avoid putting stress on his foot for at least six months while it starts to heal.

    Advice that seems to go way over Johnny’s head as he decides to show up to the hotel where Benny and Kathy are staying to invite him to attend the Vandals’ biggest motorcycle rally yet. Kathy is appalled by both Johnny’s suggestion and Benny’s eager willingness to accept despite his current physical state. Constantly fearful that he’s going to end up hurt because of how reckless he is with his body and in his actions, Kathy reaches a breaking point when her own life is put in jeopardy as a result of hanging around the Vandals for too long. Continuing to keep the company of these club members even as the club mutates into what someone from the sixties would call a “bad scene.” The infiltration of more cutthroat, sociopathic youths like “The Kid” (Toby Wallace), as well as new members fresh back from Vietnam, riddled with PTSD and correlating hard drug addictions, means that the Vandals is no longer the same entity that Johnny had envisioned when he initially founded it.

    The last straw for Kathy happens at another gathering of the members during which Benny ends up leaving in a rush to take one of the OG members, Cockroach (Emory Cohen), to the hospital after a group of new members beats the shit out of him for expressing the simple desire to leave the club and pursue a career as a motorcycle cop. With Benny gone, there’s no one around to protect Kathy from being attacked by another group that tries to force her into a room and gang rape her (this being, in part, a result of mistaken identity because she’s tried on the red dress of another girl at the party). Johnny manages to step in just in time to keep the man from harming her, but the emotional damage is done. Kathy can no longer live a life spent in constant fear and anxiety like this. Thus, she gives Benny an ultimatum: her or the club. In the end, Benny sort of chooses neither, running out on both Kathy and Johnny when each of them tries to strong-arm him into bending to their will.

    It is only after hearing news of Johnny’s murder (at the hands of The Kid, who pulls a dirty trick on Johnny that finds the latter bringing a knife to a gunfight) that Benny decides to go back to Chicago and seek out Kathy for something like comfort. For she’s the only one who will truly be able to understand this loss. In the final scene of the movie, Danny asks what happened with Benny after all that. She informs him that the two are now living happily together (having relocated to Florida, as Kathy had originally suggested), with Benny working as a mechanic at his cousin’s body shop. Even more happily, for her, is the fact that he’s given up riding motorcycles altogether. In short, “he don’t hang around with the gang no more.” This being one of many key lines from the Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets,” which is played frequently as a musical refrain throughout the film.

    That it also plays again at the end of the movie—an ending that, on the surface, seems “happy”—is telling of the larger truth: Benny has lost an essential piece of himself in choosing to give up riding. So, even though Kathy smiles at him through the window and he (sort of) smiles back, the playing of the song, paired with the distant sound of motorcycles in the distance as he stares wistfully into the abyss, makes it seem as though, like the rider of “Out in the Streets,” “His heart is [still] out in the streets.” However, in contrast to the woeful narrator of the song, Kathy isn’t one to acknowledge, “They’re waiting out there/I know I gotta set him free/(Send him back)/He’s gotta be/(Out in the street)/His heart is out in the streets.” Like most women, she would prefer to keep Benny inside their domestic cage, safe from harm. Safe, in effect, from truly living. For there is no purer freedom Benny feels than what he experiences on the open road.

    All of this isn’t to say that the ending isn’t “generally” happy. Though that perspective also depends on one’s values. And yes, The Bikeriders makes a grand statement about the sacrifices that are frequently necessary for a relationship to work (and also just to secure a little more lifespan longevity). In Benny’s case, it was giving up the essential core of his identity. Which begs the question: if that’s what it takes to make a relationship work, then can one really be all that happy? Judging from the “sunken place” look on Benny’s face, the answer is looking like a no. As Mary Weiss puts it, “I know that something’s missing inside/(Something’s gone)/Something’s died.” And in place of that is what society refers to as an “upright citizen.”

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The Bikeriders: America in Decay and Contentious Generational Divides Have Long Been a Motif of the Nation

    The Bikeriders: America in Decay and Contentious Generational Divides Have Long Been a Motif of the Nation

    [ad_1]

    One wonders, sometimes, if there was ever truly a period in U.S. history that was “golden,” so much as the nation being in an ever-increasing state of decline from the moment it was roguely founded. For while the present set of circumstances befalling the United States has rightfully convinced many Americans that things can’t possibly get more dystopian/reach a new nadir, to some extent, that has been the story of America for most of its relatively brief existence. And yet, starting in the early sixties (circa 1962), it was apparent that the United States was already beginning to experience the symptoms of some major “growing pains” unlike any they had ever known. A seismic cultural shift was afoot, and perhaps one of the most notable signs was the increase in “outlaw” motorcycle clubs across the country.

    Such as the one created by Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy), leader of the Vandals Motorcycle Club. An “MC” based on the real-life Outlaws Motorcycle Club that Danny Lyon was a member of from 1963 to 1967 (two years before Easy Rider would enshrine “the culture”), becoming one for the purpose of being able to authentically photograph and generally document the life and times of this “fringe” society. It is Lyon’s book that serves as the basis for Jeff Nichols’ fifth film, The Bikeriders (the same name as Lyon’s photographic tome). And, although Johnny is the founder of the Vandals MC, it is Benny Cross (Austin Butler) who serves as the “true” representation of what it means to live the biker lifestyle: being aloof, mysterious (through muteness) and not at all concerned with or interested in settling down in any one place, with any one person. That is, until the anchor of the story and its telling, Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer, wielding her best impression of a Midwest accent), shows up one night in the bar where the Vandals hang out. As she retells it to the film version of Lyon, played by Challengers’ Mike Faist, a friend of hers called her up and told her to come by and meet her there.

    From the moment Kathy walked in, she said she had never felt more out of place in her entire life. This being further compounded by all the ogling aimed in her direction. Creeped out to the max, Kathy tells her friend she’s going to leave, but is stopped in her tracks by the sight of the muscular Benny standing in front of the pool table. She decides to go back to her chair, waiting for the inevitable moment when he’ll come over and talk to her. But before that happens, Johnny approaches her first, assuring that he’s not going to let anything happen to her. Kathy’s response is of an eye-rolling nature and, when she and Benny finally get to talking, she still tells him she has to go. And she does…but not without being pawed on the way out. So pawed, in fact, that when she makes it back onto the street, her white pants are covered with handprints. Alas, the pursuit isn’t over, with Benny casually walking outside, going over to his motorcycle and mounting it as Kathy watches, realizing that the hordes from the MC are coming out to essentially force her to take a ride with him so as to avoid their wolf-like, unsettling nature.

    From that night onward, Benny waits outside her house once he drops her off, sitting on his motorcycle with stoic determination. Which, yes, comes across as even more stalker-y than Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) showing up to Diane Court’s (Ione Skye) house in Say Anything… to hold a boombox over his head and play Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Even though Kathy already has a live-in boyfriend, Benny just keeps waiting. Irritating the shit out of the boyfriend with his presence until he finally splits in a huff, leaving the door open, so to speak, for Benny to make his move without Kathy being able to have any excuse to “resist” him. Although she starts out by telling Danny that her life has been nothing but trouble ever since she met Benny, with him constantly getting in brawls, being thrown in jail, etc. (indeed, it smacks of the sentiment behind Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”), she admits that they got married just five months after meeting. Thus, her house effectively becomes another home away from home for many of the boys in the club. A hangout where motorcycles parked on the sidewalk vex Kathy to no end as she warns them that the neighbors will start to complain of a “bad element” in the vicinity.

    Ironically, of course, the main reason many of these boys chose to join up was because they were deemed a “bad element” based on their appearance alone. As Johnny’s right-hand man, Brucie (Damon Herriman), tells Danny, “You don’t belong nowhere else, so you belong together.” Basically, the misfits create their own “utopian” society where they can at last find acceptance in a world that has otherwise rejected them. As Johnny Stabler (Marlon Brando) puts it to Mildred (Peggy Maley) in 1954’s (or 1953, depending on who you ask) The Wild One, when she asks, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”: “Whaddaya got?” In short, these are the men rebelling against everything, including their own effective banishment from “polite” society. (And, needless to say, Johnny is inspired to form the club in the first place as a result of watching this movie.)

    While Lyon’s original book documents years going up to 1967, the film version of The Bikeriders goes up to the early seventies, with things taking a shift toward the decidedly sinister as the end of the sixties arrived, and more and more of the types of men joining up were drug users and/or recently returned from Vietnam with the PTSD to go with it. As Lyon himself remarked while still part of the club, “I was kind of horrified by the end. I remember I had a big disagreement with this guy who rolled out a huge Nazi flag as a picnic rug to put our beers on. By then I had realized that some of these guys were not so romantic after all.”

    To that point, many who had tried to remain in the “lavender haze” of America’s postwar “prosperity” in the 1950s were starting to realize that maybe capitalism and communist-centered witch hunts weren’t so romantic after all, either. The sixties, indeed, was a decade that shattered all illusions Americans had about “sense,” “morality” and “meaning.” This perhaps most famously immortalized by Joan Didion writing, “The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing persons reports, then moved on themselves.”

    Like Didion, Lyon was also part of the New Journalism “movement” in news reporting. He, too, inserted himself into the situation, into the “narrative.” One ultimately shaped and experienced by his own outsider views (like Didion documenting the “dark side” of Haight-Ashbury hippies in 1967’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” quoted above). And what his photos and their accompanying interview transcriptions told the “squares” of America was this: their precious way of life was an illusion built on a house of cards. By a simple twist of fate, they, too, might find themselves as one of these “lost boys” or as one of the women who loved them. And oh, how Kathy loves Benny, even though it’s to her emotional detriment.

    With that in mind, it’s no wonder that the musical refrain of The Shangri-Las opening “oooh” in “Out in the Streets” keeps playing throughout the film (because who knows more about biker boys than the Shangri-Las?). A constant callback to remind viewers of the track’s resonant lyrics, including, “He don’t hang around with the gang no more/He don’t do the wild things that he did before/He used to act bad/Used to, but he quit it/It makes me so sad/‘Cause I know that he did it for me (can’t you see?)/And I can see (he’s still in the street)/His heart is out in the street.” This song foreshadowing what Benny will end up sacrificing for Kathy by the end of the film.

    Though, ultimately, the sacrifice is a result of knowing that the motorcycle club will never be what it was during its pure, carefree early years. Years that were untainted by vicious, violent power struggles—this most keenly represented in The Bikeriders by a young aspiring (and ruthless) rider billed as The Kid (Toby Wallace). It is his way of life, his lack of regard for anything resembling “tradition,” “integrity” or “honor among men” that most heartbreakingly speaks to how each subsequent generation of youth becomes more and more sociopathic. Whether in their bid to prove themselves as being “better” than the previous generation or merely exhibiting the results of being a product of their own numbed-out time. Either way, in The Bikeriders, the generational divide will prove to be the undoing of both sides, “old” and young.

    Incidentally, this might be most poetically exemplified by a scene of Kathy and Benny watching an episode of Bewitched where Dick York is still the one playing Darrin, not Dick Sargent. Obviously, York was the superior Darrin. Not just because he was the original, but because he exuded a sleek, effortless sort of class that Sargent didn’t (though, funnily enough, York ended up leaving the show because of his painkiller addiction, related to the health issues he had sustained from a back injury while filming a movie five years before Bewitched—a meta detail as Benny is also laid up in bed due to his own “work-associated” injuries). The same goes for the old versus new guard motorcycle club members in The Bikeriders.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Barbra As Ultimate Useless White Woman in Night of the Living Dead

    Barbra As Ultimate Useless White Woman in Night of the Living Dead

    [ad_1]

    As far as politically charged early innovators of the horror genre go, Night of the Living Dead takes the cake. Not only the template for the many zombie movies that would come after it, George A. Romero’s debut feature would set the tone for embedding political commentary in such “gory trash.” In fact, although not a zombie movie, it was only six years later that Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would be released. Yet another scathing commentary on the Vietnam War lying just beneath the surface. 

    With Night of the Living Dead, though, it was about more than just accenting the fact that carnage had become nothing but “titillating” news to report on. It was about the apex that the civil rights movement had reached in the late 1960s, culminating not only in numerous constitutional gains (so they said) for Black Americans, but also the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. This, “coincidentally,” was the year that Night of the Living Dead was released. Amid the most volatile of racial tensions, the Cold War and the U.S. government’s open slaughtering of its citizens whether at home or abroad (where many were sent to fight a losing, inane war). Romero’s decision to cast a Black actor, Duane Jones, in the lead role of a horror film was also considered groundbreaking. But who knew better than the American Black man what it was to live a 24/7 horror movie? More “scandalous” still, Jones as Ben was placed in the hero role among the rest of the all-white cast. This including Judith O’Dea, who played the part of Barbra. A part that would have, in later years, framed her as the final girl (instead, that inaugural trope would be helmed by Sally Hardesty [Elena Sanchez] in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). But in Night of the Living Dead, the trope she instead embodies is one that has endured over many decades: the useless white woman. Not to be confused with the frivolous white woman (e.g., Betty Draper from Mad Men). 

    The film starts out in such a way as to naturally lead the viewer to believe that this is going to be a movie centered on Barbra, with the first almost fourteen minutes focused on what happens after her brother, Johnny (Russell Streiner), is attacked in the cemetery by the first “ghoul” a.k.a. zombie (played by Bill Hinzman) and Barbra must flee to some kind of safety. This turns out to be an empty (sort of) house not far from the cemetery (itself located in a rural area three hours from Pittsburgh, per Johnny’s complaints about having to travel all the way there just to place a wreath on their dead father’s grave and satisfy their mother [who got to stay home] and her quaint notions of “remembrance”). Upon encountering the mangled, eaten body of the original homeowner, Barbra starts to run outside the house again, only to encounter not only the same zombie following her, but Ben as well, himself seeking refuge from these horrifying “things,” as he calls them. No longer human. And this is an important word to distinguish the “living dead” (a phrase that also describes how the U.S. treats its minorities) from the humans. Because it’s the underlying language white people have used for centuries in their classification of Black people. What James Baldwin once referred to as the “thingification” of Black men and women during slavery. Noting how this is the only race that has ever been viewed as entirely “unhuman,” so as to “absolve” people from any sense of wrongdoing about their treatment. And it is a deeply indoctrinated perception that remains embedded in the white psyche—and, of course, never should have been permitted to happen in the first place. But with that “thingifying” of Black people, it’s no surprise that a police officer’s mere sight of a Black man would prompt him to assume him as a “ghoul,” giving automatic “license” to shoot him. As though he doesn’t have that automatic “license” every day of the week, even when a rash of dead corpses haven’t reanimated into flesh-eating zombies. 

    Barbra is perhaps able to conceal her own racism by saying not much of anything at all throughout the narrative. Even so, when Ben notices her terrified reaction—as though it might still be lingering because she’s alone with a Black man—after he closes the door behind them, he assures, “It’s all right.” What’s more, Ben is the only person she can rely on in her state. Especially now that she’s witnessed the death of her brother (though is still in denial about him being dead). Because, yes, Barbra is traumatized, entering into a trance as a coping mechanism. But it says something that she is the one who does that over Ben, accustomed, as a Black man, to not only enduring trauma all the time but being expected to grin and bear it. To “power through.” No such expectation has ever been placed on a white girl like Barbra, allowed to indulge and wallow in the shock of her trauma in a way that Ben, quite simply, is not built to. 

    Thus, he enters into a fight response, proceeding to board up all the windows to the house after realizing there’s no other options for defense. Barbra, meanwhile, is still in her scared little girl trance. Something Ben is expected to accommodate by interrupting his own state of panic to soothe her. To placate her. To, at the very least, try to shake her out of her dark reverie so that he can have the benefit of a partner assisting him in trying to survive. Foolishly, he does try to get Barbra to help out a bit with arming the place against the indefatigably hungry zombies amassing outside, smelling live people the way bears can sniff out food from miles away. As he riffles through kitchen drawers looking for something useful (since Barbra damn sure ain’t), Barbra continues to stare at him blankly, doing absolutely nothing except making the situation worse with her unapologetic uselessness. Finally, Ben gets so irritated by it that he spells out, “Why don’t you see if you can find some wood, some boards, something there by the fireplace, something we can nail this place up?” When she responds by approaching him silently, almost like a zombie herself, Ben snaps and starts to scream, “Goddam—!” stopping himself to try a gentler, more empathetic tack. He tells her, “Look, I know you’re afraid. I’m afraid too. But we have to try to board up the house together. Now, I’m going to board up the windows and the doors, do you understand? We’ll be all right here till someone comes to rescue us. But we’ll have to work together. You’ll have to help me.” Turns out, Ben forgot how much a useless white woman doesn’t have to do anything. Especially help out a Black man. 

    The rhetoric of Ben repeating his line about needing to work together comes up more than once, and it’s indicative, yet again, of the times. When leading faces of the Black civil rights movement, including King and Baldwin, were imploring white folks to recognize Black people as their fellow brothers and sisters. To, at long last, work with them rather than against them. But that didn’t happen in real life, and it certainly didn’t happen in Night of the Living Dead, where Ben is met with resistance at almost every turn. Particularly when the basement hiders in the house, led by Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), emerge. Indeed, the fact that they heard all of the noise plus Barbra’s screaming upstairs and did nothing except continue to hide is yet another metaphor for white uselessness in a Black person’s world. At the minimum, Tom (Keith Wayne), is willing to be more helpful. And more adhering to Ben’s inherent leadership role. Something Harry obviously doesn’t feel obliged to relinquish, assuming he’s the one who should be listened to as the eldest white man. 

    Before they enter the scene, however, Ben actually does end up appearing to miss the form of Barbra’s uselessness that kept her mute because, once she starts talking lucidly, she becomes even more of a shitshow. Initially retelling the story of what happened to her brother with an air of calmness, Barbra grows gradually more frantic and, yes, hysterical. This prompts Ben to urge, “Maybe you oughta calm down.” In other words, Oh god, please go back to your fugue state. As her hysteria mounts, she insists they go find her brother, who she also insists is still alive. After enough of this, Ben socks her in the face, a look of satisfaction forming as he seems to view Barbra as the representation for all such previous demanding but useless white women he’s had to deal with in the past. 

    As for Tom’s girlfriend, Judy (Judith Ridley), she, too, proves to be the worst kind of useless in that she actually wields that uselessness as a means to bring others down. Namely, Tom…as she goes against the plan to stay inside while Tom and Ben run out to fill the car with gas so they can escape. Instead of just letting him go, Judy latches onto him. As a result, she later ends up slowing him down when her jacket gets caught in the truck—enough time for the fire that’s started around it to make the whole car go up in flames. Leaving behind the perfect “barbeque dinner” for the surrounding zombies. Still, Judy did at least watch Harry and Helen’s (Marilyn Eastman) “sick” child, Karen (Kyra Schon), in the basement when they asked her to. That was far more than the likes of “paralyzed” Barbra could ever offer. Shit, even a white girl like Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren) could function through her trauma so long as she wasn’t triggered by the color red. Not Barbra though. She does fuck-all to help Ben, who does the real labor to survive and, in the end, is met with a crueler fate than Barbra being swarmed by zombies and seeing her undead brother among them. 

    And yet, though it’s sad to say, no amount of Barbra’s assistance likely would have been able to prevent Ben from being met with the average American Black male death: cold-blooded murder by a white person in a position of authority.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link