Road movies and the myth of rural America – Far Out Magazine

The myth of the perpetual American road is one of the oldest and most patriotic stories ever to be told in the United States, featuring lonely, wandering characters trying to find purpose in the wilderness of the countryside. Wide, endless and sprawling, these American back roads and highways represent a poetic landscape rife for self-discovery, led by the inspiring muffled vibrations of the music of the liberating car stereo.

Much like the classic American western, the road movie relies on an exploratory narrative where characters explore their own frontiers whilst pushing the physical borders of discovery. Such journeys take characters across the length and breadth of America, encountering hitchhikers, strange, desolate locations and surprising challenges, each weaving together to create one all-encompassing story of personal revelation.

Such stories are peppered throughout the history of American cinema, from the early tale of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 to the same storys modern reimagining in 2019s Queen & Slim, with the core narrative of self-discovery in the context of cultural change being pertinent to the subgenre.

Indeed, back in the 1960s, the power of Americas mythical past was still fresh in the mind of the zeitgeist, as the western genre remained a significant genre of contemporary Hollywood. Built on the very constructs of American idealism, the genre is one that remains inextricably tied to the identity of the nation itself, representing the values of liberty, justice and courage that the country itself holds so dearly.

Despite holding a neo-noir crime identity, with a narrative based on the real-life crime spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, theres no doubt that the 1967 movie, directed by Arthur Penn, is also a contemporary evolution of western cinema. In pursuit of liberty and the freedom of the American dream, the pair robbed gas stations, restaurants, and small-town banks, operating in Texas and New Mexico, trading horses for a 1934 Ford Model 40 B Fordor Deluxe sedan.

Much like the road movie, ever since the genres inception in the early 1920s, Western cinema has changed with the winds of America, becoming one of the greatest cinematic signifiers for the social and political changes the country has undergone in the past century. This mythic genre was too based on an idea of a lawless rural America where the true essence of the country seeped blew with the momentum of the tumbleweed.

Penn wasnt the only one to notice this truth either, with Dennis Hoppers cult classic road movie, Easy Rider presenting a tale that closely resembled the daring exploration of a timeless western story. Creating one of cinemas most countercultural road trips, Hoppers 1969 film is a hippie romp that would become part of the fabric of the late 20th-century movement. Chronicling a modern American odyssey perpetuated by the ideals of the bohemian subculture, Easy Rider journeys through Arizona and New Mexico, chronicling an epic journey that takes in all the sights, smells and noises of 60s America.

Led by an equally counter-cultural team that included actors Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, the film represents the change in American ideology that occurred throughout the middling decades of the late 20th century. Out on the open roads, such subversive ideas are explored through a haze of marijuana smoke, as the concepts of all-American freedom are discussed in the context of an increasingly commercial country that is slowly restricting the liberty of the wild west.

Such a sentiment crossed over into the 1970s, with Two-Lane Blacktop illustrating an American counterculture on the move. Burgeoning with the ongoing injustice of the Vietnam war, the youth of America found solace in the liberty of the open road.

The wide and wild endless roads of the American highways represented a poetic landscape in which self-discoveries were made for an energetic new generation, their expressive soundtracks of identity blasting out the windows of Ford Mustangs and Cadillac Coupe DeVilles. Such individuals explored their frontiers whilst pushing the borders of discovery, engaging in fleeting conversations with hitchhikers whilst fantasising about relationships and their place in Americas fluctuating identity.

Young and bohemian, the nameless lead friends, played by the singer-songwriter of Sweet Baby James, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, the drummer for the Beach Boys engage in a relationship that exists solely for their love and endless facts about cars, the means by which every inch of the country can be discovered and claimed.

It is in the depths of these rural corners of the United States where the truth of the country lies, a truth that has been built by decades of myth-making that paints the essence of America to belong in the flourishing national parks, teeming wildlife and love for liberty above all. Though, this constructed truth is as genuine as the claim on a red MAGA hat, simply echoing back to a fictional idea of America that is poorly made out beyond the smog of capitalist constructs and corporate ventures that truly make up the backbone of the country.

Such representation of this broken idea of national identity was presented in Terrence Malicks extraordinary debut feature, Badlands, a film that follows two protagonists who reveal a dark truth about the country in the late 20th and 21st century as they engage in a ruthless killing spree.

Exploring how American commercial values poisoned the idea of the mythical wanderer in the countrys wilderness, Malicks film comments on the technological revolution that saw televisions find their place in households across the country and the status of the celebrity grow astronomically. Where the travelling myth-makers of the past found meaning on their own terms, the lead character of Badlands, Kit (Martin Sheen), self-consciously moulds himself on the famous rebel and youthful celebrity, James Dean.

Defining himself by the icons he admires and creating a fake image of himself based on others, Malick demonstrates how the ideology of the American countryside has been corrupted by a pervasive commercial force as his lead character finds identity in the ones manufactured by him by modern media. Is there indeed no meaning in the barren landscapes of rural America?

The horror movie craze that infested culture throughout the late 1970s and 1980s would certainly suggest that any national identity had been destroyed by a pervasive contemporary evil, with the likes of Tobe Hoopers 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrating this in abundance.

Taking place in the forgotten outback of Texas, where the land is littered with the fossils of cattle alongside rarely-used gasoline stations and forgotten graveyards, Hoopers film encapsulates the idea of rural America as a mass necropolis. Embodying the slowly defiled identity of the country itself, the film is driven by the villainous Leatherface and his cannibalistic family, representing the strange victims of such a change.

This land mocks liberty and toys with justice, with the dust of the Texas landscape totally devoid of any hope at all; such that its a wonder why any young people would want to walk its ground at all. Seeking out the resting place of their grandfather, Sally Hardesty, her brother Franklin and their three friends set on a road trip across the Texas wasteland whereupon they become the latest victims of the lands barren hope and lack of law.

Such law, order and justice are flouted and mocked in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a terrifying horror film that speaks to the insecurity of America that was suffering the bruises of the Watergate scandal as well as the ongoing Vietnam war. Damaging the legitimacy of the countrys political foundations, such events demonstrated that the law, order and liberty that the USA was built on, may no longer exist.

Battered by the events of the 20th century, by the final decade of the 1990s, America was battered and mutated, a far cry from the heroic myth of the country represented in ancient westerns. Society had been indelibly changed by the events of the previous decades and cinema responded as such, with the feminist masterpiece giving a brand new perspective on the American road movie.

Where often a male lead would grab the steering wheel of a road movie, here Ridley Scotts Thelma & Louise takes inspiration from Spielbergs Sugarland Express and reimagines the typical male-buddy film with female protagonists. Written and creatively masterminded by screenwriter Callie Khouri, who would win an Oscar for her debut piece of work, the film is a Western-inspired, venomously-spiked escape to Mexico, avoiding Texas at all costs.

A frenetic movie that prods and ridicules old stereotypes, Thelma and Louise would represent more modern attitudes to the idea of the American country, ideas of gender and social status that were reflected in the tender Kelly Reichardt movie Old Joy, released during the infancy of the 21st century. A pensive exploration of gender and individuality in modern America, Reichardts film represented a sign of things to come for the contemporary road movie.

Followed by Melina Matsoukas Queen and Slim in 2019, a road movie that casts an analytical light on contemporary issues and offers a sobering parable that forces reflection, Matsoukas play on Bonnie and Clyde would bring the genre full circle.

Finding meaning and solace on the American highways, the titular protagonists of Queen and Slim engage in fleeting conversations with strangers both friendly and hostile whilst fantasising about their relationship and their place in an ever-more volatile American society. Young, gifted and promising, their lives represent the reality of so many in contemporary life as Melina Matsoukass film yearns for a time and place where such injustices are finally put to bed.

Indeed, this demonstrates the transition to a brand new myth of the rural outback where new attitudes towards gender and sexuality force the traditional qualities of the American country to be reconsidered and re-evaluated. The sacred allure of the American road still invites personal myth-making, but in an informed modern society, awake to the injustices of the past, this new distant dream is a far cry from the one of old.

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Road movies and the myth of rural America - Far Out Magazine