TEENS AND THE COUNTERCULTURE

FMS 394: Lesson 6

GUIDING QUESTIONS

How and why does film engage with youth countercultures in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

What are the cultural possibilities and limitations of the “revolutionary” pictures that appear between 1969 and 1971?

How does Easy Rider exemplify the new trend of blending high-brow and low-brow film styles? How does this stylistic shift reflect and shape late 1960s/early 1970s discourses of youth?

Rejuvenating Hollywood

Emergence of the film school generation Film increasingly a

part of liberal arts education

A more film-literate audience and a new generation of auteurs

Also trained in “exploitation” methods

New Hollywood targets youth via use of high-brow and low-brow styles

Dennis Hopper: Roger Corman protégé; co-writer and director of Easy Rider

“Reel” Revolutionaries

Between 1969 and 1971 major studios produce a cycle of films centered on youth countercultures Following and

coinciding with series of visible and volatile demonstrations

Progressive narrative vs. visual strategies in The Strawberry Statement (1970)

Romancing the Counterculture Easy Rider (1969)

Representing youthfulness Generational and

geographical tensions

Representing rebellion Sex, drugs, and

rock and roll The open road The perils of non-

conformity

Next Time on FMS 394