Easy Rider Acid Trip: Textual Analysis

The scene begins with a long shot showing four young characters sat all beside each other on the floor, dressed in muted colours. Perhaps this is to represent the attempted muting of youth culture at the time of filming. Acid was actively used during this decade due to inspiration from musicians like the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin encouraging lots of different drug-consuming subcultures, particularly hippies. In the beginning, the man and the woman to the right of the frame are consuming alcohol and cigarettes. This was far more commonplace in the 60s than it is now. The woman towards the left of the frame kisses the man beside her on the cheek and strokes his face repeatedly, as peace and love was also a huge part of youth subculture. In the background, a train (?) can be heard. This may be foreshadowing the fact that the acid is going to take these people on a trip far away from where they (mentally) are now. The diegetic sound of the train also makes it difficult to hear the characters converse aside from when the men tell one of the women to 'shut up and take it' in reference to the acid. This may have been done to represent the power and importance of men in comparison to women at the time, or it could have just been due to the poor quality of filming technology of the time.
The lighting at the beginning of the scene is fully natural. There is no specific unnatural lighting to alter the feel of the scene. It is quite muted and dark. However, as the scene progresses, the lighting intensifies. It is still natural lighting, though. A bright lens flare can be seen as the acid trip begins, representing the intense high that these characters are going through. The audio as the acid trip begins becomes a mess of the sound from the train and people talking. The lighting is incredibly intense and pretty much blinds the camera. The editing from here on is very fast and jump cuts are used. This has been done to represent the intensity and speed the characters are feeling from their high. There is a lot of religious iconography in this scene, ranging from a young girl reading out a bible verse to a man weeping by a statue, to the scene literally being in a cemetery. There is also multiple shots of a woman getting undressed and being naked; this may have been done to add controversy to the scene as this sort if visuals were not common in mainstream cinema at the time. It may have also been done to symbolise sinning, as the religious iconography in this scene is very strong and it is blasphemous that such an act is taking place in a religious place.