Unit 1- Enrolmnt task

Conduct textual analysis on the following scene from Easy Rider (1969) . Explain how the text has been constructed to create meaning.

The 60s' are described as an era of irresponsible excess, flamboyance and decay of social order which are also factors to the beggining of the New hollywood movement where movies were starting to break social taboos. This is not only evident in the scene from Easy Rider, but is also summing up the overall message of the film while also exploring the rise of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifetyle.
At the beggining of the scene we see a medium shot, establishing the mise-en-scene of a cemetary in NewOrleans while following the reactions of all four character in the frame. The lighting is high key natural and dull, with a diegetic ambient noise adding to the unnatural and uncomfortble atmosphere. While the camera is static to begin with, once we see them taking the acid the scene jump cuts to a one second upward tilt shot of a building, going up towards the sky, using shot reverse shot cutting back to the characters then nce again to the tilt, deviding the world in two, juxtaposing the moral verus the immoral, the taboos (the use of drugs, sex, and alcohl in the scene) that go against the church with the church itself and God, by using the viceover of girl reciting prayers about crucifixion 'God, father oh mighty, creator of heaven and earth...', while the scene jump cuts between the tilt shot of the camea moving up a building towards the sky, 'closer' to God, with the high key light and sunbeams lighting up the scene making it almost heavenly, then jumpcuting back to the static shot of Fonda an Hopper. For the Catholic church which owns the cemetary these image would be seen as scandalising and were the reason why the cemetary was closed for the public after the film was released.
Halfway through the scene there is a following sequence of jumpcuts, hectic and in no specific order, which coud represent what is going on in their head and the effect of the drugs. It represents the voices in their head they cant silence even with the drugs, how they can't fit in and find their space in the society they live in. The shots are ment to make you uncomortable from the close up of the females face in a long angle shot while she recitise, to show the power of the church at the time, to the zoom in on the sun, however the sequence always cuts back to Peter Fonda in the arms of one of the statues in the graveyard