One of the most emblematic road trip movie of all time is Easy Rider. The movie was rapidly associated with the idea of the American dream, and the star spangled banner bike coupled with the endless road became the symbol of America in collective imagination. In the collective subconscious, Easy Rider is the embodiment of freedom.
Although Easy Rider is in reality more complex than the common beliefs attached to it, it serves to prove that the road trip is a staple of the American dream. In general, this dream has two ingredients: freedom and individual success.
Ever since Easy Rider, numerous road trip movies have depicted loners, buddies or families taking the road to look for success. The road trip is a very good plot for a movie. First, the road is aesthetically pleasing and symbolic in different ways. Second, the timeline that it offers allows to tell stories of growth. In an article about Thelma and Louise, Aspasia Kotsopoulos explains that road trips usually follow a similar pattern: leaving a familiar context to go to an unfamiliar place, a journey that allows for personal discovery (Kotsopoulos, 2010). With this in mind, we can assume that road trips are personal journeys as well as geographic ones.
If those journeys can be used to reinforce the very idea of the American dream and tell stories of individualistic quests, they can also be used to criticize the American dream itself.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Captain Fantastic (2016) are three great examples of that. Those three movies embrace the traditional plot of the road trip, the viewers expect them to embrace the traditional meaning attached to the genre. However, those three movies criticize the very idea of the individualistic vision of the American dream.
Those three movies question the American society, its way of life and its obsession with the quest for individual success in showing us a transformative journey through which the characters realize that they are part of something greater than themselves and embrace this discovery rather than their own pursuit of happiness.
Those movies show us families who were failed by the American dream or who were against it. They proceed to show us their transformative journey and how the road was a revealing experience.
The three movies start their criticism of the American dream by depicting families that were either failed by it or deeply against it. They also picture moments in American history during which there were reasons to have doubts about America’s promises. Finally, they showcase families that have to deal with the idea of success, a core value of the American dream.
The Great Depression, the Great Recession, Inequality: the American Dream Isn't For Everyone
Those three families have a similar relationship with the traditional idea of the American dream: it does not work for them. The very structure of their families, especially for Little Miss Sunshine and Captain Fantastic also defy the classic idea of the American family.
In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads are being displaced and expelled from their own land [18:00]. Ownership and the ability to have a place of your own is central to American values, and the fact that the family cannot keep their land for economic reasons shows the limits of private property that America can offer.
In Little Miss Sunshine, the family is lower class, with a working mother and a father who fails to get his book published. The uncle is depressed and the little girl seems to have dreams that she cannot achieve. This family is not the typical, perfect American family, often depicted in movies. The lunch scene of the beginning of the movie [18:12] shows how the mother is struggling to keep the family going and how as a whole, the family is dysfunctional.
In Captain Fantastic, the relationship with the American dream is a little bit different. They are not failed by it but they chose to live outside of it. Their criticism of the system is most clearly seen at [30:53] when the father is sarcastically explaining consumerism to the kids.
In a paper about Little Miss Sunshine, Nikki Martin explains how the movie challenges the “ideal” and “dominant” vision of the American family (Martin, 2012). This analysis could be applied to all three movies as they depict three families that are far from the norm of what a family ought to be according to the American dream.
The criticism that those movies have towards the American dream can be attributed to the political and economic context during which they were produced. All three of them were made during periods of economic inequality.
The Grapes of Wrath is the most prominent example. The movie was produced a few years after the Great Depression and tells a story that takes place during it. In 1940, the country was in need of unity and acknowledging that some citizens were poor was a part of that effort.
Little Miss Sunshine was filmed in 2006, two years before the Great Recession. The movie is a testimony of what it was to live under the Bush Jr. administration. The lower and middle class felt like they were being left on the side, while the speculation bubble was growing.
Captain Fantastic, which was made in 2016, depicts a family that has a very strong ideology. The family is strongly against capitalism and glorifies knowledge and equality which are communist ideals. 2016 is the year when Bernie Sanders was one the most important contender in the Democratic primary, one of the first major candidate to declare himself a socialist. The mid 2010s also saw anti-capitalist movements such as Occupy Wall Street emerge, which would explain the family’s ideology in the movie.
Individualism vs. Family Values
Those movies are interesting from a historical standpoint as they show moments in history during which there were some serious doubts about America’s ability to guarantee happiness to all. The plot of those movies gives an interesting and disruptive answer to those doubts, one that might make the audience feel better about the future. Although those movies are not “feel good” movies they show the spectator a transformative journey that criticizes individualism and the traditional perception of success and that promotes the values of family.
This transformative journey brings those families from a chaotic starting point to a place of harmony.
The beginning of all three movies showcase families that are either sad or dysfunctional. This is a necessary starting point to allow them to grow during their trip.
In The Grapes of Wrath, the family has doubts about Tom Joad still being in jail while they leave. Some of them suffer from the idea of leaving, especially the Grandpa, who has to be drugged to leave and who dies at the start of the trip [38:16].
In Little Miss Sunshine, as said above, the family is dysfunctional. But more importantly, the beginning scene introduces the characters one by one. They are shown while they are pursuing their own dream (Olive is watching the pageant show, the father is explaining his book to an almost empty room, and the son is working out to become a pilot...). This shows that they all have their own goals, they don’t function as a united family.
The campfire scene of Captain Fantastic [9:10], shows a family in which brothers and sisters are not talking because of a father who seems to be very strict. On top of that, the mother is absent because she is about to die in the hospital.
Although those families are different, their initial situations suggest that there is room for them to grow and the viewer is wondering what their success is going to be. For The Grapes of Wrath, we hope that they will find a job, for Little Miss Sunshine we hope that Olive will win the contest, for Captain Fantastic we hope that they will make it to the funeral and come back healed.
It's Ok To "Loose"
The end of this transformative journey, however is different than what we expect. In the same article cited above, Nikki Martin explains that Little Miss Sunshine challenges “the pattern of narrative conventions” (Martin, 2012). It is true for all three movies, all of them have slightly different outcomes than those that were expected by the viewer. They want to show that the road trip does not have to follow the road of conventional success but rather, the road of happiness.
In The Grapes of Wrath, although the Joads find a job, the ending scene is one that depicts them driving away. What they found is not economic success, something valued in the American dream. What they found is a feeling of belonging. Being on the road showed them that they belong to a Nation and that they are not alone. In The Grapes of Wrath, the road is the “gathering up” of “a nation of displaced persons” (Schaber, 1997) which took a depressed Oklahoman family and brought it to a place where it discovered its purpose.
In Little Miss Sunshine, Olive does not win the contest, however she leaves California to go back home with a unified family. The best scene that shows this is the dancing scene at the end of the movie. All members of the family dance to the same choreography which suggests that they can function together and that they found harmony.
Captain Fantastic’s end is a little bit different and sends a more complex message. While the spectator is happy to see that the family could attend the funeral they expect the convictions of the dad to be strong enough so that they will go back to their simple life in the woods. However, the end of the movie shows that the family is moving to a more traditional home. In an article about the movie in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Amy Kind explains that the film is a great example of growth and learning. The father reevaluated his individual values when he rediscovered society and decided to change (Kind, 2016). At the end, the family seems to enjoy this change as they prepare a harmonious breakfast before going to school.
All three of those endings are challenging the classic idea of success and what the American dream would have wanted for those characters. The purpose of those endings might be to reassure those who watch the movies. It is easy to imagine that when those films were released many families could relate to them. It was probably a relief for them to see that the classic idea of success is not mandatory and that some failures are necessary. For those movies, being on the road looking for a job is ok, as long as we are a nation, losing a beauty pageant is not dramatic as long as we have a family and not knowing how to raise kids in a world we don’t like is a legitimate anxiety.
The Road: America's Own Way of Dealing With Hardships
Those road trip movies are true examples of transformative journeys, with the particularity that they seem to criticize America’s traditional idea of success. Using the road trip, an emblem of the American dream, those movies tried to show that the road can lead to other conclusions than a selfish pursuit of happiness.
In another road trip movie, Into the Wild, the character, who travels alone realizes that he suffers from loneliness and comes to the conclusion that “happiness is only real when shared”. In this movie, like in the three discussed above, the road is a school of life that teaches the characters a lesson. Life is made up of hardships, and individuals sometimes feel like they are lost. It seems like those movies understand the road as America’s historic own special way of finding a purpose and a meaning. The road shows to those who drive, the physical boundaries of the country, and how each of us are connected by highways. Fixing those physical boundaries is a way to travel within oneself and a starting point to think about identity and priorities.