If The Searchers was a sign of wear showing in the cloak of exceptionalism, then Dennis HopperвЂ™s Easy Rider was the first big tear. In 1969, after years of protests against institutional racism, the Vietnam War and what many of the nationвЂ™s youth saw as dated social mores, that erosion turned to perforation.

In fact, that old teleological ethic - which kept America strong through a civil war, two world wars and two centuries of expansion - was beginning to erode. This overarching assumption is more difficult to find in later Westerns films like John FordвЂ™s The Searchers, while not overtly condemning the actions of its mysterious protagonist, are certainly not exactly ecstatic about the Western White Man both in his attempts to control a land and an indigenous people who never seemed to want him there in the first place. positivism, where good always triumphed over evil and our biggest assumption - that we were, somehow, inexorably right - was never defeated by naysayers (even metaphorical naysayers, as was often the case of the вЂman in blackвЂ™). In fact, some of the earliest films (and, eventually, television) to hold captive the American audienceвЂ™s attention were spectacles of U.S. But what the French political scientist did not consider was how this вЂexceptionalismвЂ™ was, indeed, a myth - one that had to be sustained through a perpetual progression.Д®xpansion towards the Pacific provided the easiest mode of sustaining this advancement, and for a long while it was assumed that westward growth was the surest sign of success. As early as the mid 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville proclaimed that the United States held remarkable place in the world, as a nation of immigrants living in the first democracy of the вЂmodernвЂ™ era (Tocqueville 1). The myth of American exceptionalism has existed since early on in our nationвЂ™s history.

Easy rider film