In many ways, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders and Lana Del Rey x Quavo’s “Tough” achieve the same dichotomous thing: acknowledging the death of what America used to “mean”/represent, while also making one nostalgic for it now that it’s gone. Or at least, that’s the intent. Some, however, are immune to such feelings of nostalgia, knowing full well that America was never anything other than what it currently is: a false promised land built on a literal Native American burial ground. (Hence, all the haunting things that consistently happen on it.)
In The Bikeriders, which was released at the beginning of summer (specifically June 21st—which, not so coincidentally, happens to also be Lana Del Rey’s birthday), the slow then gradual decline of the greatest marketing scheme ever created (read: the United States) is starting to make itself known through the “fringe,” embodied by bikers like Benny (Austin Butler) and Johnny (Tom Hardy). Only the so-called fringe has become the mainstream during the late 60s/early 70s period that The Bikeriders covers. Having increasingly come to represent the disillusioned and displaced everyman in America. Particularly as those who survived the throes of the Vietnam War were starting to come back with all manner of disenchantment when it came not only to the United States, but to the “American dream” itself. The veneer cruelly unmasked by the things they saw “over there” and could not then unsee back at home. Itself a battleground between the rich and the poor, the “normals” and the “freaks.”
This is part of why Johnny’s biker gang, the Vandals Motorcycle Club, started to turn sour as this new “element,” freshly returned from ‘Nam, began to render the nature of the club into something dark and violent. Something that Benny’s girlfriend, Kathy (Jodie Comer), must bear the brunt of in many ways. In fact, she can easily be seen as the “Lana Del Rey figure” of the outfit, all melancholia and style.
Of the sort that finds its way onto “Tough,” yet another ode (whether country or trap or however one wants to bill the genre) to Del Rey’s favorite subject: Americana. More specifically in this case, American resilience (also present on a song like “When The World Was At War We Kept On Dancing”). Side note: with that motif in mind, it’s no wonder she opted to release the single the day before the Fourth of July. So it is that she paints the picture in the opening verse: “Tough like the scuff on a pair of old leather boots/Like the blue-collar, red-dirt attitude/Like a .38 made out of brass/Tough like the stuff in your grandpa’s glass/Life’s gonna do what it does/Sure as the good Lord’s up above/I’m cut like a diamond shinin’ in the rough/Tough.” As for the “blue-collar” mention, it’s no secret that Del Rey also likes to play up her “poverty” angle, therefore making herself a stronger representation of the American dream—i.e., pulling oneself up by their bootstraps and creating success of their own no matter what sort of background they come from.
Were it not for the fact that The Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets” is the constant (and era-appropriate) refrain of the film, LDR’s “Tough” could have fit in perfectly (though only as a supplement to “Ride”) with the overarching theme and “feel” of The Bikeriders. Which is that, through all the pain and agony of what it is to live in America, Americans still have the uncanny ability to “endure”—mainly by repeating, as though it’s a Jesus Prayer—that America is the “greatest country in the world” (much as New Yorkers like to repeat the same thing about their specific shitty city). Granted, this has become a much more difficult mass delusion to uphold in the twenty-first century. A difficulty that began far sooner than the aftermath of the 2016 election, arguably all the way back in 2000, when George W. Bush actually did steal the election (as opposed to Donald Trump insisting that’s what Joe Biden did in 2020).
As a matter of fact, in 2000, Del Rey would have been fifteen years old, turning “sweet sixteen” in time for 9/11 the following year. Bearing witness to these two indelible political events—the “election” of George W. Bush and the destruction of the World Trade Center—would have been formative to her obsession with a simultaneous elevation of Americana and continuous “hat tip” to American decay. A decay that many baby boomers would, in turn, trace back to the 1960s, when the conservatism and repression of the decade before that had to be blown to bits in order to “deprogram” from the lie of it all, as it were. Hence, Joan Didion famously quoting W. B. Yeats when she pronounced “the center will not hold” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
In the American summer of 2024, the same sentiment remains. Especially as the latest fraught election plays out like yet another bad soap opera (except this one has life-altering effects on a global and individual level). Perhaps that’s why the alignment of these two palpable homages to Americana and the decay of America itself (more notably in The Bikeriders) showed up during a season of theoretical “levity.” Alas, there is no such thing anymore in the climate of the U.S. at present. For even “light” fare like Charli XCX’s Brat has to be laden with the analysis that during times of recession, people just want to party to forget their troubles. And by “troubles,” one also means the existential dread of being an American forced to keep living the lie that insists the place is a “dream.”
The thing is, America has long been in a recession…only not the kind that anybody wanted to address until the elephant in the room (no Republican pun intended) became so big, it ended up trampling over everyone. Now no longer able to ignore it. At least not quite so easily. Which is precisely why two pop culture moments like The Bikeriders and “Tough” coincided during the same season. Because when the erstwhile “glamor” of Americana is paraded in the current era, even the suits in charge know that it’s too great an insult to the audience’s intelligence to not include some tinge of the bleak reality that belies it. In fact, such an acknowledgement is all in keeping with the old capitalism-related adage, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
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