Chapter Five:
Genres and Junk Fiction
In his novel Deathride, D. A. Hodgman provides the reader with just about every scrap of information law enforcement officials have accumulated on outlaw motorcycle subculture. Over the course of 13 pages framed as a briefing for two covert agents planning to infiltrate a motorcycle gang, the reader is told the clubs are merely fronts for a variety of illegal operations. Trafficking in weapons and drugs has made them profitable and powerful, yet they remain “misfits. People who never could have made it in ordinary life.” (1) They use women as “chattel.” They are racist and it is a subculture oriented towards weapons and violence. Law enforcement’s attempts to destroy the clubs, which is the agents’ ultimate goal, are easily rationalized.
Part of the attraction of genre fiction like Hodgman’s Deathride is the ease with which characters can be defined and described. Heather Dubrow believes genres function as a “code of behavior between the author and his reader.” (2) Similarly, Eugenio Bolongaro describes genre literature as employing a series of “communicative conventions” in order to provide a message “accessible to the parties involved in the communication, so that process of cognition can take place.” (3)
It is this aspect of genre fiction, its use of signs and codes, which lends it to a structuralist analysis. (4) An examination of how bikers have been employed within a genre reveals much about the code, a genre’s relationship to societal boundaries, and its assumptions concerning deviance. Genres can and do vary in their acceptance, denial and criticism of those boundaries, providing alternate visions of how life “ought to be.”
Deathride is an example of men’s adventure fiction, a genre built on a tradition established by Argosy, which began publication in 1882, and later emphasized in such stalwart men’s magazines as True and Saga. Those publications eventually folded, Robert La Liberte Migneault contends, because they avoided sex and finally lost touch with their readers in the 1950s. Their failure opened the door for Cavalier and Playboy, and later Hustler, to satisfy that portion of the male audience which wanted “skin” instead of adventure. (5)
But what of those readers who still wanted action and adventure? Migneault’s concern is with the Cold War and the Vietnam War’s influence on the publication of mercenary magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, begun in 1975. His discussion of macho military adventure ignores, however, those magazines such as Male, Men and Stag which incorporated the masculine appeal of both softcore pornography and adventure.
In Adventure, Mystery and Romance, John Cawelti provides a thoughtful analysis of literary genres. For him the difference between formula and genre is a matter of time and acceptance. A literary formula includes a series of conventions and stereotypes, or refers to larger plot patterns. Once these formulas and their limitations are standardized, the larger body of work which employs them is recognized as a genre. (6) The familiarity of genres and their formulaic plots is at once an advantage and a liability. On the one hand these story archetypes are easily recognized and decoded and they successfully “fulfill man’s need for enjoyment and escape.” (7) Their simplicity, however, and their “recipe” plots lead derisive critics to ignore their artistic potential.
Are there other explanations for the popularity of genre literature with both men and women? Though he proposes the term junk fiction, Thomas Roberts has sought to gain critical favor for genre fiction. In considering why readers would invest time in genre literature, Roberts is not satisfied with the simple explanation that it is escapism. All books, he argues, offer escape and fun. That 10 to 20 percent of most genre texts are description and explanation suggests readers learn from them. (8) That they offer the potential for daydreaming holds even more interest: “If our wounds are deep enough, our capacity for inventing our own daydreams dim enough — we turn to popular fiction, whose stories, like so many daydreams, serve as psychic bandages.” (9)
In the end Roberts is dissatisfied with the daydreaming explanation because it assumes an unhappy reader. But in the men’s adventure genre, especially those which utilize outlaw bikers as antagonists, that may actually be a viable explanation for its popularity. Cawelti suggests that formulaic literature offers “moments of intense excitement and interest to get away from the boredom and ennui that are particularly prevalent in the secure, routine, and organized lives of the great majority of the contemporary American and western European public.” (10) The popularity and durability of genre literature is complemented then by the heroic nature of the main characters which allow for vicarious identification. There is a certain amount of wish–fulfillment as the heroes, male and female alike, perform actions and deeds in a fictional world.
Outlaw bikers have proven to be particularly useful to masculine genres in two important ways. On the most basic level they reveal society’s fear of lawlessness and random violence. In his examination of the Hell’s Angels, Yves Lavigne wrote that the club also bore “the brunt of society’s repressed sexuality.” (11) Outlaw bikers provide sexual danger and excitement, and by their very nature an escape from the mundane reality which surrounds readers’ lives. The reader of early men’s adventure fiction, especially that which appeared in magazines such as Men and Male, enjoyed the vicarious thrill of the bikers’ lascivious and violent existence, and when the outlaws were punished he felt a sense of satisfaction which comes with making the safe choice — the choice to obey the law.
Second, outlaw biker fiction exposes a dissatisfaction with society. Beyond the discontent with civility and middle–class morality, men’s adventure fiction takes as a prominent theme the sense of frustration with an increasingly weak–willed bureaucracy. David Pugh believes the need for escapist literature arises from the male reader’s perception that he has been domesticated by society. (12)
Time–bound genre literature is especially effective in easing that anxiety because the plots are pulled from “newspaper reality,” giving them a “solid base in our shared lives.” (13) And though Cawelti believes genre plots are universal, they must also be relevant: “In order for these patterns to work, they must be embodied in figures, settings, and situations that have appropriate meanings for the culture which produces them.” (14)
Biker gangs are the perfect symbols of society’s frustration and masculine impotence. They are not handcuffed by rules and regulations; in fact they are often shown to manipulate the law to their own benefit. It is up to the heroes of men’s adventure stories to take the law into their own hands. In The Angels Do Not Forget former police officer and detective Raymond Morgan predicted motorcycle outlaws would flourish unless changes were made to the justice system. Without such changes, he writes, “we will see vigilantism explode across this country as it has never occurred in any other part of the world. Then and only then will the Hell’s Angels and other violent subcultures like them cease to exist.” (15) Vigilantism abounds in men’s fiction as moral heroes fight back against outlaws who mock heroism.
Hollister introduced the nation to outlaw motorcycle clubs in 1947. Frank Rooney’s “Cyclists’ Raid” appeared in Harper’s in 1951, providing the inspiration for Marlon Brando’s role as Johnny in The Wild One in 1954. In Rooney’s story, a fictional treatment of the Hollister riot, bikers suggest the nation’s Cold War fear that communism insinuates itself even into small–town America. When the gang assaults a California town, the sheriff proves to be ineffective against the club’s numbers. And when a young girl is killed, her father, Joel Bleeker, is also revealed as impotent against the faceless, unified troop:
They were all alike. They were standardized figurines, seeking in each other a willful loss of identity, dividing themselves equally among one another until there was only a single mythical figure, unspeakably sterile and furnishing the norm for hundreds of others. He could not accuse something which didn’t actually exist. (16)
The best the town can do is beat senseless a repentant biker who returns after the rest of the riders have moved on. But even the thought of revenge leaves Bleeker feeling empty. Rooney’s image of helplessness against the overwhelming force represented by motorcycle gangs became a staple of the biker genre, but the lack of desire for revenge on what they represent did not.
Bikers did not immediately become the nation’s foremost bogeymen, despite Brando’s popularity. Communists remained popular antagonists in the 1950s, but it was easier for “B” movie producers and directors to use space aliens to represent the threat of invasion. Readers of pulp fiction, on the other hand, discovered a new kind of hero. Between 1947 and 1952 Mickey Spillane’s first six Mike Hammer novels sold over 17 million copies.
Contemporary men’s adventure fiction is at least a spiritual descendant of Spillane’s hard–boiled detective. In his history of paperback publishing, Kenneth Davis describes the attraction of I, The Jury, Spillane’s first Hammer novel: “[It] was typical of the series; it contained the rage that was seething beneath the supposed civility of American life in the early 1950s.” (17) It incorporated necessary elements of sex, violence and personal morality to appeal to an audience of beleaguered men unable to act on their frustrations.
Outlaw bikers were rare in fiction between “Cyclists’ Raid” and the news media coverage that greeted the Hell’s Angels and other California clubs in the late 1960s. William Murray, who had profiled the Angels in The Saturday Evening Post, used many of the same biker types from that article in his 1967 novel The Sweet Ride, a murder mystery involving middle–class California youths wrapped up in beach culture.
Anyone familiar with Murray’s article (and the accompanying photos) would have no problem identifying Jimmy the Head, Jawbone and Big Jane, or the ruined 69ers clubhouse. The novel’s reader, like middle–class magazine readers, would likely be put off as well by the bikers’ sexual deviancy as Jimmy tries to sell Big Jane for three marijuana cigarettes. And like Mousie, a surfer character, their reaction upon seeing a biker would have been to immediately call the police.
Murray’s sympathy remains with the bikers, though. The character of Choo–Choo rode with the Angels and had been invited to join. He admits to their bizarre behavior and penchant for violence and drugs, yet approves of their political stance. “They’re anti–everyone and everything,” he tells his friends, adding that they “have it in for the whole crazy American scene. That part of it I could identify with. You know, it’s like being able to say nuts to this whole phony Great Society crap. That part I could dig.” (18) The police duly blame the bikers for the rape and murder at the center of the plot, but the Angels turn out to be innocent of the charges, persecuted by a society that does not even attempt to understand them.
Murray’s bikers, outside of their outlandish dress, are little different from their middle–class counterparts in their desire for sex and drugs and in their ability to employ violence. Choo–Choo and Collie beat a biker with a beer bottle to get information, then leave him alone not knowing whether he is dead or alive. Their neighbor, Parker, a former Mississippi cop who “hates beatniks, Negroes, Mexicans, Japanese and Reds,” is surprised when the youths do not take his side against the bikers trespassing on his beach. (19) Murray’s is a society where individuals need to recognize their spiritual and political allies, but where eventually everyone has to fend for themselves.
Bikers did not fit the role of innocent fall guys well, but an Action for Men story in 1975 did work them into a story about a corrupt small–town sheriff. Ben and his “bros” in the Roadburners Motorcycle Club, all ex–cons, find themselves the victims of Deputy Jo–Jo Seiler’s “Mickey Mouse” harassment. Because they are the perfect patsies, “bikers with prison records,” Seiler is able to set them up to take the blame for his robberies. The Roadburners, by using their heads, turn the tables on him and end up assisting the sheriff. They do not fit the role of upstanding citizens well, though, and they receive no reward. “Nobody loves an outlaw biker, I guess. Even when he does something straight.” (20)
Murray’s semblance of respect for bikers and any depth of character development disappeared quickly as men’s magazines of the late 1960s and early 1970s found a different use for biker culture. The period’s genre fiction and pseudo–fiction, published in such magazines as Stag and Male, is almost schizophrenic in its ability to abhor and admire the outlaws.
Bikers remain physically repulsive, forsake 9–5 jobs to exist on illegal profits from prostitution and drug dealing, and physically and sexually abuse women. Though they generally suffer the consequence for living their lives on the margin, the romantic attraction of the lifestyle remains and the characters enjoy the experience while it lasts. The attraction of this style of genre fiction is, at least in part, its hedonistic and undomesticated characters living in a world tailor–made for their skills.
The fiction elements of the formula were in place by 1969 when Stag printed “‘Terror Tramp’ Cycle Mama.” Bored with her middle–class life, a “good little girl” and honors student wants to discover the “wickedness” inside her. She gets the chance when she meets biker Big Ed. Taking their cue from the Hell’s Angels, Ed’s gang sports tattoos, beards, chains and swastikas. Though initially shaken, the woman enjoys being raped by “steel–strong and virile” Ed. She maintains the relationship until her initiation into the gang requires that she be gang raped, “pull a train.” After all of that, and a high speed chase that lands her in the hospital, she refuses to press charges: “I couldn’t hate Ed, the man who, despite everything, made a woman of me with his strong body.” (21)
If there is anything to be learned from the story, as cliché as it may sound, it is that women want untamed men who take what they want. In fact, it is through violence that they are freed from society’s restraints. The outlaw biker, unfettered by anything or anyone, fills the demand nicely. He is a symbol of sexual freedom for both men and women. From her hospital bed the woman claims she is a normal woman who was warped by society’s too–rigid rules and forgot her natural desires. Big Ed set her straight. He and the others get off with short sentences, and the woman is changed forever, for the better we are to believe. She has gained a sort of “wild strength,” and “being a cycle gang torture victim” had changed her. (22)
“‘Terror Tramp’ Cycle Mama” offers an interesting comparison to Lynne Murphy’s “That Motorcycle Crowd,” a short story printed in True Story, a magazine of genre fiction for women. In the supposedly biographical story Murphy describes herself as a “spoiled brat” who buys a motorcycle and joins the Dust–Eaters’ Motorcycle Club on a whim. The experience exposes her to another side of life and, eventually, to the love of her life.
“Murph” Murphy is a Korean War vet with scarred hands who wins her affection in spite of his working–class background, her attempts to play hard to get and his admonition to “go find yourself a nice young guy with a nice, tidy little future ahead of him. A guy you wouldn’t be ashamed to have shaking hands with your friends.” (23) Like Ed, Murph exposes the sheltered college girl to a different world, but it is his love, honesty and tenderness rather than brutality that wins her heart and unleashes her femininity.
In the decade which produced the second wave of women’s liberation, it is no surprise to see these men’s adventure magazines’ hyper–masculine reaffirmation of the male prerogative. But that is not to totally deny the possibility of love. “Cycle Death Run” concerns two bikers on the lam who trade wives in an effort to preserve the peace. Jeanne slowly falls in love with Carl for unexplained reasons. It may be because he does not beat her, or it may be because he awakens her as a women. More likely the motivation is not important to the story. Carl is a man, self–confident and self–reliant. He does not have to beat his women, though Jeanne wishes he would: “She almost hoped he would knock her down and beat her, for it would help assuage her own guilt. ‘I won’t be this foolish again,’ she said.” (24) That she would love him is natural.
“Cycle Death Run” ends with the unlikely image of Carl and Jeanne in paradise. The unnamed biker in “The Topless ‘Angel’ and the Cycle Savages,” a parolee who gets pulled back into a motorcycle club, is not quite so lucky. Brenda, the topless angel, uses him to escape Scar and the Devil’s Disciples. The results of two months of living with Brenda and working in the Disciples’ stolen Volkswagen shop is a savings account, which he had never had before, a broken leg and three bullet holes. Brenda leaves him with only a postcard that says, “Thanks.” “I’ve still got it, man,” the biker concludes. “It’s wrinkled and torn, and it’s in my wallet. I never saw her again, but I’ve still got it.” (25)
Like the comics code which said characters could not profit from evil, men’s adventure stories try, albeit perfunctorily, to show that bikers pay the price for their profligate ways. Lynne Murphy and Murph eventually sell their motorcycles in order to pursue a safe middle–class existence for themselves and their children. The biker in “The Topless ‘Angel’” pays with his injuries, though he does escape a return to prison. Carl and Jeanne have to survive paradise without the $68,000 he and his partner stole; it burns in the same accident that kills his former partner. And Ben, the narrator of “The Cycle Busters,” pays possibly the highest price — the loss of his motorcycle.
Male’s editors want readers to be appalled by the violence and bloodshed of “The Cycle Busters,” but more than a few men would be attracted by the beer, women and marijuana that were free for the taking. The story begins with a free–for–all party between the Hell Rangers and Speed Freaks and progresses into a three–state battle between the two gangs. Despite the fact the gangs wipe each other out and a number end up dead or in jail, “The Cycle Busters” presents another masculine paradise. They party hard and half–naked women stagger about waiting to be raped. And even though the editors suggest this activity should be abhorred, the narrator, Ben, enjoys it. His system is “chicks first, then I could get really stoned in a relaxed way.” (26) Later he is content to be sixth in a line of 25 men waiting to pull a train on one of the other gang’s mamas.
Fighting alongside his buddies and bros is another aspect of the life about which Ben is quite eloquent. The bikers work together in their quest for revenge, and each has his role. They work together and protect each other in fights which, in most cases, involve weapons such as brass knuckles, knives, pipes and chains rather than something as impersonal as a gun. And when their activities make the news they revel in their notoriety: “The headlines were a foot high. We were ‘modern–day barbarians,’ ‘Huns of the highway,’ ‘brutes, beasts, sadists and sex maniacs.’ It made us feel great.” (27) Of the media, he says the newspapers were just giving readers the sex and violence they want in order to increase circulation during a slow news period. For their actions he thinks the club should get a commission. (28)
When it is over, what he misses most is his motorcycle, “blasting down the highway with all that power between my legs. No more wind in the face and a mama hugging my guts and squeezing her bosom into the muscles of my back.” (29) In these stories, motorcycles are not major props, yet they are symbolic of the desires of the biker characters. Big Ed and the bikers in “Cycle Savages” use the motorcycle to intimidate, then stimulate women who, of course, cannot handle a bike of their own. Lynne Murphy simply enjoys the challenge and adventure presented by her motorcycle. In “The Topless ‘Angel’” the narrator ponders the many benefits of riding: “Dudes look at you, man. The Harley pounding through your spine. Taking off, you hear the fender vibrating, and each stroke pounds through you, and you know it’s juicing up the old lady and after fifty miles she’s already come three times.” (30)
The mechanical knowledge needed to build, maintain and operate a motorcycle that will illustrate the rider’s individuality and skill, an important aspect of Hunter Thompson’s reporting, had yet to be introduced to this fiction. “Angel” had become something of an all–purpose generic adjective, however, which was full of meaning. “The Topless ‘Angel’” is an obvious example, and Male advertises “The Cycle Busters” as a story about “‘Angels’ who terrorize the south.” Men promotes “Cycle Death Run” as a story about a “band of ‘Angels’” on a spree. The oddest example of this is Charles Kranepool’s “Hell Trek of the ‘Angel’ Beach Brutes,” which is not even about bikers, despite the cover’s claim of a “cycle–surfboard gang of ‘Angels’ that terrorized seven California resorts.” (31)
The only motorcycles in Kranepool’s story are those in the accompanying stock photos and movie stills. The “surf brutes” do dress like the already–stereotypical outlaw biker — German army helmets, Iron Crosses and earrings — but they have the club name, the Ocean Slayers, stamped on their surfboards. The boards and the ocean replace the motorcycle and open road as symbols of freedom. Even without the bikes the story successfully fits the genre: the gang involves itself in brawls, makes money putting the women out as prostitutes, loots its way across the country, and suffers a violent yet splendid end. That they ride in Volkswagens and Cadillacs, and at one point purchase a yacht so they can terrorize an island, only makes for a bit of needed variety in a genre which had to thrill its reader anew each month.
Men’s magazines did provide stories which did not fit established biker formulae and were instead similar to the novels which would come later. Men featured the revenge story “The Cycle Stompers” in 1968, and injected the unlikely yet efficient hero into the outlaw biker story “Rape Rampage of the Backwoods Bike Brutes” in 1971. An important and lasting theme which would be repeated in novels as well as films is that of the Vietnam veteran returning to find his chances of a happy life had been taken from him by a biker gang. In “The Cycle Stompers” Craig Stokes leaves the service after his father and sister are killed. He gets his revenge a year later by creatively killing the six bikers one by one.
Stokes has to kill them because the police cannot act without proof of their guilt, repeating the theme of impotent officials. He is helped by a woman who teaches him to ride a motorcycle. She also has a dislike for bikers because they give motorcycling a bad image. While other women are raped and beaten because that is what they really want, Beverly Jo is one of the few female characters treated well in these stories, but she knows her place. Her Honda is smaller than her man’s, and she rides in Stokes’ wake: “The Honda trailed after him like a mechanical female, obedient and much less powerful. Beverly Jo didn’t mind. She was wearing her husband’s colors. That was enough to make her happy.” (32)
Vietnam veteran Bill Shreve has a different problem in “Rape Rampage of the Backwoods Bike Brutes.” Seven bikers, who are not veterans, take over the town of Red Creek and hold his fiancée hostage. The sheriff is helpless once he is disarmed, which means saving the town is up to Shreve, a decorated vet who uses his brain as well as his martial skills. His attitude is, “There’s always something you can do.” (33) He enlists the sheriff and some of the “farmers” to fight back against the gang, which is too stoned to react. The final confrontation between Shreve and gang leader Unger recalls a medieval joust as they ride their motorcycles at each other with pitchforks in hand.
To suggest that men’s fiction and the genre in general provide male readers escape and catharsis is no revelation. The obvious conclusion is that the genre’s authors were reacting against women’s demands for equality and society’s demand that men restrain themselves and deny what are supposed to be natural natural urges. Pugh believes men’s magazines are the best example of America’s “masculinity cult” and its obsessive virility. They represent the male reader’s anxiety of female encroachment and their fear of being “fenced in.” (34) Bikers, as has been stated, represented an attractive style of unrestrained existence. Arguing that they represent the way society ought to be would be a stretch, however. Attractive yet impossible and impractical for the average man is closer.
But might there be something besides misogyny and gender anxiety being vented in this fiction? Choo–Choo applauds bikers’ complete lack of sophistication in The Sweet Ride. They see through the pretense and act simply to please themselves and to abide by club standards. Living by society’s standards and being a model citizen does not make a man happy or get him what he wants. More importantly, these stories are critical of the physical and moral softness of society’s agents — sheriffs, deputies and police — in a way the news media are not. The same rules and regulations which kept men from being men kept law enforcement from being efficient and effective.
Like other aspects of contemporary men’s fiction, this convention can be traced back to Spillane. Davis describes Mike Hammer “as a private investigator who chose his profession over police work because the cops are tied down by the rules and regulations imposed by ‘pansy’ bureaucracy.” (35) But where the news media generally perceive outlaw bikers and clubs as a threat and the actions of law enforcement as positive, men’s adventure fiction takes a different position. The threat to society comes from society itself, which by its bureaucracy, rules and morality handcuffs law enforcement. And by its ease and convenience it has produced a generation of semi–masculine men who could no longer protect themselves, their loved ones or their country, as well as clubs and gangs dedicated to exploiting that weakness.
The most obvious reflection of this anger and dissatisfaction is in men’s adventure novels, and it is interesting to note how often outlaw bikers are used to reflect the worst aspects of a society they disdain. A broad plot summary of these novels features an honorable hero standing alone against incredible odds. Bikers are the stereotypical bullies and ruffians who by their presence reflect positively on the highly trained and attractive hero. The gang depends on intimidation, reputation and sheer numbers while the hero relies on his or her wits, skill and determination. There is often an element of revenge, whether it is for a specific transgression or simply for what outlaw motorcycle gangs stand for.
Another convention of the genre is the unintentional hero drawn into a conflict for which he is unusually well–prepared. The hero’s motivation may simply be to do the right thing, but in Gannon’s Vendetta John Gannon is initially motivated by revenge. Bikers break into his home, then rape and kill his wife. The guilty go free not so much because there is a lack of evidence, but because they hire a high-–powered attorney and the “DA just won’t go with a probable loser; not in an election year.” (36)
Gannon, an insurance adjuster, fails and almost dies in his first attempt at revenge. That he survives two weeks in the desert with no water suggests he is resourceful as well as lucky. After recovering his health and regaining his skill with a bow and arrow, he and a few allies who respect his strength and determination succeed in wiping out the gang.
The bikers are not included solely for revenge, though their extinction is a foregone conclusion. Most of the story takes place in a small Mexican village which allows them to operate as long as they keep the peace. Gannon is skeptical of the arrangement which lets the townspeople remain oblivious to evil as long they themselves are not injured and the tourists keep spending money. When an old man is killed in cold blood and a little girl terrorized they realize they cannot allow evil to go unchallenged. And when Gannon discovers the bikers have conspired with their lawyer and a prominent Mexican woman to traffic drugs into the United States, he is that much more justified in wiping out the gang.
Bikers as symbols of corruption and the basest of human desires is no accident. Early news stories focused on motorcycle clubs’ free and easy lifestyle, their distaste for regular jobs and their interest in alcohol and sex. (37) In an increasingly conservative society fearful of crime those attributes would suggest, at least, that the clubs had been nurtured in the too–liberal atmosphere of the 1960s. Exaggerating them and opposing them to a hero who extols middle–class values reassures and reaffirms the status quo. Similarly, the clubs’ ability to move smoothly and successfully into drug trafficking could have been perceived as the result of lenient justice. The good citizen would be obliged to fight back.
Revenge motivates Jesse Heller, but the first two novels in the Hellrider series are a bit more complex than Gannon’s Vendetta and depend on the reader to be familiar with the frustrations of Vietnam veterans. Migneault describes veterans returning from tours of duty in Vietnam as lost in America, unable to adjust, unable to find jobs and unable to find people who would listen to their stories. When Soldier of Fortune hit the newsstands, it was a “timely and much–needed antidote to the social toxicity of the Vietnam syndrome.” (38) Veterans identified with it because it was the one publication that ran Vietnam hero stories. Men’s adventure novels served a similar need, telling stories about skilled, self–reliant veterans keeping up the good fight for their country and for the values and morals it stands for. They also provide symbolic victories which military forces were not allowed to achieve in Vietnam.
Heller is a vicious and remorseless bounty hunter who over 13 years has accumulated the necessary evidence to convict and punish the Satan’s Avengers for the death of his family and fiancee. The first book is a straightforward story of his revenge on the bikers. To one biker he says, “I was serving this country while you were squirreled away up in Canada, smoking pot and jacking off,” voicing the pent up anger of veterans who returned to an unappreciative country. (39) Later he explains why he is determined to have his revenge: “After all the shit, after all the blood over there, all the men I watched die — all I wanted was to get back to something I could call my own. . . . But I was cheated.” (40)
Everywhere Heller goes citizens applaud his war on bikers. Law enforcement officials are bent on stopping him, however, partly because they are embarrassed by his effectiveness. He is told that what he is doing, his fight for justice, is against the law and that he “can’t just kill them” to exact his revenge.
In sorting out his hero’s confusion, author Dan Killerman writes, “‘Funny you should say that, Garrett.’ Heller’s voice shook. ‘That’s what I heard the hippies tell the law about the Vietnamese before the law put a rifle in my hand and told me to go kill something.’” (41) Heller, a man of action, is disgusted that the outlaws should get better treatment than his family. As a soldier he was the law and now he is incapable of letting others fight his battles and uncomfortable with letting others decide what is right and wrong.
The second Hellrider novel, Blood Run, picks up where the first leaves off, except now Heller is on the run from the police and from bikers bent on their own revenge. The world is less black and white as Killerman presents a mixed bag of rednecks, backwoods sheriffs, overworked police officers and even bikers with a sense of honor. All have power, but few have the desire to use it for good. Detective Garrett, who still refuses to see the world from Heller’s perspective, is nonetheless dissatisfied with his own position: “After a while, seeing what the human animal can do just eats away at your guts until you can’t really separate the good guys from the bad guys. Everyone becomes crud. Including yourself.” (42)
Heller’s world view sustains the novel as he metes out justice, but here it is a matter of survival rather than simply revenge. In some respects the biker gang’s desire for revenge is equally justified. They too are veterans who had discovered brotherhood in Vietnam. But when they came back to “the World,” they ran up against “a society that seemed to fear every veteran as some psychopathic killing machine.” Unable to find jobs their brotherhood became perverted and corrupt:
Big, powerful bikes and the open road, beer, loose women and easy money made from drug–dealing and selling stolen bike parts — these things had bonded them through post–Nam.
But there was something else that held them together, a feeling that went deep into each of them and let them hold their heads high when everything else went to hell. It was a feeling greater than just friendship — a brotherhood of men who shared the love of the freedom of biker law. The colors made them somebody, made the society that cast them off as losers take notice. (43)
Killerman does not expand on what exactly is involved in biker law, but he at least provides it a bit of respect. Few authors do. It is Heller’s law of survival that prevails, but in the process a woman who holds the hope for his future happiness is killed. Self–reliance and individual honor, undomesticated, cannot protect her but he survives to fight again.
A slightly different twist on the Vietnam veteran theme is featured in Bob Ham’s The Wrath. In this case the bikers are hired muscle for a crime family trying to take over Leeco Trucking Co., which is owned and operated by Marc Lee and Carl Browne, Delta Force veterans. They face the challenge as professionals, which means using all the military training and material at their disposal to protect the Leeco family from the unprincipled strength and immoral alliance represented by bikers and the Mafia. Carl explains to an employee that force is not always the answer, but when it is necessary he and his partner do not hold back: “Marc and I are trained to react. And that’s what we do, we fight fire with fire, force with force. I suppose what I’m trying to say is we’ve never killed anybody who didn’t deserve killing. We’re not murderers, we’re soldiers.” (44)
The gang leader, veteran Barry Dillon, is a murderer, however, providing a foil to the heroes’ virtues. Dillon, “the Wrath,” is described as “a diseased, crazed wood tick” and “the most dangerous kind of killer — the kind who killed because he liked it.” (45) More importantly, he and his gang are power without soul or conscience. They believe they are rebelling against society — “He applied every technique and trick he had learned to ravage and rape the 99 percent of society he hated” (46) — but the violence is solely for thrills and self–gratification.
In men’s magazine fiction an outlaw club’s hedonism could be attractive at times, but some novels exaggerated self–indulgence to a point where it is indefensible. When a biker named Shark takes bite–size pieces out of a living victim and laughs as he spits the chunks back in his victim’s face, the line between irresponsibility and venality is quite clear.
The Predators MC also works as hired muscle in Hell’s March, but author Dan Schmidt provides a clearer explanation of what motorcycle gangs represent. The Predators and their president Buzzard Smith, another Vietnam veteran, deal death and drugs to earn other rewards: “Dope, dope money, his bros, a nice–looking young piece of ass, and kicking butt were all that mattered to Buzzard Smith. And not necessarily in that order. All these things were prize possessions and they were the status symbols of a man’s strength.” (47) Arranged against the drug cartels and the biker gang is Eagle Force, a four–man mercenary team of hardened veterans outfitted with sophisticated weaponry and skills. Their job, in this case, is to clean up after the “Georgia peanut farmer” and a government too weak and too naive to realize the dangers of cocaine.
Eagle Force is led by Vic Gabriel, who at first allows the Predators a grudging respect and notes similarities between the bikers and his paramilitary team:
The biker mentality was of a savage predatory nature, they lived by their own codes, obeyed no laws but their own. It was the ultimate criminal mind-–set, but Gabriel supposed he could at least respect them for gripping onto some ironclad individuality that separated them from the rest of the world and gave them some feeling of freedom and unique identity. (48)
But again the bikers represent an immoral and inferior strength arrayed against clean living and morally upright heroes. Smith and Gabriel square off in order to gauge each other’s ability. Gabriel proves himself the better man on the bikers’ terms — he pounds him to the ground with his fists. Though Smith has the skills to win he is weakened by self–indulgence. That “mindless animalistic self–indulgence” is revealed as the mercenaries walk through the bikers’ clubhouse, an orgy of naked bodies, drugs and violence which is testament to the “sadomasochistic culture of the Predators” and its “base animal degradation.” (49)
All of the heroic protagonists featured in these texts could back down and walk away, leaving the fight to legitimate law enforcement. But, as is made clear, that authority is incapable of dealing with a threat that runs deeper than biker gangs. Outlaws simply represent a profound malaise, a moral corruption which cannot be arrested and locked away; it has to be eliminated. Bikers are easily corrupted because their desires naturally tend towards freedom and irresponsibility, and for whom taking the easy way out is natural. The character of Vic Gabriel is just the opposite. He accepts the fact that life is hard and so is doing the right thing. “Man must confront the struggle or be devoured by it,” Gabriel thinks. “Whatever is in a man’s heart ultimately leads him to what he deserves in the world.” (50)
Eagle Force provides an example of one final convention of men’s adventure fiction which needs to be considered. They are elite heroes acting as the instrument of a government agency which hands them a license to kill without fear of sanction. Of course, to be deserving of agency notice the antagonist must be evil incarnate, and biker gangs are made to fit the bill.
In Hell on Wheels, Dennison’s Warriors, much like Charlie’s Angels, are professional fighters who “handle the jobs conventional agencies could not, warriors concerned with ends not means, with results not rules.” (51) Dennison tracks the “scumbags of the world,” and the biker gangs featured here are too well–armed, too vicious and too sophisticated for regular law enforcement. The Satan’s Sons and the Mad Dogs have a monopoly on drugs and weapons. Their success can be blamed in part on corrupt police officers, “they were the holes in the fabric of justice through which ruthless hoodlums like the bikers were able to wriggle.” (52)
Apeman, president of the Mad Dogs, wants it all, however, and that cannot be allowed. The answer is to send a woman, Chris Amado, to infiltrate one of the gangs and get them to wipe each other out. The prospect of a gang accepting a woman as a member is ridiculous, but she succeeds in bringing down the bikers, at least “until some other Apeman Crenshaw comes along and bullies them back into power.” (53)
Carmelita Morales and Harry Wolfe have a similar task in Deathride, but they also want revenge for the death of an undercover DEA field agent who was abandoned by his agency. They successfully insinuate themselves into the Princes of Hell, partly because they are skilled fighters, but mostly because the bikers are exceptionally greedy and not very bright. The agents’ cover is blown when Harry refuses to go through with the gang’s initiation, the rape and murder of a 15–year–old Mexican girl. The reason behind the initiation is to weed out potential undercover officers and to forge a bond between members, “a bond nobody can cut.”
In each of the texts described here, there is a moment when the hero is attracted to the biker lifestyle. In Deathride Harry wonders whether he will be strong enough to turn away from the power represented by outlaw clubs, but the plot is almost always stacked against bikers. In the end they can never be considered a viable alternative.
An exception is Robert Baron’s Storm Rider science fiction series, which is unique in its praise of biker philosophy. In a post–apocalyptic world the United States has formed itself into regulated, prison–like city states where Citizens dwell. Outside of the cities are the Plains where nomadic biker tribes, the High Free Folk, fashion an existence of equal parts medieval heraldry, Native American lore, and biker law that focuses on individual freedom and survival of the fittest.
The motorcycle is the center of the Folk’s existence; being mobile under Father Sun, face into Brother Wind defines freedom. Tristan Hardrider is the last of his clan. He is captured and raised in an Orwellian Homeland which is at constant war with what the populace is led to believe is an army of heathen biker trash. Tristan is adopted out of a reformatory by the Tomlinsons, who represent for him the evil of city living. Their security is a roof and inside is a “horror of chintz curtains” and a wealth of meaningless possessions. “These were citizens, the ancient enemy and their smug snug constricted lifestyles were the antithesis of everything the High Free Folk lived for and by.” (54) Tristan, given his feudal heritage, learns to fight and survive, becomes a captain in its army, the Homeland Defense Force, and eventually returns to champion his people.
Begun in 1992, the books are an obvious reflection of bureaucracy, racial separatism and this country’s underground militia movement. In Baron’s novels the most hateful aspect of the cities is their regulations. “The City,” Tristan claims, “in its wisdom believed it knew better how to manage its Citizens’ lives than they or their families did.” (55) The Folk have their laws as well, but the difference is they can choose whether or not to abide by them. If they do not they can walk away. At the center of the first novel is Tristan’s discovery of U. S. history and the Declaration of Independence, which is the basis of High Free Folk law: “Being free means you have the freedom to make wrong choices, to hurt yourself and others.” (56) That history is blasphemy, however, and only a few realize the true American heritage they have been denied by a smothering government.
In the second novel, River of Fire, the threat to the Folk’s freedom is a religious cult called the Fusion. It means to enslave High Free Folk and Citizens alike, forcing them to surrender their individuality. Obviously that would be anathema to the outlaw Folk, “a wild, individualistic race, who painted their machines in all the colors of their souls.” (57) To carry out their plans the Fusion recruits a renegade band of bikers called the Catheads who do not hold to biker law. It is Tristan’s destiny to lead the Folk to victory, but first he has to enlist the aid of netherworld mutants who have harnessed technology and weaponry lost to civilization, and regain the fabled motorcycle of his forefathers, WildFyre.
For a number of reasons the Storm Rider novels do not fit the standard men’s adventure genre mold. The novels come closer to the fantasy genre, taking themselves less seriously than the straight–ahead action of other novels. Neither does it have to pretend to be relevant, escaping many of the men’s genre’s more egregious plot conventions. But it is interesting to look at Baron’s novels as responses to the stereotypical bad biker used by other authors. Bikers remain fundamentally the same — dirty, ill–mannered, anti–social — but Baron exaggerates other characteristics, such as individuality, brotherhood, mechanical skill and physicality, which were virtually ignored by other writers. Baron takes “biker law,” mentioned in passing by Killerman in his Hellrider series, and provides it a broader definition which could actually be considered attractive.
There is as well a subtle difference in the type of instruction taking place in Baron’s texts. The typical men’s adventure novel attempts to instruct its readers concerning the merits of various weapons, fighting, preparedness and self–reliance. A clear example is Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy’s series of Destroyer novels in which government operative Remo Williams dedicates himself to physical and martial perfection. In two novels, Brain Drain and Acid Rock, bikers simply provide a stark contrast of animal brutality to Remo’s cool efficiency. (58) The true hero’s persona includes poise and intelligence rather than brute strength. Baron also includes such messages and instruction, but his heroes reveal that living in civil society, protected by the umbrella of government, dulls those skills because they are too often surrendered to others.
On the whole, however, men’s adventure literature represents frustration with the status quo. The cookie–cutter plots, predictable by design, suggest the difference one good man can make if he stands up for what he believes. Doing the right thing often means escaping the limitations represented by society’s rules and regulations. Real men, we would be led to believe, should have no boundaries other than their own personal code. Living by a code, whether it embodies a conservative anti–government stance or simply the admonition to do what is right, is the critical element. It is dishonorable to betray that code, and the ultimate disgrace is for a man to allow someone else to force a code upon him.
Bikers in men’s fiction, like the heroes we have come to expect, live by codes as well. But we are to understand they are weakly held. An obvious example is that of brotherhood. While the clubs boast of being brothers, they will quickly betray one another if there is profit in it, and they are always looking out for personal safety rather than the continued survival of the club. Their lifestyle embodies lax morality and hedonism, the result of physical, moral and political softness. They exist only because society blanches in the face of the club’s combined strength and lacks the strength of will it takes to overcome the threat.
The hero’s courage, on the other hand, generally depends on moral conviction and his ability to enforce it through individual strength and cunning rather than the intimidation of the collective. Consequently, bikers are quick to bow before real men and real authority.
Chapter 6
1. D. A. Hodgman, Deathride (Toronto: Worldwide Library, 1992), 52.
2. Heather Dubrow, Genre (London: Methuen, 1982), 2.
3. Eugenio Bolongaro, “From Literariness to Genre: Establishing Foundations for a Theory of Literary Genres,” Genre 25 (Summer/Fall 1992): 304.
4. Terry Eagleton is critical of structuralist analysis because it assumes an “ideal reader” who has at “his or her disposal all of the codes which would render it exhaustively intelligible.” While this may be an accurate criticism, it is less relevant in this case because the works discussed here consciously employ broad archetypes and signs to reach a reader particularly apt to discern its meaning. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 121.
5. Robert La Liberte Migneault, “Marketing Macho Adventure,” Serials Review 10 (Spring 1984): 15.
6. John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 6–7.
7. Ibid., 6.
8. Thomas J. Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1990), 211.
9. Ibid., 211.
10. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance, 15–16. See also M. Dwayne Smith and Marc Matre, “Social Norms and Sex Roles in Romance and Adventure Novels,” Journalism Quarterly 52 (1975): 309–315. They conclude the world these readers of adventure magazines escape to is simplistic, “devoid of domestic, civic, or moral complications and responsibilities. It is a world in which men are unburdened by the complexities of modern life, so that problems can be met and overcome by the forceful application of manly prowess” (315).
11. Yves Lavigne, Hell’s Angels: Three Can Keep a Secret if Two are Dead (New York: Carol Publishing Group), 144–145.
12. David G. Pugh, “History as an Expedient Accommodation: The Manliness Ethos in Modern America,” Journal of American Culture 3 (Spring 1980): 53–68. See also John G. Cawelti, Six–Gun Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1969).
13. Roberts, 12.
14. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance, 6.
15. Raymond C. Morgan, The Angels Do Not Forget (San Diego: Law and Justice Publishers, 1979), 197.
16. Ibid., 43.
17. Kenneth C. Davis, Two–Bit Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 182.
18. William Murray, The Sweet Ride (New York: New American Library, 1967), 93.
19. Ibid., 95.
20. Ben Bowen as told to Cole Stryker, “Wipe–out Run With the Naked Angels,” Action for Men, July 1975, 48.
21. Terry Michaels as told to Jack Draper, “‘Terror Tramp’ Cycle Mama,” Stag, August 1969, 50.
22. Ibid., 50
23. Lynne Murphy, “That Motorcycle Crowd,” True Story, March 1960, 129.
24. Charles Runyon, “Cycle Death Run,” Men, April 1970, 88.
25. Dick Love, “The Topless ‘Angel’ and the Cycle Savages,” Stag, April 1972, 97.
26. Ben Samuels as told to Anthony Henderson, “The Cycle Busters,” Male, November 1969, 15.
27. Ibid., 97.
28. Ibid., 97.
29. Ibid., 98.
30. Love, 95.
31. Charles Kranepool, “Hell Trek of the ‘Angel’ Beach Brutes,” Male Annual, June 1970, cover.
32. Mario Cleri, “The Cycle Stompers,” Men, August 1968, 96.
33. Tom Christopher, “Rape Rampage of the Backwoods Bike Brutes,” Male Annual, November 1970, 123.
34. Pugh, 55–56.
35. Davis., 182.
36. John Whitlatch, Gannon’s Vendetta (New York: Pocket Books, 1969), 31.
37. This leads to a noteworthy inconsistency. While outlaws are pegged as rather aimless, their successful efforts in the drug trade suggest they are at least diligent and ruthless competitors.
38. Migneault, 17.
39. Dan Killerman, Hellrider (New York: Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1985), 15.
40. Ibid., 48.
41. Ibid., 144.
42. Dan Killerman, Hellrider #2: Blood Run (New York: Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1985), 127.
43. Ibid., 61.
44. Bob Ham, The Wrath (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 60.
45. Ibid., 79.
46. Ibid., 48.
47. Dan Schmidt, Hell’s March (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 50.
48. Ibid., 99.
49. Ibid., 111.
50. Ibid., 61.
51. Adam Lassiter, Hell on Wheels (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 36.
52. Ibid., 55.
53. Ibid., 191.
54. Robert Baron, Storm Rider (New York: Jove, 1992), 64.
55. Ibid., 31.
56. Ibid., 30.
57. Robert Baron, Storm Rider #2: River of Fire (New York: Jove, 1993), 132.
58. Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, The Destroyer: Acid Rock (New York: Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1973); Warren Murphy, The Destroyer: Brain Drain (New York: Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1976).