Chicago Bikers

 “The Bikeriders” a film by Jeff Nichols, 2023

This is a somewhat real story of a working-class subculture in the 1960s in Chicago, of guys who liked to ride and work on motorcycles, drink, fight, break traffic laws and hang-out.  It is also how motorcycle clubs turned into criminal gangs in the 1970s.  The Chicago ‘Vandals’ are really a fictional name for the very real Outlaws, who are now one of 4 big international MC gangs.  This is an origin story as told through interviews with one of the women connected to the group.

It features the ‘wild’ and handsome Benny, who lives for his bike and the group.  The club is led by Johnny, played by Tom Hardy, an older guy who works, but was inspired to form the group by the movie The Wild Ones with Brando. Benny is a James Dean knock-off, so that tells you the role of film in culture.  The story is told through interviews by the rather straight Kathy, who falls in love with Benny and marries him quickly. That is the set-up.

The men in the group are a varied bunch – good mechanics where some work, some don’t and are mostly older men.  They ride Harley’s and Indians.  One member from Romania or Hungary dislikes ‘pinkos,’ who he describes as college students wearing sweaters and glasses, and who later burn draft cards.  He is rejected by the military because of his surly attitude.  There is no hint of illegality in what they do except fist fights, running red lights, and other trivial nonsense.  They stick with each other and will resort to violence if one of their members is hurt by an outsider.  They do burn down a bar after hard-head Benny is savagely beaten and injured there.

There is a contrast between the non-motorcyclists and these bikers.  Kathy’s proletarian boyfriend gets angry after she spends a late night drinking with Benny.  In anger he later drives off in his pickup truck and leaves her.  The two men who beat Benny because he won’t take off his club jacket in the bar probably had jobs.  One club member is killed in an accident and Johnny is spit on by the mother at the funeral.  So the club is a transitional group as seen by non-club members, to thuggery and crime of some sort. But they are not there yet.

The Vietnam War is going on and military vets begin returning to the U.S. in the late 1960s and early '70s. Some want to join the Vandals and these ‘new guys’ are a different breed from the original members. They are more violent and rougher than the originals, who are not that inclined to violence and are ultimately kinder to women.  They new guys threaten to kill one older member who wants to quit and become a motorcycle cop. After Johnny solves that problem with unorthodox violence, Benny bails due to the increasingly violent climate.  Other chapters begin to form and younger punks want to join. Johnny rejects one young thug who would abandon his comrades for membership and that delinquent later challenges Johnny for leadership of the Vandals.  “Knives or fists?” says Johnny.  The kid says ‘knives.’  They later meet somewhere on Fullerton in an empty lot.  Johnny gets out his knife and approaches and the kid shoots him dead.

This is the moment where the fictional Chicago Vandals become the real Outlaws, a criminal gang involved in drugs, protection, gun running, murder and the like.  This is when proletarianism is abandoned for lumpenism.  In dialectics, this is when quantity turns into 'quality.' “That” is the difference between a real gang and a club, a topic this blog has followed over the role of actual gangs in any revolutionary struggle.

A somewhat romantic portrait of the early Outlaws where life imitates film.  When Benny hears of Johnny’s death, he weeps for the first time in his life, unlike a ‘real’ man and he gives up on motorcycling.  The film is absent any material understanding of how Benny and some others survive financially – for him probably on the wages of his wife Kathy.  The interviewer was a photographer who created a picture book out of this. Nichols has done other films – in particular “Mud” and “Loving.”  Worth watching if you are a biker like me, with a female viewpoint of sorts, but the romanticism is also evident.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “The Outlaws,” “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” “Mayans M.C.,” “Spring is Here and the Time is Right for Riding in the Streets,” “Gang Politics,” “James-Younger Gang,” “Peaky Blinders,” “City on a Hill,” “Razorblade Tears,” “Fear City,” “Get Gotti,” “How to Become a Mob Boss,” “Athena,” “Drug War Capitalism.”

The Cultural Marxist

October 24, 2024