In January 1991, I began working in downtown Los Angeles, close to the Union Mission and near St. Vibiana. I walked through a kind of war zone, where the homeless (drunks and druggies and mentally deficit mostly, I thought at the time), the parking lot attendants, and even visiting businessmen thought women walking alone were fair game. I learned to put on a hard urban face and stride through town. In early February, the rainy season in Los Angeles, Christopher McCandless came to Los Angeles for an I.D.
Watching Emile Hirsch as McCandless walking those familiar streets in scenes from Into the Wild came as a bit of a shock. Had I passed this man on the street? Like McCandless, I had recently graduated and this was my first real job. Certainly, I had and have angst that still creates a wide gorge between my mother and me, but I had more mundane worries. I had worked myself through college; my parents didn't have the opportunity nor did they have the ability to extend financial support. I could hardly imagine having $24,000, let alone giving away such a sum to OxFam.
In this way, the movie about McCandless, based on Jon Krakauer's bestseller, is about a privileged young white man wanting to experience poverty and the so-called freedom it gives him. It is also the movie about a young man's dream.
As cool as "King of the Road" sounds or as people find Jack Kerouc's On the Road, poverty and powerlessness can make it less fun. I think of Carlos Bulosan's "America Is In the Heart" road tale. A minority and poor, his tale wasn't about the romance of the road, but about becoming American. He recalls a young girl and her even younger brother waiting until the railroad detectives are gone before, along with Bulosan and other men looking for work, they board a freight train in hopes of getting to California. During the night, the girl is gang raped.
Not everyone is so unlucky as that girl and her brother, and men don't have to worry so much as women. Perhaps what fueled McCandless' dreams was his good fortune and director Sean Penn emphasizes this. In his screenplay, Penn shows us at the very beginning how angry McCandless is with his parents and instead of being delighted at the offer of a car, he becomes angry. There are many people who would never and will never be able to afford a new car. Turning down a new car as a gift would be unimaginable. Yet this was part of the privileged life McCandless led.
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