In Easy Rider, as the main characters travel across the South, they are often refused service, threatened, and even attacked >!and eventually murdered!< for being "long-hairs". Would travelling through conservative areas really have been this perilous for hippies during the late 60s, or is it all exaggerated for the film? In this case does it reflect a real paranoia at the time that hippies could be attacked when out travelling?
A related question for the Historians:
In the movie First Blood (Rambo), the lead character is given the same reception as the lead characters in Easy Rider, i.e.; unwelcome, and with comments about him needing a haircut etc.
In the context of the film (released in 1982) this seems jarring, as long hair on men was widely acceptable at the time, and the John Rambo character does not seem particularly out of place.
Writing of the book on which the film is based started in 1968, so it is roughly contemporaneous with Easy Rider.
My question is; does this discrepancy in the way Rambo is treated accurately reflect the societal shift towards countercultural elements between the late 1960s and the early 1980s?