Think back to the last blockbuster action movie you saw in theaters. Chances are, a motorcycle made an appearance. Motorcycles are in right now, and lately it seems like every major action movie tries to squeeze one in.
Ever since my dad first introduced me to Star Wars, I’ve been an action movie fan. Indiana Jones, the Matrix, Die Hard… give me explosions and a sexy, rebellious lead and I’m in. And now action movies have more motorcycle scenes? I’m not complaining.
But one thing troubles me about this new wave of motorcycle movies: Too many heroes don’t wear helmets.
When I first started riding, every unhelmeted rider I saw in the media put me in a bad mood. Would it really be so awful to show your character slipping on a helmet before hopping on their bike?
Over time, though, I got used to it, and my agitation faded to cynicism. I still wished more riders would be shown wearing helmets in major movies, but what can one lone rider/writer do about it?
Then, last month, stunt rider SJ Harris passed away during the filming of Deadpool 2. Based on the description of the accident, it sounds as if a helmet could have saved her life.
I have no experience with the world of stunt-riding, so this article is not a commentary on the circumstances surrounding her death. Instead, I’d like to focus on this question: why did her character need to be riding without a helmet?
“There was no time to grab a helmet!”
The first contender here is that maybe Domino (the character SJ was stunting for) didn’t expect to ride a motorcycle that day, like Tom Cruise in the most recent Mission Impossible:
This is probably the biggest excuse Hollywood has. If the character needs a motorcycle for a quick escape, they won’t have a helmet.
And I’ll concede the point, but it has to be said: a motorcycle is a bad vehicle to choose if you’re running from bad guys with guns. All they have to do is shoot out a tire and your day just got a lot worse.
Possibly the only exception I truly can’t argue with is an invincible superhero. But isn’t it an even better message to show that even Captain America wears a helmet (of sorts) when he rides?
And you didn’t grab a helmet… why?
Even allowing for “escape motorcycles,” though, there are plenty of situations in recent movies where a rider could have found a helmet before taking off.
For example, the Jurassic World team had plenty of time to prepare before unleashing the raptors…
… in the first Star Trek reboot, Chris Pine was just out for a leisurely cruise…
… and in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Scarlett Johansson had ample time to slip on a helmet before they dropped her out of the jet:
So, I’d like to propose a new rule of thumb: if the character is planning to ride a motorcycle, they should plan to wear a helmet.
Helmetless Protagonists Survive; Helmeted Expendables Die
But wait… there is one contingent of movie motorcyclists who often wear helmets: the expendables. In the first Deadpool, they used CGI riders, so helmets were not only easier production-wise, but they made the attackers look more intimidating:
And in John Wick 2, Keanu Reeves pursues an expendable rider wearing an AGV helmet, who immediately dies after a collision with Keanu’s Chevelle.
Wait… he dies? Notice, his bike takes the brunt of the impact. Certainly a head-on collision at 45-50 mph (let’s say) is a bad effing day. But would he have died on impact, like the character did in the movie? I’m not so sure.
That’s the thing about expendables: they die. In our current movie culture, expendables wearing helmets die, and heroes without helmets survive after navigating extremely dangerous situations on two wheels.
That is not the story we should be telling.
“But I’m not affected by what actors do in movies!”
Undoubtedly, some people, even some religiously helmeted riders, will think I’m making a big deal about nothing. And certainly, on an individual level seeing one rider in a movie wearing a helmet (or not) won’t change a person’s beliefs.
But on the scale of billion-dollar movies seen by billions of people, only a small fraction of whom ride motorcycles, the minor influence of each movie adds up. And there’s no denying that exposure can make some things “feel normal,” and others not.
Here’s a personal example: last year I moved from Texas, where a helmet isn’t required for riders over 18, to Oregon, where helmets are required for everyone. While I lived in Texas, I got used to seeing guys on Harleys doing 80 on the freeway without a helmet on. It was normal.
But after eight months living in Oregon, I went back to visit my family in Texas. The first time I saw a rider on the road without a helmet, it set off alarm bells in my mind, as if I were watching an accident about to happen. In just a few months, sharing the road with an unhelmeted rider went from “normal” to “immediate danger,” without me even realizing it had happened.
Like it or not, we are all products of our society. You, me, everyone. It’s purely egotistical to think otherwise. And that’s why the cultural representation of riders matters.
One in four riders is not rare
Thankfully, it seems that there is a movement in the motorcycle community (especially among younger riders) toward wearing helmets. But the NHTSA estimates that 26% of riders didn’t wear a helmet in 2016. That’s one in four riders.
Not wearing a helmet, like not wearing a seatbelt, is such a fundamental safety measure that it should be the extreme exception to the rule. And like seatbelts, making helmets normal requires a culture shift. Like it or not, movies are a big part of that culture.
The irony, though, is that blockbuster movies both shape and reflect culture. It’s a business, after all — they’ve got to give the masses what they want. So, the responsibility falls not to Hollywood, but to us: if we don’t speak out about unhelmeted heroes, Hollywood won’t ever change.
That’s why I finally decided to speak out. And I hope you will, too.
I normally don’t wear a helmet. i have one obe the bike but onlt use it when traveling through states that require it. I am not anti helmet, just feel it shoud be left to personal choice.
Thanks for commenting respectfully, Don. I hope you can agree that even if you feel wearing a helmet should be left to personal choice, it wouldn’t hurt the quality of blockbuster action movies to show riders in helmets more often 🙂
LT,
Your passion for this issue is as admirable as it is almost palpable. I do however think conventional wisdom is to assign the brunt of the blame to Tinseltown (though I acknowledge you didn’t assign all of it to them). To be clear: there is a LOT that Hollywood gets wrong. I can think of little they get right; but art reflects life, not the other way around. That is NOT to say that art doesn’t affect/impact life (George Lucas forever changed me; and I fell in love with suits again because of Daniel Craig’s James Bond); but art does heavily reflect it. There’s a difference.
There are only 19 states (and Washington D.C.) with full helmet laws; 28 with partial helmet laws (riders above a certain age don’t have to wear them); and three with NO helmet laws. And none of them require people to wear any other PPE than the helmet. Many of our brethren in all 50 states still fight / lobby hard to not wear helmets.
Further compounding the problem are those speed freaks who (at least on this coast) blow through traffic at triple-digit speeds wearing nothing more than a helmet, a t-shirt, and jeans or shorts. This has been going on LONG before the Matrix when Trinity raced and laced through freeway traffic on a Ducati in nothing more than a latex bodysuit (not that I’m complaining about seeing her do that – yes, I’m happily married).
But yes, it goes both ways: Your father – who raised you right – got you started on action movies with Star Wars, and he wins father-of-the-year for that; but look at some of the shoot-em-up movies out there (like any cop show ever made). How many have you seen where the cops or military strike teams go through the door with guns drawn and the “heroes” or lead actors aren’t wearing tactical helmets like the rest of the team?
Hollywood has even gone so far as to put them in tactical vests but not helmets, as if bullets are somehow only magically attracted to the torso of the lead actors. As a former military service member, it sickens me to see this about as much as it sickens you (and me) to see helmetless riders on the screen; but the thought is that the talent needs to be seen, and audiences are demanding it, so they err on the side of recklessness for the sake of profit. Sons of Anarchy would probably not have done as well if the members of SAMCRO rode around in full-face helmets.
Conversely, I also wouldn’t give the producers at the Avengers too much credit: Captain America does wear a helmet while riding his motorcycle; but it’s only in action shots, and that’s only because it’s a lot easier to CGI the Hell out of him when he ends up doing some crazy stunt that Chris Evans (or any other human) could never do on a bike.
BTW, he does not ride with a helmet in civilian clothes in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (My all-time favorite superhero movie) because no stunts were in those shots.
Again, to be clear, I am on your side: Hollywood could do a lot to help clean up stereotypes and other misperceptions of reality for bikers; people in combat situations; women; minorities; et cetera; BUT they are (understandably) going to go for what sells / what the audience wants, because studios, including the people who work in them, (not just the Big Wigs) need to get paid. As long as that’s reality, we’re going to keep giving them our money. The same holds true for news. We collectively, and publicly, say there’s too much bad news; but ratings tell a different story. So yes, as you accurately stated, the responsibility falls to us. We have to make Hollywood feel it in the purse strings; but will we, and do we even want to?
Ride On and Write On; Because You’re Right On!!!
Ohene —
I agree, blaming “the media” is a kind of knee-jerk reaction, one that I definitely succumbed to as a newbie rider 😉 But it’s a strange paradox, the way we both shape and are shaped by the media, especially in the age of pervasive mass media. I was talking with a friend about this same issue when it comes to body image — at first blush, it seems like shifting the blame to say that women have body image issues because of the media, but (having been a teenage girl with body image issues myself) I can vouch for the fact that often you don’t realize how much “the media” and culture affects you until something happens to shift your viewpoint.
I think the real problem with representation in the media — for women, combat situations, motorcyclists, etc — is simply that the general population doesn’t question those bad representations. What we love about blockbuster action movies is not that they show unhelmeted riders and combat soldiers, it’s the explosions, the adrenaline rush, the thrill of the scene. Personally, I doubt anyone would actually complain if more riders and soldiers wore helmets. Very few people would leave the theater saying, “What an awesome movie, but… I wish the actor wasn’t wearing a helmet during that 10-minute chase scene!”
Anyway, this article was meant to be a fun way to bring attention to an issue that affects riders, and explore the ways that exposure creates our sense of what’s normal. And you’re right, Avengers doesn’t deserve any credit (see Scarlett Johansson below), I just pulled that photo as a bit of a joke 😉
I do, however, think the culture needs to change a bit more before helmet laws start becoming more widespread. My home state of Texas actually repealed its helmet law in 1997, which boils my blood. (Technically they amended it so if you’re licensed and over 21 you don’t have to wear one, but still.) If we had previously developed a culture that saw helmeted riders as “normal” and unhelmeted riders as “abnormal,” maybe that wouldn’t have happened.
Either way, it breaks my heart that helmet use continues to be a contentious issue. I’m not a fan of confrontation, so I try not to get too involved, but after SJ’s accident while filming Deadpool 2 I knew I wanted to speak out. I saw people talking about how the entertainment industry needed to become more safety-conscious with its stunt riders, and it upset me to think that the entertainment industry would start thinking up ways to still show the characters riding unhelmeted while protecting the stunt riders (i.e. a helmets concealed by wigs, or composited footage). How about we all just wear helmets?
Sigh. Anyway. There’s only so much you can do to change the world. As always, thanks for reading, Ohene. I appreciate that you take the time to share your thoughts 🙂
LT,
As I wrote earlier, your passion for this issue is as admirable as it is almost palpable. Too many years on this planet and more than two decades in the military has taught me the world ONLY changes because of people like you. Stoke those flames and keep your fire of faith burning brightly. I have hope for my daughters because of people like you.
Best to you & J
Perhaps in the US, Hollywood sets the cultural tone for behaviour, but in Europe, we generally do not take our cues from the entertainment industry.
As I said in the article, I certainly don’t think anyone actively takes safety advice from movie stars. My argument is that our environment influences our thinking, whether we believe it does or not.