feb 16, 2022
The automobile is, to me, the personification of American culture. There is no place on Earth where cars have played a larger role in shaping every single facet of our lives. This mostly made things worse, of course, but it's still undeniable that every street lined with cars, every gridlocked intersection, every 10-lane highway screams something about America in a way that very few other things can.
Because of our car-centric culture, I believe cars can say a lot about the world surrounding them, precisely because they so accurately reflect the circumstances they were born into. While fashion has largely remained an ouroboros for the past 60 years and architecture has stagnated and operates on a glacial timeframe (with the exception of hideous 5-over-1s that will, I assure you, only get uglier with time), the language of automotive design moves fast and remains very much alive.
When a car is designed, it says something about its era that very few consumer products do. The jet age of the 50s, the bright techno-futurism of the 80s, the military paranoia of the 00s - it's all reflected most strongly in the cars of their eras. Specific vehicles right off the lot say specific things about their buyers (Schwarzanegger and the Hummer, anyone?) As cars age into different hands, slowly working their way down the food chain of buyers, they say new things about each one of those people, too. (For example, want a shorthand for a character who's a desperate wannabe finance bro? Give him a 15-year-old BMW 3 Series.)
And that's ultimately what makes this image so interesting to me. It says nothing - it's two cars in front of a repeating background - and yet I guarantee you every American who sees this image will vividly imagine something wildly precise based on the statements these two cars make. Historical vignette, modern-day drug deal, sad 00's statement on planned obsolescence, it could be any of these. I have my own reading; what matters less is the exact one you have, and instead, your awareness that our vehicles speak volumes about America, for better and worse.
